As parents celebrate the end of school holidays, they are also bracing for an avalanche of mental load tasks, with mums likely to bear the brunt of the planning, preparation and making to-do lists.
As the new school year approaches, research shows parents of two school-aged children will be ambushed by at least 2900 WhatsApp messages in class chats.
Additionally, parents could spend the equivalent of three unpaid working months a year managing the thinking, planning and administration of more than 1200 tasks related to the household, schooling and extra-curricular activities.
The bulk of this unpaid labour, equating to $10,990 in minimum wage terms, falls to women, with research showing mothers take on about 70 per cent of household mental load tasks.
University of Melbourne researcher and sociologist Leah Ruppanner said mothers often take on daily tasks to run the household while fathers do more episodic tasks, including handling family finances.
"The research found schools are a huge source of generating mental load for parents," Professor Ruppanner told AAP.
"Parents find they can't quite set the boundaries and are particularly affected during the working day when they need to be responding to work and not school notifications."
The mental load can be defined as the thinking work required to keep a family running smoothly and includes scheduling, planning and organising.
Prof Ruppanner said the mental load was also invisible.
"As children get older the composition changes but it’s just as challenging," she said.
"The saying rings true - 'little kids, little problems, bigger kids, bigger problems'."
Parent and child advocate Georgie Dent says women carry a greater share of the caregiving because Australia hasn't yet embraced policies to help parents share the load.
"The pattern of caregiving set in the first year of a child’s life persists for the later years," the chief executive officer at The Parenthood said.
"It then makes sense that when children arrive at school, it is the mum that takes on the administrative load for those children."
Ms Dent said parents in 2025 were under unprecedented pressure, with high costs of living specifically affecting those with kids under eight.
"The wellbeing of parents is inextricably linked with the wellbeing of children," she said.
"The expectations on parents are really significant. My message is that (parenting) is not feeling hard because you're doing it wrong, it's hard because we don't have all the supports and services we need to make it easier."
While technology has made it harder to distinguish between work and home, some advancements can help parents to reduce the mental load tasks.
An AI personal assistant, Goldee, has been designed by parents Verity Tuck and Mike Fraser to help ease the back-to-school chaos by streamlining information into one place.
The app scans school and extra-curricular-related communications including emails, messages, sporting fixtures and WhatsApp threads and automatically adds event details, to-do lists and reminders to parents' calendars.
Ms Dent said Goldee and had become an important tool to manage all the administrative tasks generated by three school-aged children.
"I don't know many parents who don't find the information overload of school, sport, extra-curricular activities and birthday party invitations a fairly big source of pressure," she said.
"Goldee is a tool that I think can genuinely ease the load on parents quite significantly."
