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There are many gems and reflections on ‘fathering’ in Pope Francis’s apostolic letter, Patris Corde ‘With a Father’s Heart’, in which he nominates 2021 as the year to honour the fatherhood of St Joseph. Francis’s letter is inclusive, encompassing the scope of fatherhood and the responsibilities fathering entails. ‘Fathers are not born, but made’, Francis says.
Men, it seems, have been looking for more opportunities to spend time with family. Research on young fathers, conducted by the Diversity Council of Australia a few years ago, reported that 79 per cent of new generation dads wanted the flexibility to improve their work and family life. For all its downsides, 2020 provided the opportunities.
Despite the heavy focus on 'hard-hat' professions in our political discourse, Australia’s economy is dominated by its service sectors. If this is Australia’s first service sector recession, why is this not reflected in the focus of our recovery and job creation programs?
The Stage Four lockdown announced by Daniel Andrews on Sunday shows how precarious it is for working mothers. When the going gets tough; our jobs outside the home are expendable.
It turns out that the COVID-19 economic crisis is disproportionately affecting women — so much so that some have dubbed it a ‘pink-collar recession’. Unemployment figures show that since February, 457,517 women have lost their jobs compared to 380,737 men.
As more schools close to stop the spread of COVID-19, many parents are becoming instant homeschoolers. I’m a mum of six who started homeschooling before it was cool, and friends have been asking my advice.
The modern 'old maid' is no longer confined to the attic. She's in the workforce, the senate, leading in the community. Yet while gender norms are being deconstructed and cultural ideas of femininity are evolving, the idea women exist only to procreate still persists. Women are not only supposed to have children, they're supposed to want to.
Dominant ideals of masculinity do not materialise out of thin air. They are produced and reproduced by people, institutions, policies and other social forces, and there are places in Australia where efforts to promote or defend traditional ideals of masculinity seem particularly energetic.
It isn't just mothers and wives who bear the burden. Many households outsource domestic labour to nannies, housekeepers and cleaners. These workers are part of a vast global industry that employs 100 million people around the world. They are usually women from poor backgrounds who are rarely paid well for their labour.
Wandering out of sorts around the lake, my thoughts backward now there is more past than future, I see a boy and girl on a school day wearing uniforms I recognise from when my son arranged his to resemble the garb of an urchin.
I've waitressed at yacht clubs, fire stations, homes. I've seen 16 year olds on their birthdays, old couples on their anniversaries, a surprise wedding. I've watched grandmothers ferrying food to their grandkids, and heard the cadences in people's speech all over Victoria. I learned a lot about people when I wasn't 'really' there.
Employer-led change is happening. But if we want men to take on a greater role in caregiving, what we need is structural change: universal, use-it-or-lose-it parental leave offered to both parents instead of the old primary/secondary caregiver model that entrenches existing gender roles.
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