A School Holiday Reckoning & The 'Wifecore' Queen of the VMAs

Mamamia Out Loud

The episode explores the intersection of modern economic pressures and evolving pop culture trends. It begins with a deep dive into Georgie

Key takeaways

• Georgie Dent highlighted that working parents must find 814 extra hours of care annually due to the gap between school and work hours.
• The cost of raising a child in Australia is estimated at $17,800 for one child and over $36,500 for two or more.
• Johanna Cosgrove argues that requesting repayment for amounts under $15 undermines social trust and generosity.
• Taylor Swift's new music includes references to past relationships, specifically touching on Joe Jonas.
• Kylie Minogue's AFL Grand Final performance featured Gen Z/Millennial nods like the Inspired Unemployed.

Main topics

• Childcare and school holiday gaps
• Social etiquette of small debts
• Taylor Swift's 'Wifecore' era

Notable quotes

The school day runs roughly nine until three. The work day does not.

Conclusion

A reflection on how economic pressures and cultural shifts are reshapi

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:04) and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud. It's what we've been actually talking about on Monday, the 28th of September. I'm Holly Wainwright. Speaker 3 (0:10) I'm Jessie Stephens. And I'm Amelia Lester. And Speaker 4 (0:13) here's what made our agenda for today. Speaker 3 (0:16) 814 hours, parents and an impossible equation. And to add to that, why we have an unusual... visitor in our office today. Speaker 4 (0:27) That's my fault. When do we stop talking about ancient exes? Welcome to Taylor Swift's new music and a very big day for T Swift. Plus, Speaker 2 (0:38) are we going to be paying friends back for coffee? There's a controversial piece of life advice we need to unpack. Speaker 4 (0:43) But first... Forgive me for my parenting sins, friends. It was uncovered on the weekend that I have missed a very important piece of education for my children. It was the AFL Grand Final. I don't know if you watched it. It was an amazing game. You would have watched it, didn't you, Amelia? You love AFL. How good was that game? But anyway, possibly better than the game itself was the pre-game performance by one Kylie Minogue. I was so excited. I was home alone. Well, I wasn't. I had my kids, but Brent wasn't there. And I was bouncing around and I was like, come on. Watch Kylie with me. And my daughter was like, who is Kylie Minogue? She did not know who she was. Have you Speaker 3 (1:22) sat her down to watch the Netflix documentary? Speaker 4 (1:24) Clearly this is what the school holiday schedule is going to be about. Yes, Speaker 3 (1:27) exactly, Speaker 4 (1:27) just in Speaker 3 (1:28) time. Full Speaker 4 (1:28) immersion. But I posted about it and so many people said, same, same, same, same. And I was like, Generation X is failing here, passing on the importance of our cultural icons. Speaker 3 (1:40) She what? Padam, padam. That won a Grammy Award like two years ago. I'm sorry, but that is on Matilda for being uncool. I agree. Speaker 4 (1:47) But you know what? The excellent show made me realise that Kylie's team were onto this because they dropped into that performance quite a lot of Gen Z and millennial reference points, right? Notably the Inspired Unemployed. I Speaker 3 (2:05) loved that. They were so good. And they teased on social. Speaker 4 (2:08) They were like. Locomotion. Is that what the song's called? Speaker 3 (2:12) Yes. Oh, dear. Speaker 4 (2:14) That's not my Speaker 3 (2:15) Kylie reference. And Speaker 4 (2:16) she calls them out. And they are podcasters, comedians, massive TikTok people. Yes, yes. Who all the young ones would know. So they were on the stage. They Speaker 3 (2:25) were on the stage. They were a fantastic Easter egg. You could tell they were stoked and a little confused as to how they made it. G Speaker 4 (2:30) Flip. Speaker 3 (2:31) G Flip. is recently when absolutely, you know, has been an enormous musician for years and years, but Off Campus, which everyone watched this year, their song on Off Campus blew up and suddenly has this international appeal. And, of course, and we don't... Selling Speaker 2 (2:48) sunsets. Speaker 3 (2:50) You know, it's not about who you're with. But Chris Schell is, of course, the spouse of G Flip. There are photos every five minutes of them. It is just an iconic partnership. Speaker 4 (3:00) And then Dom Dollar, who, look, to be honest, I don't know about Dom Dollar because I'm not that cool. Okay. Huge producer DJ, right? Speaker 3 (3:08) Coachella, nominated for a Grammy. And Australian. And Australian. And not only Australian. All three have lived in Melbourne. So Kylie's Melbourne. Perfect. G Flip has been Melbourne. And Dom Dollar, I think, was born somewhere else but, like, grew up in Melbourne. And so they, like, they knew what. AFL was. And I just think last year it was Snoop. Then before that, I think it was Katy Perry and then Robbie Williams. There hasn't been an Aussie act in five years. And you can tell the look in their eyes when they're like, I don't know what they're about to do with that ball, but I've been paid a lot of money. Speaker 2 (3:43) I also just love what struck me about it. I mean, I just thought it was a tremendous 20 minutes, but what struck me about it is she is such a generous. collaborator and performer with others. She works so well with others. So in addition to the three artists you've mentioned, there was also William Barton and he played the guitar during Confide in Me. Speaker 2 (4:05) Kylie was wearing what looked to be a gold foil drysabone, which I loved because Melbourne tends to drizzle a little bit. Speaker 4 (4:13) And it was indeed drizzling. Speaker 2 (4:15) And the two of them together were just so electric and just the way that she brought in each of these performers and really shared the stage with them. They were just cameos. Why Speaker 4 (4:27) did I feel emotional during that Kylie set, apart from the fact that I realised I had really ruined my daughter's childhood by not? Speaker 2 (4:34) Because Kylie is everything. I mean, G Flip said this week they have a tattoo on their arm that reads Kylie thinks I'm cute. Like Kylie's appeal