After her third child was born, Ariel Bryant was struggling. Originally from New York, she had spent much of her pregnancy at home during one of Melbourne’s long Covid lockdowns. Even as restrictions lifted, she was still far from family and feeling the pressure of looking after young children without a solid community.
When her doctor diagnosed her with postpartum anxiety she began researching what social support she could access. As she already had kids she wasn’t able to join a local council parent group. So instead she started going on long regular walks with a new friend, Keshia Hutchens, who had also had a third child and was facing similar obstacles.
“Keshia and I started having conversations about how you get support for your first child but not following ones,” Bryant says. “The maternal child health services are amazing but they’re also mostly for the baby. There are gaps.”
Realising they couldn’t be the only parents lost in the system, Bryant and Hutchens set out to map parents’ postpartum challenges. “We started putting together informal focus groups online and in-person with friends and friends-of-friends with babies under 12 months. Then we began meeting with five to 10 women every other week for almost 18 months to gauge what they were searching for after the birth of their children.
“The one thing we heard about constantly was the isolation of motherhood, and how that’s not being solved in maternal child health service appointments or by going to the doctor.”
All those conversations lead Bryant and Hutchens to found From Day One, which they describe as “a first-of-its-kind space” for parents of babies under 12 months. Opened this month in Melbourne’s well-heeled Prahran neighbourhood, they offer families group classes, events and access to specialists. “We really wanted to build a physical space where women could meet others in the same place in life, who just wanted to speak, be heard and be validated.”
With its boutique design and soothing pastel palette, From Day One may feel like a singular response to Hutchens and Bryant’s personal histories. But it exists within a growing trend. Around the country private parent groups are on the rise.
In Brisbane there’s Modern Mamas, founded in 2017, which holds mum and bub fitness classes, pregnancy yoga, parent groups for babies and older kids, and a dads program. Adelaide has Bump and Beyond, which spans birth classes and parents groups, with specific guidance about things like sleep and play.
Services across these groups vary but they all come at a cost. Modern Mamas offers a 10-week course for $250, Bump and Beyond’s eight-week course is $400, From Day One’s prices vary but sit at about $25 a week for an ongoing membership, which gives parents access to a drop-in space, scheduled mothers’ groups and masterclasses covering everything from first aid to managing stress.
While paid-for parenting groups are common in many other countries, in Australia, states, territories and local councils already arrange universal, free services for parents and children from birth to school age.
Stacey Fleming, a maternal child health leader with the city of Darebin, in Victoria says: “There is no barrier to becoming part of a new parent group … you’re automatically enrolled into the maternal child health service when your child is born.”
Alongside parent groups, councils also facilitate guidance on topics like sleep and breastfeeding. So why are some parents paying for something that’s available for free?
When Georgia Prince, a primary school teacher, had her son in 2022, she was enrolled into a local new parents group. But she quickly realised that, despite its breadth of services, she wasn’t getting what she needed. “The focus was very much, ‘This is what you do with a baby,’” she says. “But that wasn’t what I was worrying about. I was more anxious about questions like, ‘How am I going to adapt and change within this new role?’”
While she appreciates and respects the work of her maternal child health nurses, she felt they simply did not have the time to unpack the complex emotional realities she was facing. She ended up paying to join a private group, a guided program in which participants came together weekly to explore the emotional and social transformations that come with new parenthood. The course gave her “avenues to explore those topics in a safe way, with other mums and a facilitator who I felt really comfortable with”.
Fleming is sympathetic to new parents seeking more agency over their postpartum experience and ensuring their needs and values are met but she worries about what might be lost when individuals choose to retreat into familiar cliques. She says one of the benefits of council-run parenting groups is the way they combine proximity and diversity.
“We are a conduit for connecting people who are on a similar journey in those early days of parenthood, which can be overwhelming,” she says. Often that involves becoming close to people you might not usually encounter. “It’s an opportunity to socialise with others in your local area and then what generally happens is you create bonds that can continue past the six week sessions that we offer.”
These issues of community are familiar to Dr Cris Townley, a postdoctoral research fellow at Western Sydney University, whose work has explored identity, belonging and support in parenting groups.
Traditionally, Townley says, parent groups have been great places for people to connect but broader social changes have shifted the experience. “We’re used to thinking about local communities as being spaces we can push a pram to,” they say. “But people don’t think about identity in that way any more. While there is a strong argument that that’s how we build strong, diverse communities, there is also a strong argument that people want to be in a parent group with people like themselves in some way.”
Like Prince, Townley also wanted a parenting group aligned to their individual experiences: “I went to the local playgroup, because it was important to me to be part of the community. But I also travelled to be part of a group that was mostly lesbian mums because that was my community and what I wanted for my child.”
Fleming understands the desire for a more personal experience but wishes that parents sought it out through council groups. “The idea with the council group is to come together and ask: ‘What do we want to talk about?’ It’s open to the participants to say what they’re interested in, rather than the nurse dictating the session.”
She says her program has started surveying at the beginning of sessions, to help shape conversations. Instead of breaking away to the private sector, where additional costs can create barriers, Fleming hopes parents will advocate for those more nuanced discussions in council groups. “Put your hand up and say, ‘This is what I want to cover,’” she says.
Fleming says this open approach has allowed leaders like herself to meet parents where they are, while catering to the needs of a diverse group. “Some groups may have members who are part of the LGBTQA community, some may have more single parents, some may have more young parents. They might have different wants and interests that the nurse can bring into the sessions.”
Townley notes that this vision of a highly engaged and self-motivated council model requires a level of dedication that not all families can commit to. “I think what’s happened is people don’t have the time and energy,” they say. “Rather, now there are people who are willing to pay for that.
“You know, we’re used to ordering in Uber Eats rather than cooking our own dinner … I think it’s a similar kind of trend where we’re becoming accustomed to buying in those services.
“The risk is that the people who have the resources to afford to do that are then taken out of the pool of people who might voluntarily band together and use their resources and energy for a community group.”
Townley understands that all new parents require a variety of spaces and ways to connect. While there is nothing wrong with parents seeking out communities that meet their needs, Townley says a wide-scale diversion of resources from public to private groups could erode “the grassroots infrastructure” that has made council maternal health services so valuable to all.
