Fertility Decision-Making and Family Friendly Policy in Victoria: Findings from a Qualitative Pilot Study

This paper discusses preliminary findings from a project that seeks to generate new insights into the current downturn in Australia’s birthrate. The Australian federal government’s own surveys show that Australians generally believe managing work and family is getting harder not easier. At the same time, public debate surrounding a series of recent family and maternity-related initiatives suggests that unresolved tensions concerning population levels, motherhood and family policy persist in Australian society. This debate reflects public investment in particular forms of classed and raced femininity and models of ‘good ’ and ‘appropriate ’ mothers, while constructing women’s fertility decision-making processes variously as wilful, problematic and/or potentially costly. Moreover, the media’s consistent framing of the population issue within the language of a ‘birth strike ’ cedes to middle class professional women exclusive blame for the declining population. It follows then that this particular demographic cohort is exhorted to re-embrace and re-prioritise the nuclear family, domesticity and motherhood as both feminine and national duties, while no meaningful social role is extended either to non-domestic, child-free wome