We work hard, play hard, we mum hard — and that’s not just a mantra, it’s statistically true. Our generation of mums spend more time with our kids than generations before (twice as much as parents 50 years ago), but we also do more paid work (just 30% of mums with partners had paid work in 1984, but in 2019 it had more than doubled to 63%), more co-parenting (dads spend 4 times as much time with their kids today as dads in 1965, and 30% of Australian fathers utilise flexible work arrangements to care for their children), more paid care (50.4% of Australian children aged 0–5 years attended child care services, up 8% in just 9 years), more juggle. We research more, try more, learn more and share more. It’s our mum-era, and it’s a whole new world.

“It takes a village to raise a child” is a phrase that gets used like wet wipes in new parent circles, and while it’s always been true, villages look very different in 2025. Grandparents are still working. Friends are flat-out with careers, Hinge, chasing their own toddlers around or simply live too far away to help out with any regularity. For most, the idea of your bestie popping over to help with the baby while your mum stirs a bone broth and your nan folds your washing is a vintage fantasy. Our mother’s groups live in apps, memes about the mental load hit like gospel and if we want help, we pay for it.

We’re raising families in homes where both parents do paid work (in 2023, 25.7% of couple families with children aged 0–4 years had both parents working full-time, just 4.6% of dads identified as stay-at-home in 2016, compared to 23.6% of mums with kids under 15-years-old), yet while women are more likely to be in the workforce, they’re still far more likely to be the ones doing daycare drop-offs, scheduling doctor’s appointments, and managing the endless snack rotation. In fact, over the last 30 years, the division of housework and childcare between men and women in Australia has remained markedly unequal, with only modest shifts toward balance. In 1992, women dedicated approximately 21 hours per week to childcare, whereas men contributed about 5 hours. In 2022, studies showed women still spend twice the amount of time as men on kid duty. Unsurprisingly, men generally report higher satisfaction with the division of unpaid work, and 55.6% of fathers believe they do their fair share (despite data indicating otherwise) and 38% of women reported feeling chronically time-stressed.

How we parent has also greatly changed compared to previous generations. While we’re grateful for the Dr Google and sleep consultants on Instagram, all the extra information means that on every decision, from bottles to discipline, we’re striving for the most educated choice. Much of it is different to how it was done before, so we’re educating grandparents, friends, and sometimes even maternal and child healthcare providers. It’s a complicated feeling to be relying on a grandparent for childcare, but also needing them to respect your requests for not putting soft toys in the cot, or make the formula water first (and please, no shaking). It’s stressful, exhausting and overwhelming.

These factors have combined and contributed to how motherhood looks in 2025. The long-held silence surrounding the postpartum experience finally began to fracture, and in its place, a more honest, nuanced dialogue has emerged. This cultural shift has catalysed change across research, healthcare, product design, and policy, reshaping how we approach early parenthood. Concepts like the postpartum hormonal crash, matrescence, and the mental load have entered the public consciousness, reflecting a broader societal reckoning with the realities of caregiving.

It marks a sharp departure from the previous generations, where new mothers felt compelled to present a polished facade. To cope was to be composed: a tidy home, your old body, and an unwavering display of maternal joy. This isn’t just for the TikTok Mums either, Millennial celebrities also partake in the modern mum conversation. Rihanna expressing the duplicity of joy and sorrow in being a working mum on the red carpet, Olivia Munn sharing a toddler meltdown that saw her son walking through NYC sans shoes, the reason we do it? It educates, it makes us laugh, but mostly, it helps us feel less alone.

Motherhood in 2025 is full. Full of emotion, full of pressure, full of love, logistics, and contradictions. We’re stretched thin and deeply invested, navigating a version of parenting that's the first of it's kind. A version with more options, more noise, and more expectations, but through it all, we’re making it our own. We're questioning old narratives, writing new ones, and showing up, for ourselves and each other, raw and open. And in that honesty, there’s strength.