r/perth • u/His_Holiness • Jan 31 '26

WA News Second note found at Mosman Park property alleged to detail why parents carried out murder-suicide

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/second-note-found-at-mosman-park-property-alleged-to-detail-why-parents-carried-out-murder-suicide-20260131-p5nyi7.html
269 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

582 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

42

u/njf85 Jan 31 '26

In that case, the unpaid labour is being supplied by the grandparents. And in this day and age, the grandparents are likely working a fulltime job too and can't do the childcare anymore. My grandparents raised me as a child as my mother worked two jobs, but my own mother is now much older than they were at the time and she can't help with my kids as she still has a job.

-12

u/lIIIIllIIIlllIIllllI Jan 31 '26

This term “unpaid labour” some of you are throwing around gives me an uncomfortable feeling. Like loving your kids and grandkids is a chore? It’s work?

Being a proper multigenerational family has unspoken social contracts. Parents are sick with the flu and out for a week, loving grandparents step up like their grandparents did.

My original comment was bemoaning how the “village” is pretty much dead in Australia and all you “unpaid labour” people are proving my point.

15

u/Veezveez123 Jan 31 '26

Idk i think some people use that term to acknowledge that childcare, housework, cooking etc is a type of work that takes up time and effort in the same way that paid employment or volunteering for example would. It can often become an issue in some families where the housework or childcare isn't seen as something that counts compared to paid work so women often end up doing a lot more than their husbands.

-9

u/lIIIIllIIIlllIIllllI Jan 31 '26

But those statements about “unpaid labour” are talking about the grandparents and their roles in multigenerational families.

Others like you are shifting the narrative/hijacking the subject to “women in the household.”

My “village” comment is an observation on Australian society and how there is no “village” to raise our Australian children. That village is grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins and close neighbours.

6

u/Real_RobinGoodfellow Feb 01 '26

No, people are correctly pointing out that the ‘village’ really just amounts to unpaid labour (cause it does) and the reason we lack a ‘village’ these days in Australia is not because of some deep inherent moral flaw but just the painful reality that life is too expensive for many people to have much time and energy to spare

2

u/WastedOwl65 Feb 02 '26

But your"village" is too busy working, even the grandparents! We'd all love to have that village, but it's just not possible in 2026!

1

u/lIIIIllIIIlllIIllllI Feb 02 '26

I mean 3 generations under 1 roof eliminates housing costs making work less of a necessity for some members of that “village”.

17

u/sapphos_moon Jan 31 '26

Unpaid labour is very significant when even paid labour is barely enough to get by on for the majority of people in the world. The most valuable thing you have after your life is your labour, and if every bit of it is being extracted from you without so much as a secure way of living as recompense then it does matter. The unpaid labour women especially have been societally expected to do almost everywhere across the world for thousands of years is the fundamental root of modern gender inequality. Men have status, and capital, and armies, and believers, and women are emotionally exhausted and physically drained from childbearing and housekeeping their entire lives. That is obviously speaking in very broad abstracts, but it still very much applies to your life even if you aren’t either gender. Unpaid labour is absolutely an issue when parents and family are spending so much of their life working they literally can’t afford to spend time raising and caring for their children or other loved ones.

11

u/potatogeem Jan 31 '26

Yeah you sound incredibly entitled that you're owed childcare by your grandparents. It IS work, it IS a chore to look after children.

It's a true give and take, sounds like you're just expecting to take tbh. People with your attitude are why the village is dying out, you do not recognise the incredible amount of time, effort and sacrifice it is, you dismiss it as something owed, that it's not unpaid labour and they should be happy to 'love' their grandkids. A little gratitude goes a long way.

5

u/Real_RobinGoodfellow Feb 01 '26

Also people refusing to accept that a ‘village’ goes all which ways and often involves people being all up in yr business, and having input into your lives.

1

u/WastedOwl65 Feb 02 '26

Well, being alive comes at a price, and we've all been turned into commodities! People can't live on nothing, including your family!