To Stephanie Bastiaan, a mother of five with another on the way, the "messaging" around motherhood can be a tricky balancing act. Bastiaan recently said in the latest Feed debate that some women can now feel shamed for taking on traditional female roles in a nuclear family setting.
"The messaging through the media and in some parts of feminism is that women who do choose to embrace traditional gender roles are somehow pushing a dangerous agenda that sets women back," the 35-year-old said.
"Inherently, there are women who want to embrace that feminine gender role and that's not a thing to demonise women about ... What I'd like to see the conversation go to is choice."
Bastiaan, the head of advocacy at conservative think tank Women's Forum Australia, says that even though gender roles in parenting have "evolved for the better" over time, with men becoming more involved parents, women can feel like they're "letting the team down" when they choose to be stay-at-home parents.
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While Viva Hammer, a research fellow at the ANU Crawford School of Policy, told The Feed the word 'demonise' is extreme, she has interviewed over a hundred mothers with large families and says "there's always a tension" between the perceived value of a woman's labour at home and the value of her labour in the workforce.
"I don't think that you find many women today who don't feel some kind of tension between those choices — and that tension is exacerbated and brought to the fore with women with large families," Hammer said.
According to the latest data from the federal government's Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, 14 per cent of women and 15 per cent of men report they do not want children.
As more Australians choose to go child-free and Australia's fertility rate continues to dive to historic lows, is this tension playing a role in some women's choice to turn away from parenthood altogether?
To Dita, 37, the prospect of burnout from trying to balance a career with long hours and motherhood is part of what turned her away from the idea of becoming a parent.
She told the Feed's latest debate that her partner works full-time and her line of work demands shifts that can range over 12 hours a day.
"So, what are we going to be doing? So, we dump our child into a childcare facility, we come home, pick our child up and we don't have time," she said.
While Dita and her partner could financially support a child, she said she doesn't have the time, mental capacity or physical strength to adequately parent while also pursuing her career.
Hammer also says economic pressures also mean many mothers simply don't have a choice, even if they wanted to be stay-at-home parents.
From 2005 to 2025, the number of Australian couples with children where both parents were employed increased from 60 to 73 per cent and the number of families with just one employed parent decreased from 33 to 22 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Steph agreed with Dita that the demands on parents who work full-time can be unsustainable.
"I think if you have both parents in an economy where they have to work, then you've got them coming home after a day of work. They then have two hours where they've got to emotionally give to their kids. And you can see why there's such a high rate of burnout, particularly for women where that usually falls to them," she said.
Dr Belinda Eslick from the University of Queensland's Centre for Policy Futures told The Feed the changing expectations about a woman's life trajectory can cause a lot of distress around parenting.
"We've got this sort of normative expectation ... you pursue an education, a career that's meaningful to you, you get a professional, permanent job, you get a partner, you get a house, you get a dog or whatever and then you have a baby — not too soon, not too late," she says.
"And it's almost impossible to line all those ducks up in a row to become a mother and be financially independent and living a sort of comfortable life and do motherhood right in this sort of neoliberal context."
Women continue to take on the lion's share of childcaring in Australia. Women in couples with children under 15 do an average 52 hours of unpaid work and care, compared to 35 hours for men, according to 2024 ABS data.
Mothers in Australia also continue to face a 'motherhood penalty', where their earnings are reduced by an average of 55 per cent in the first five years of parenting and they're often expected to trade off paid work for unpaid caring responsibilities, according to the 2024 Working for Women report, produced by the federal government.
"Mothers are really not coping very well right now. And there are these huge demands on time and capacity and a lot of mothers are being really pushed beyond their capacity," Eslick said.
Ellie Gonsalves, a child-free model and actor, told the latest Feed debate that in a "perfect world, it would be amazing for someone to stay home with the child the majority of the time, but we don't live in a perfect world".
Gonsalves believes Australians need better government supports to make it easier to make the decision to have children when they are wanted.
"I think that having a favourable environment where we have affordable and more accessible childcare for people, parental leave, better housing, I think that all of these things contribute to being able to be with your child."
Eslick believes the emergence of 'trad wives' (short for traditional wives), often politically conservative women who believe in traditional gender roles and prioritise homemaking and motherhood over careers, is in some ways a manifestation of the anxieties women experience when trying to balance their lives. The Feed is not suggesting that Bastiaan identifies as a trad wife.
"There is a very real devaluation of reproductive labour and housework and the sort of labour and the care that goes into sustaining life and keeping things running," Eslick said.
"We don't count that labour or that care as contributing towards the GDP or the economy or productivity even though without that labour the economy wouldn't exist, our society wouldn't exist."
Eslick believes the trad wife ideology can be viewed as a "reactionary, kind of defensive" response to undervaluation of parenting and care. However, Eslick says the trad wife model is "flawed" as women sacrifice economic and social power to male partners.
Some former trad wife influencers have spoken up against the movement after divorce, warning others about a lack of financial independence and abuse. Bernadine Barber (known as Bernadine Bluntly online) amassed a large online audience as a trad wife influencer but left her partner following allegations of domestic violence.
"I no longer believe in extreme gender roles ... What I initially thought was a return to strong family values has, in many cases, devolved into control, legalism and an online ideal that doesn't hold up in real life," Barber said in one video titled 'what I got wrong about the trad movement'.
Ideas such as universal basic incomes or basic carer's income could provide some relief when it comes to the issue of undervalued care and domestic labour, Eslick says, although she acknowledges that these ideas are not perfect and could end up "ingraining" gender roles in parenting.
Bastiaan and Eslick share some agreement that the problems associated with modern motherhood have become so loud in conversations about having children that positive aspects of becoming a parent can be overlooked.
"I do think quite often, I think the human species is built to survive. And when it comes to children, we often hear about the negatives — I do think that is dominant in our culture," Bastiaan said.
Eslick said there is a distinct difference between the 'institution of motherhood' and the experience of 'mothering'.
"The institution of motherhood has all of these expectations and demands and is, you know, shaped by patriarchy and capitalism and so on," she said.
"And I think when people talk about this decision to become a mother or about motherhood, about having a child, I think a lot of the focus is on like these negative or limiting aspects of it, but it can also be a really positive and enriching and expansive experience."
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