It is, at once, the most blissful and the most stressful thing I’ve ever done. But these kids of mine, their children, their friends, their colleagues, their generation, go into tomorrow and build our futures. Sure, it’s all been a bit buggered by the election of Donald Trump, but he too shall eventually pass.

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Which is not to say parenting is at all easy. While we wait for governments to catch up with the changed roles of women and men, of parents and grandparents, there are things we must do ourselves.

Leonora Risse, associate professor of economics at the University of Canberra, wrote her PhD thesis on parental leave during the time of the Howard government and Peter Costello’s baby bonus. Immediately after the bonus, there was a brief increase to an average birth rate of 2.0 children per family, but now we are down to 1.5 and only headed one way.

Many women don’t have kids because they can’t manage everything everywhere all at once. Risse says there shouldn’t have to be a trade-off between having children and pursuing the other dimensions of life, like a career. Ideally government policies, business structures, and society in general would be set up in a way that makes it possible to genuinely harmonise all the competing priorities in our lives.

She also wants to give a shoutout to the nation’s grandparents, whose unpaid caregiving makes modern family life possible. A linchpin in the economy, she wishes governments would better recognise and back them too.

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That brings me to what men and women my age must do if we want to do more than just get shoved into a dismal retirement village and left to desiccate. The University of Melbourne’s Lyn Craig is blunt: provide housing and childcare.

Earlier this year I wrote a story for the Good Weekend on modern grandparenting. What horrified me was the number of men and women I spoke to who had no interest in helping their children even though they could. People who said things to me such as, “We had to do it on our own.” As if struggling were in itself a good thing. It’s not. It leaves us broken for years after.

Babies are our beacon. They make it necessary for us to imagine a decent future. They are our last best hope.

Jenna Price is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and a regular columnist.

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