Cost of living fears pushing new parents back to work early from parental leave

Queensland parents are being pushed to the brink as the true depth of the cost of living crisis is exposed.

Vance Hurley and Sera Rohan at home with her baby Archer Hurley, four months. Picture: Annette Dew

Cost of living fears are pushing new parents to the brink and forcing more people back to work early from parental leave, as support services report a huge spike in calls for help.

Exclusive figures from Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia (PANDA) shows calls, texts and emails from worried parents has jumped 13 per cent in the last year, with the service getting up to two calls a day from mums and dads with suicidal thoughts.

PANDA CEO Julie Borninkhof said the organisation received more than 65,000 calls for help over the past year.

“Prior to Covid we were delivering less than half of that,” Ms Borninkhof said.

“In 2020 we saw the numbers spike and in 2022 we expected those numbers to flatten back out... but numbers haven’t gone down.”

Aside from the usual stressful adjustments to becoming a new parent, including lack of sleep, Ms Borninkhof said more people were also now reporting being triggered by financial concerns.

Vance Hurley with Sera Rohan and her baby Archer Hurley. Picture: Annette Dew

“It’s the financial stressors, the housing instability and all the bigger things we are hearing about in the news - including war and humanitarian issues - all of those exacerbate what people are feeling and can heighten their stress around parenting,” she said.

Another support provider, Gidget Foundation Australia, has also recorded a massive jump in demand.

More than 3500 people reached out to Gidget in 2023 for face-to-face or telehealth counselling – more than double the number that were reaching out just three years ago.

Gigget Foundation CEO Arabella Gibson said struggling new families were reporting that the cost of living pinch was forcing them to return to work earlier than they’d hoped.

“So people are finding that they need to get back to work quickly so that they’ve increased their earing capacity again and that puts pressures on families,” Ms Gibson said.

Brisbane mum Sera Rohan had was left with anxiety and depression following the death of her firstborn, Isabelle, in 2017, who was stillborn at 38 weeks.

She said the grief she experienced impacted her mental health around her subsequent pregnancies but that she has sought help early when it came to parenting Amelia, now 5, and baby Archer, 4.5 months.

Ms Rohan said the normal upheaval of being a new parent was being further compounded by the cost of living crisis and that she had experienced “guilt” in having to return to work earlier than she’d hoped to because it was hard to live on just a single wage.

“You kind of feel guilty because you have to go back to work and you’re not 100 per cent. I would’ve loved to have spent a lot more time at home, just with me and the kids, but that’s obviously not possible,” Ms Rohan said.

In a raw column in QWeekend, TV personality Kendall Gilding has laid bare her own mental health struggles following the birth of her son Moses and has detailed how hard it was to find help.

“Challenged” by taking time off from work to care for her son, Gilding reached out to her GP but says she was met with a “blank expression”.

She says she was shocked by the PANDA figures detailing just how many parents, like her, were desperate for help.

“Most (calls for help) took place over the phone,” she writes.

“But how many others couldn’t find the strength to dial the number?”

Another Brisbane mum who knows all too well how hard it can be to weather the peri-natal storm is Abby Stiefel.

Brisbane mother Abby Stiefel with her nine-year-old son Felix. Picture: Annette Dew

In just one year, Ms Stiefel endured two heartbreaking miscarriages before finally giving birth to her much longed-for son, Felix.

But after a complicated and long labour, Mrs Stiefel said she knew within hours of seeing her son for the first time that something was amiss.

“I kind of kept him at arm’s length. Emotionally, I think, I was trying not to attach almost on purpose. It was like I thought ‘I don’t want to love you too much’.”

Almost a decade on, Mrs Stiefel is now using her experience to help others. Felix has grown into a happy and healthy nine year old and Mrs Stiefel is a peer support practitioner who helps other new parents through their peri-natal journeys.

“Would I ever want to go through that again? No. But having said that it has shaped my life in a way. I think that if I had to go through all that crap to help others than I’m OK with that.”

Originally published as Cost of living fears pushing new parents back to work early from parental leave