The PARENT TRAP

A raft of sexual assault allegations has rocked the early childhood education industry. Georgie Dent, CEO of Australia's leading parent advocacy organisation, The Parenthood, explains how it puts working mothers in an impossible position

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At 2am, Chloe* was still scrolling. The Sydney mother of two was overseas with her family when reports of a string of alleged child sexual assaults at a Melbourne childcare centre first surfaced. The alleged offender, Joshua Brown, had worked at 23 centres across the city between January 2017 and May 2025.

What began as casually checking the news, spiralled into an obsession she couldn't shake. “I was seeing every single detail of every case that was happening ... I was unravelling with the stress of it,” she recalls.

By the time the family returned home, Chloe had made a decision that would reshape their lives: she pulled her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter out of childcare altogether.

In Brisbane, Jane* was watching the same headlines but making a different calculation. The Irish migrant, who runs an international recruitment business while her husband works on a tech startup, considered withdrawing her two daughters from childcare. He was ready to downscale his business to care for them, yet Jane resisted. “In five years’ time, you’d be so frustrated you had to step away [from the startup],” she told him. “You potentially miss the window of opportunity [to scale the business], and that has compounding impacts over the lives of those kids.”

Two families. Two opposite decisions. One impossible dilemma: how to balance their children’s safety with their family’s survival. They are far from alone. Research by the Minderoo Foundation found one in 10 parents has withdrawn their child from childcare since the abuse revelations, and 16 per cent have reduced their work hours to fill the care gap. Nearly 73 per cent of couples with children under 15 have both parents working, and 70 per cent of mothers with children under 15 who want to work cite childcare responsibilities as their primary barrier to employment.