Overview

This section explores key terms relating to family and caring responsibilities, the state of play for carers in the Australian workforce, and key issues such as bias, discrimination, the gender care and pay gap, and the barriers experienced by young carers and members of the ‘sandwich generation’.

Table of Contents

Key definitions

Caring responsibilities: DCA recommends taking a broad approach to defining ‘caring responsibilities’ to support a diversity of family and caregiving relationships. Caring responsibilities may arise in relation to a range of different relationship and caring types, such as:

  • caring for children
  • foster care
  • kinship care
  • elder care
  • caring for a person with disability.

Other agencies, institutions, and some of the research and resources cited on this website may use different definitions. For example, the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 defines family responsibilities as: the responsibilities of a person to care for or support:

  • a dependent child of the person, or any other immediate family member who is in need of care and support.1

While definitions such as this focus on dependent children and immediate family, when designing your workplace policies and initiatives, DCA encourages employers to use an expansive and flexible definition of caring responsibilities. Avoid distinctions such as ‘immediate family’ or ‘household members’. This will help ensure your policies are inclusive of a broad range of caring responsibilities.
Importantly, employees may have multiple different caring responsibilities. For example, they may be responsible for caring for their young children and an older relative. Caring responsibilities can be long term (for example caring for a child), or temporary and ad hoc (for example temporarily caring for a relative while they recover from surgery).

Caregiving status can be fluid. The role of caregiver is one a person may enter and leave as their family and caring circumstances change.

Other key terms

  • Informal carers: ‘People who provide care to those who need it within the context of an existing relationship, such as a family member, a friend or a neighbour. The demands of the role often go beyond what would normally be expected of these relationships. People who need help may also receive formal services from government and other organisations. The majority of informal carers are unpaid, although some may receive assistance through income support payments and other support services.’2
  • Carers: ‘Carers’ is sometimes used to broadly to describe anyone who provides unpaid care to another person. This is distinct from paid, professional care jobs. Sometimes the term refers specifically to informal carers as described above. At DCA we take the former approach, but other organisations that we reference, for example some government agencies and Carers Australia, take the latter. Within DCA resources we use the term ‘carer’ and ‘person with caring responsibilities’ interchangeably.
  • Elder care: When someone provides informal or unpaid care for an older person with whom they have an existing relationship, such as a family member. This is distinct from those who undertake paid care roles such as support care workers or aged care workers.
  • Primary carer: A person who has the main responsibility for the care of another person. It is often used in the context of parents, however it is sometimes used to describe other care relationships. DCA does not use the term ‘primary carer’ unless citing external research or resources. For more information, see the parental leave overview section of our website.
  • Young carers (sometimes called young adult carers): ‘People up to 25 years old who provide unpaid care and support to family members or friends who have a disability, mental illness, chronic condition, mental illness, an alcohol or other drug issue or who are frail aged.’3
  • Work-family conflict: the struggle people face when the demands of their job and their family life clash or compete.4
  • Work-life balance: the balance between work and home life with minimal role conflict between the two.5

Inclusive language

When it comes to caring responsibilities, it is important to focus on gender- and family- inclusive language.

Gender: DCA recognises that gender does not exist only in binary categories and that many people do not identify or fit comfortably with these labels. We acknowledge that there are people whose experiences and identities cannot be captured by this binary language. At DCA we aim to use language that includes, and addresses marginalisation of, all genders where possible.

However, this resource sometimes uses binary language. Gendered terms are sometimes used in the legislation we are discussing or in the research that we are citing. Furthermore, binary language is sometimes necessary to convey the gendered nature and dynamics of society, and the very real effects these categories can have on people’s lives.

Learn more about gender-inclusive language in DCA’s Words at Work Gender Guide.

Some other inclusive language considerations when creating your caring responsibilities and initiatives include:

  • Instead of using terms such as ‘immediate’ family and ‘extended’ family, simply use ‘family’
  • Refrain from using the terms ‘household’ or ‘household members’ as not all family members live together

It is also important for employers to recognise that employees may define family in different ways, with varied structures and cultural expectations around caring responsibilities.

State of play

Australia has a diversity of families, family structures, and caregiving arrangements. Yet the data we capture often does not reflect that diversity. For example, the census has failed to accurately and inclusively capture LGBTQ+ community data.6 While the caregiving statistics below attempt to illustrate the breadth, prevalence and diversity of carers and caregiving arrangements in Australia, they do not capture the full picture.

DCA's Inclusion@Work Index data

DCA’s Inclusion@Work Index is a survey of 3,000 nationally representative workers in Australia. In 2025, 25% of all respondents reported having one or more kinds of caring responsibilities. 