transcends generations, whether or not those generations know of her. Once they do know of her, they love her. And Speaker 3 (4:49) she's 58 and at the top of her game. Like this is not her looking back at her career. Like she is in it in a way that feels, I think as well, you know, when you watch one documentary about someone and then you become like that. basically their biographer. That's me right now. It's like the fact I saw that documentary relatively recently meant I felt I knew all the law. Are you Speaker 2 (5:09) writing Ray Gunn's biography? Is that Speaker 3 (5:11) the moment that you're announcing here? I Speaker 2 (5:14) was like, Speaker 3 (5:14) where's Nick Cave, her best friend? Speaker 4 (5:15) I know. When she did start doing La La La, which is burnt into our heads because we performed that once for a live show, Jesus Christ. My daughter did go, oh, I know this one. I know this one. It was. A flawless performance. Flawless. Speaker 3 (5:32) An address at the National Press Club last week by CEO of The Parenthood, Georgie Dent, has since gone viral. The Speaker 4 (5:39) Parenthood is an Australian advocacy organisation. It Speaker 3 (5:42) represents parents, carers and family. It's not for profit. And it basically, it has a whole lot of legislation ideas. It's had some success in the past. Georgie has been photographed with Albanese. They are working on making... childcare more affordable and extending paid parental leave. I'd Speaker 4 (6:01) like it on the record that Georgie Dent, former mumma may. I know. We taught her everything Speaker 3 (6:05) she knew. Far out. Speaker 4 (6:07) Well, we did specifically, Jessie, yes. She is an all-round excellent person. Yeah. We're obsessed Speaker 3 (6:15) with Georgie. Look, we didn't teach her anything, but she's gone on to do it. I'm sure we Speaker 4 (6:19) taught her something, like where the toilets were and how to get the Barry's tea, probably that kind of stuff. Speaker 3 (6:26) Dent is a mother to three children and she spoke at the National Press Club about how having a family in Australia has become unaffordable, how it puts enormous pressure on families and it's ultimately contributing to the declining national birth rate, which our politicians keep yelling about. She has a bunch of solutions and I implore everyone to go and listen to the speech, but there was one point she made during her address that struck a particular chord. Here's what she said. Speaker 4 (6:55) The school day runs roughly nine until three. The work day does not. Australian children get 12 weeks of school holidays. A full-time employee gets four weeks of annual leave. New ABC analysis found that two parents working full-time with primary school-aged children have to find an additional 814 hours of care a year to bridge that gap, even if they take all their annual leave separately. Speaker 3 (7:25) 814 hours, that's 107 full-time days that parents are trying to scramble. together while also trying to pay their bills with salaries that have not increased at the same rate as childcare costs. Holly, this was shared by just about every parent I know. Yeah, same. Why did it touch such a nerve, do you think? Speaker 4 (7:44) I think, I mean, I think a lot of what Georgie was saying in that speech about the parenthood campaigns on, we all sort of know, every parent feels it, but she articulated it in such a clear and reasonable way and engaging way, and she's very good at that. People... in the know tell me that she's always being approached to run for politics because she's so engaging and so good. So far she isn't declining those offers, I believe. But I think she articulated in a very accessible, approachable way something that every parent feels but often just internalises blame for. You know, every parent I know when their kids hit school get this jolt of like, how does this work? And to be clear, Georgie Dent in this speech wasn't really suggesting that school hours should be extended or that holidays should be reduced or anything like that. She was more using this as sort of emblematic of how disconnected work and family are and how out of date a lot of the care and work hours are when they meet school. Speaker 3 (8:52) And Speaker 4 (8:53) the thing is, I was thinking, because those hours, that... Even on vibes, that amount of hours felt right to me. And I'm sitting here now, my kids, my oldest is finishing school next year. So we've survived that pretty much, although they're both here today. Speaker 2 (9:08) So Speaker 3 (9:09) one Speaker 4 (9:10) teenager lolling in the kitchen belongs to me, another one's turning up later. Can Speaker 3 (9:13) I just tell the out louders that I just saw, you know, you see things that are like parenting goals. I was in the kitchen before and I saw your daughter on a beanbag. reading a book made of paper and I thought Holly's paid Matilda so much money Speaker 4 (9:28) to Speaker 3 (9:28) do that in front Speaker 4 (9:29) of all her Speaker 3 (9:29) colleagues. I was like Speaker 4 (9:29) this is called a book page. Speaker 3 (9:33) She's holding it upside down and she doesn't know what to do with it but she is holding it. Speaker 4 (9:37) She's reading it for school but like so even now we're still struggling with the school holiday. hours. But I was thinking, where did we find those 814 hours? Because they're hard to come by down the back of the couch, whatever. We did not have family around when the kids were smaller. We found them, we paid for some of them, of course, school holiday care was a big thing. And that was really competitive to get into at my kids' primary school because all the parents were working. And so it was expensive and it was difficult to get into. So that was a mega stress. But lots of that, lots of like, today you'll be going, you know, to learn how to paint a blah blah and we were like that sounds great go go go who cares um you bartered those hours with friends um you know I'll have your kids on my day if you can have my kids on your day and that kind of thing and we absolutely split holidays which I love I love that Georgie referenced that is that if you're in a couple and you're raising kids at this time, you will take your holidays separately. Now, what does that also do to family stress? I've got