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More than 20 per cent of mothers rejoin the workforce by the time their child is six months old, a new national survey of childhood shows.
Other key findings of the Growing Up In Australia survey include the fact that grandparents provide child care for more than half of the children of working or studying parents.
The nationwide survey was of parents of about 5000 infants aged under 12 months and 5000 children aged four to five years. The study will follow the progress of the two groups of children over nine years.
Professor Alan Hayes, director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, says it is the first study of its size and scope in Australia.
Family and Community Services Minister Kay Patterson seized on the report as evidence supporting the Federal Government's controversial push to get single mothers back to work.
Most parents felt that working had a positive or benign impact on themselves and their children, according to the report, which was launched in Melbourne today.
Senator Patterson said the findings supported the Government's "work first" approach in last week's budget to force single parents back to work for at least 15 hours a week once their youngest child was six years old.
The survey found that 70 per cent of the parents feel that working makes them more competent and 49 per cent feel it has a positive impact on their children.
Another 37 per cent feel that working has neither a positive nor a negative effect on children, and most parents do not think family time is less enjoyable because of work.
However, up to 40 per cent of parents would like to work fewer hours than they do now.
- reprinted from the Sydney Morning Herald