Bar chart titled “Types of caring responsibilities.” It shows the percentage of respondents with each type of caring role: 5% care for an adult or adults without disability, 6% care for an adult or adults with disability, 14% care for a child or children without disability, 4% care for a child or children with disability. Source: DCA’s Inclusion@Work Index survey of 3,000 Australian workers; 26% reported having one or more caring responsibilities.

Please note that survey respondents were able to select multiple kinds of caring responsibilities. 

Our Inclusion@Work data also shows that carers represent a diversity of demographic backgrounds:

Bar chart titled “% were workers with caring responsibilities.” • 44% were workers from one or more non–main English-speaking backgrounds • 56% were workers from main English-speaking backgrounds • 17% were workers with disability • 42% were workers with a non-Christian religion • 51% were workers with no religion • 7% were workers with a Christian religion • 17% were older workers (over 55) • 64% were mid-career workers (aged 30–54) • 18% were young workers (aged 18–29) • 22% were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers • 43% were men • 57% were women

This data shows that carers are a diverse cohort, and employers need to keep this diversity in mind when designing their carer inclusion policies and initiatives.

Learn more about how to design your policies to be inclusive for a diversity of carers and caring responsibilities in the leading practice section.

Carers of people with disability or older people

The 2022 Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (in this report ‘carers’ included those who provide informal assistance to people with disability or a person aged 65 and older) found that there were:

  • 3 million carers, representing 11.9% of all Australians living in households (up from 10.8% in 2018)
  • 391,300 young carers (under the age of 25), up from 235,300 in 2018
  • 1.2 million primary carers in Australia, and of these, 43.8% had disability themselves

The average age of a carer was 50 years.

Parents

The 2021 census counted 2.5 million families with children under the age of 15 years7. Further:

  • there were 1.2 million one-parent families in June 2024, accounting for 16% of all families. Of these one-parent families, 741,000 (62%) had dependants (including children under 15)
  • the majority (78%) of one-parent families with children and dependants were headed by a single mother.8

Out of home carers

According to the Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, there are 4 types of carers who provide out of home care are:

  • foster carers who are not related to the child
  • relative/kinship carers who are related to or know the child
  • long-term guardianship carers who may or may not be related to the child
  • respite carers who provide short-term accommodation where the intention is for the child to return to their prior residence (out-of-home care or family home).9

As of 30 June 2024, there were about 24,200 unique carer households with a placement.10

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The contents of this page were last updated in October 2025.

Caring
The case for action

References

  1. Fair Work Commission, “Family or carer’s responsibilities”, https://www.fwc.gov.au/family-or-carers-responsibilities.
  2. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, “Informal Carers”, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/informal-carers.
  3. Carers Australia, “Young Carers”, https://www.carersaustralia.com.au/about-carers/young-carers/.
  4. Jeffrey H. Greenhaus and Nicholas J. Beutell, “Sources of Conflict between Work and Family Roles,” The Academy of Management Review 10, no. 1 (1985): 76–88, https://doi.org/10.2307/258214.
  5. Jeffrey H. Greenhaus and Saroj Parasuraman, “The Allocation of Time to Work and Family Roles,” in Gender, Work Stress, and Health (American Psychological Association, 2002), https://doi.org/10.1037/10467-008.
  6. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Statement of Regret: 2021 Census”, 14/08/2023, https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-statements/statement-regret-2021-census.
  7. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Our families and households”, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/people-and-communities/snapshot-australia/latest-release#our-families-and-households.
  8. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “One parent families”, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/employment-and-unemployment/labour-force-status-families/latest-release#one-parent-families.
  9. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, “Child protection Australia 2023–24”, 25 June 2025, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/child-protection/child-protection-australia-2023-24/contents/insights/supporting-children#oohc.
  10. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, “Child protection Australia 2023–24”, 25 June 2025, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/child-protection/child-protection-australia-2023-24/contents/insights/supporting-children.
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  13. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Barriers and Incentives to Labour Force Participation”, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/employment-and-unemployment/barriers-and-incentives-labour-force-participation-australia/dec-2024.
  14. Australian Institute of Family Studies, “Employment of Men and Women Across the Life Course”, https://aifs.gov.au/research/facts-and-figures/employment-men-and-women-across-life-course.
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  18. Workplace Gender Equality Agency, WGEA Gender Equality Scorecard 2023-24, 20 November 2024, https://www.wgea.gov.au/publications/australias-gender-equality-scorecard.
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    Ashlee Borgkvist, “‘It Would Be Silly to Stop Now and Go Part-Time’: Fathers and Flexible Working Arrangements in Australia,” in Engaged Fatherhood for Men, Families and Gender Equality: Healthcare, Social Policy, and Work Perspectives, ed. Marc Grau Grau et al. (Springer International Publishing, 2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75645-1_13.
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