In The Labour Market Ate My Babies, Barbara Pocock examines the impact of modern working life on our children. In this book, young Australians from all over the country, city and the bush, rich and poor, talk about the good and bad of parental work--the trade off between consumer riches versus time for each other.

Pocock argues that the modern labour market is having a huge impact on today’s youth and eating into our capacity to care. Children have become a "market." Caring for kids and selling to kids is big business, as stressed, time-poor parents struggle to care for their children and salve their guilt with presents and pocket money.

How will this future generation of workers weigh up the labour market and organise their lives? The Labour Market Ate My Babies argues that a sustainable future requires new policy approaches to work that incorporate the perspectives of children. We should:

• ensure that parents get the time they need away from work when they need it;
• help parents get a good fit between how they want to work, and how they have to;
• provide quality, low cost, public childcare options; and
• stop advertising to kids in ways that stimulate an early work/spend cycle.

Table of Contents

Preface
About the Author
Abbreviations

CHAPTER 1: Introduction and overview
CHAPTER 2: Understanding households, work, and social reproduction
CHAPTER 3: Work, children and time versus money
CHAPTER 4: Job spillover: How parents’ job affect young people
CHAPTER 5: Guilt, money and the market at work
CHAPTER 6: Future work and households: Transitions and sharing
CHAPTER 7: Kids as commodities? Childcare in Australia
CHAPTER 8: Runaway consumption, the work/spend cycle and youth
CHAPTER 9: Children, work and a sustainable future

APPENDIX: Data sources
Bibliography

Index