What can ABC’s 'Bluey' tell us about Australian family dynamics and work life balance?

Kids’ TV shows can play a number of roles – to entertain, to educate, to challenge, to reassure. Today’s post, written by Dr Briony Lipton (@briony_lipton), examines how the beloved ABC Kids series Bluey, about irrepressible Blue Heeler puppy Bluey and her family, portrays gender and work. Using a scene from the show as its springboard, this piece sheds light on the complex negotiations around work and family roles that are central to contemporary Australian family life.

“Morning, honey!”

“Morning, sweetheart!”

Bluey’s pre-school friends Rusty and Indy performatively coo their greetings in a scene from hit Australian children’s television series Bluey. Rusty, a red cattle dog pup, is fixing a leak under the sink and Indy, a young Afghan hound, feeds her dog-doll Polly some breakfast. Such playacting is not uncommon as imaginative role play is a typical part of early childhood, but as their game unfolds the pair bring to light a complex conundrum of contemporary Australian family life.

“Okay, I’m off to work now, bye!” they call out in unison, causing shock and confusion.

“What did you say?” asks Indy.

“Mums don’t go to work,” Rusty replies adamantly.

“Yes, they do.”

“No, they stay at home and look after kids.”

“Dads stay home and mow the lawn.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do.”

At this point their ethereal teacher Calypso, an Australian shepherd intervenes, “This is not how mums and dads behave!”

This disagreement leads the pair to play separately, but by the end of the 7-minute episode, Rusty and Indy reunite after discovering the different ideas their peers have about how to play “Mums and Dads”. They reset the terms of engagement:

“How about you go to work, and I look after Polly.”

“No, I really don’t mind. You go to work.”

“Well somebody has to!” the central character Bluey barks, part in conversation with Indy and Rusty and part in narration, breaking the theatrical fourth wall. After her interjection, Indy and Rusty temporarily resolve their differences about the gendered predicament of their imaginary work and family responsibilities by exclaiming, “It’s the weekend!”

“Hooray!” the children shout in clear resolution – in what has become something of a Bluey catchphrase – and so neither parent goes to work, but the reality is that as a nation, we still haven’t found sustainable solutions to very real gender inequalities in paid and unpaid work either.

Brisbane-based animation Bluey centers on a family of Australian cattle dogs: Mum (Chilli), Dad (Bandit), four-year-old Bingo and her older sister, the eponymous character, six-year-old Bluey. The Heeler family are very much designed as counterpoints to the patriarchal family configuring of children’s programs like BBC’s Peppa Pig. It’s no surprise that this touching series has become the most popular Australian-made program for children under four on the ABC (streamed over 200 million times, it is the top-rated show on the ABC iview app since it debuted in October 2018).

The show has been praised for its realistic portrayal of family dynamics, particularly the close father-daughter relationship. Bluey discards the bumbling idiot dad and bimbo mother tropes commonly found in children’s television. Instead, Bluey’s father is laconic and emotionally intelligent. Bandit is patient and imaginative, a playful parent who does household chores and works from home. Chilli is a sardonic, attentive, and working mother, whose primary occupation isn’t merely in managing the home.

What is special about Bluey is its authentic and honest depictions of Australian family life that capture the joys and frustrations of parenthood as well as the importance of imagination and unstructured play in pre-school aged children.

Understanding how paid work and family commitments are portrayed in children’s television and how they are perceived and experienced by men and women provides important insights into how to better design policies that promote gender equality and support work-life-family balance for the kids (and parents) growing up on Bluey.

In the above-mentioned episode, Indy and Rusty re-enact a spectacle no doubt witnessed in many a household across Australia. What is concerning is the implied acceptance of these unsustainable models and gendered norms around work and care.

Bluey is a social barometer for where we are at with gender equality. It may be a realistic depiction, but it inadvertently holds up long held gendered attitudes around the roles of “mums” and “dads”. As such, it is crucial that we reframe the way life and career intersections are conceptualised and depicted, starting with how children see the division of paid and unpaid labour.

Progress towards gender equality in Australia is on a dramatic decline. Women in Australia now enter the labour market with higher education qualifications than men but are segregated in certain “feminised” industries (such as early childhood education and nursing), they make “choices” around work and family that more often than not force them out of certain industries and prevent them from rising to leadership positions and decision-making roles. They are also overrepresented in nonstandard forms of employment (such as fixed-term contracts, casual employment and permanent part-time work).

The unequal sharing of family responsibilities between men and women continues to consolidate the gender segregation of Australian workforces and reproduces the widening gender pay gap and underwrites women’s smaller superannuation. Violence against women and children in Australia is also a serious and widespread concern. 

Women’s time and women’s work in the private sphere has historically been directed towards the care of others and as a means of supporting and sustaining the public sphere and consumerist production through unpaid domestic labour. Upon having children women are often scolded into being grateful to be offered paid work, likely to be linked with gendered attitudes towards work and family and the distribution of household tasks.Even when mothers work full-time, they tend to do double the childcare, domestic work and emotional labour of fathers. Work-life balance is really only something that arrives in our Australian lexicon when women enter employment, or when work is something that needs to be mitigated by private life. While workplaces are increasingly offering flexible working arrangements, not enough is being done to improve men’s engagement in flexible work.

Indeed, these pressing gender inequalities at work negate mothers and fathers’ desires to spend more time at home with their children.

As long as these pups [people] see these gendered disparities at work as normal, society has a problem. So too, seemingly small and subtle gender differences in the division of household chores and responsibilities add up and have lasting consequences.

What Bluey can tell us about Australian family dynamics and work life balance is that gender inequality is complicated and pretending “it’s the weekend” as Rusty and Indy ultimately decide just doesn’t cut it in the long term and does a disservice to women (not to mention the thirty five per cent of Australians that undertake paid work on Saturday and Sunday).

Nevertheless, the show-not-tell depictions of family life in Bluey is a great way to continue these conversations on gender inequalities in the mainstream and push for policy change that understands the gendered nuances of contemporary Australian family life.

Dr Briony Lipton is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Women and Work Research Group at the University of Sydney Business School and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Australia New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) at the Australian National University. You can follow her on Twitter @briony_lipton

This post is part of the Women's Policy Action Tank initiative to analyse government policy using a gendered lens. View our other policy analysis pieces here.

Posted by @LauraKDavy

@LauraKDavy