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#34 Roads and Bridges with Georgie Dent: The Care Infrastructure Working Parents Were Never Given

What if it feels impossible not because you are doing it wrong, but because nobody built the road?

It rarely arrives as a crisis. It arrives as a calendar change: a gala day moved at the last minute, a sick child, a vacation care booking window that closes before breakfast. And then someone absorbs it, usually by default, usually a woman.

Georgie Dent has spent almost two decades arguing that this is not a personal logistics problem. As CEO of The Parenthood, she helped win paid parental leave of 26 weeks with superannuation and a pay rise for early educators, and in September she took the case to the National Press Club. She is also a mother of three who learned, early and painfully, what happens when you treat a structural problem as a personal failing.

Together we trace why this is a parenting issue with a disproportionate cost to women, why the first year of a baby’s life sets the pattern for decades, and what workplaces and households can do right now.

In this episode Georgie shares

  • Why the viral ABC Lifestyle post got the analysis right and the question wrong

  • "It’s not feeling hard because you’re making the wrong choices": the line The Parenthood says to parents every day

  • Why the answer is never to take women out of the workforce, and what economic security means for women’s independence and safety

  • Why she advocates for parents, not mothers, and how that protects women

  • Why dads need to be "main characters, not cameos in families", and how use-it-or-lose-it leave makes that possible

  • The caregiving patterns that set in a baby’s first year and persist for decades

  • The invisible logistics of care: nappies, wipes, onesies that fit, the right layers for today’s weather

  • Her colleague’s restaurant lesson on swapping front of house and back of house

  • Why lowering the bar is a skill, and why lunchboxes are not a verdict on your parenting

  • How she and her husband use the Fair Play system to take full ownership of tasks, including every school form

  • The school camp phone call that proves who institutions still assume is in charge

  • The acting editor role that judged her on output, not hours, when she had two small children

  • Why paid parental leave and early education are the roads and bridges between home and work

  • The specialist appointment early in her career, and why her breakdown became a turning point

Key Quotes

  • "It’s not feeling hard because you’re making the wrong choices. It is really hard because we have not invested in the infrastructure that you need in order to be able to combine work and care." Georgie Dent

  • "Paid parental leave and early education and care are literally the roads and bridges that parents need in order to be able to move between home and work. But we haven’t built it for them." Georgie Dent

  • "Becoming a parent for the first time is life’s most radical transformation." Georgie Dent

Timestamps

  • (04:38) Welcome, Georgie Dent

  • (10:12) The ABC Lifestyle post that asked mothers for their secrets.

  • (14:27) The Success Tax, and parenting like it’s 1956

  • (17:14) Why women’s economic security is non-negotiable

  • (19:00) Why men have to be in this conversation

  • (21:07) Main characters, not cameos

  • (26:37) The invisible load and why it sticks to one person

  • (30:27) Lower the bar, and fully owning a task

  • (33:16) Why the school always calls Mum

  • (38:20) What genuine workplace flexibility looks like

  • (43:17) Roads and bridges: care as infrastructure

  • (45:41) A turning point early in Georgie’s career

  • (55:34) What spacious success looks like for Georgie now

Georgie Dent

Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin: 

References

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