Recently the HILDA findings on children care were released and these illustrate how difficult it is for families across Australia to access good quality child care.

Firstly there is a problem with cost.

Australian childcare costs are amongst the highest in the OECD, taking on average, around 27% of household income. In comparison, child care costs are about 5% of household income in Sweden and 8% in Bulgaria.

Given we know that good quality early education makes such a huge difference in life-time outcomes (Heckman's economic analysis indicates a 17:1 return on investment) it is unfortunate that successive Australian governments have not made access to child care a higher priority.

Part of the reason for this is the long-term nature of the return on investment.

Heckman's work showed that the highest return comes as today's children move through their adult lives: better paid jobs paying more taxes, better health and less criminal activity are all outcomes associated with attendance at a good quality early childhood program and these all generate revenue and or savings on expenditure for governments of the future, not governments of today.

Returns are greater for children who are disadvantaged as quality early childhood education improves their school achievement, improves their health and increases their employability as they move into adult lives.

The 1:17 figure calculated by Heckman came from a range of different studies in the USA where researchers followed children from their time in an early childhood setting right up until they were 42 years of age.

There were a number of these large studies begun as part of President Johnson's 'War on Poverty' and these, along with a major study from the UK, form the basis of our modern understanding of the benefits of early education.

Given the lack of government investment in early education, rising costs continue to be met by parents.

This creates a tension between the desire of the early childhood sector to improve quality through improved qualifications (which means workers should be paid more), better working conditions (which means there should be more workers who are better paid) and better adult:child ratios (which means more workers), and the desire of families to maintain affordable costs.

The quality agenda, driven initially by the Rudd government, recognises the importance of all these factors.

However, change is constrained by the lack of government investment in the sector, and the positioning of early education as something for which parents ought to take responsibility.

This is in contrast to primary and secondary education, which are required to be accessible to all, irrespective of parental income or employment status.

Australian families are currently experiencing cost increases across many areas of their lives - petrol, food, electricity to name but a few - so increasing child care costs imposes an even greater burden.

Cost is a major barrier that prevents many children from attending any kind of quality early childhood program, to the detriment of children's long term outcomes.

Many families attempt to address this barrier through part-time work.

Australia has the fourth highest rate of part-time employment of all OECD countries and it is mothers who are more likely to work part-time (37%) than fathers (5%).

Mothers thus tend to shoulder more of the home responsibilities along with their employment responsibilities.

Work-family conflict concerns, once the purview of men, are increasingly being reported by women.

In other countries around the world these tensions are addressed by an increased government focus on government subsidised, fulltime child care (including before and after school care).

For example in Washington DC women's employment rates have increased as a result of extending child care subsidies.

Mothers report lower stress levels and there are fewer families living below the poverty line.

It's time we called on our governments (state and federal) to develop effective work-family policies and the HILDA report provides us with some of the ammunition we can us to do this.