'I spent years thinking I wasn't cut out to be a mum. The real problem was much bigger than me.'

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This is an edited extract from All Mothers Work by Virginia Tapscott.

When my son was born, I couldn't understand why it was so hard. I couldn't work out why a sense of dread crept up into my chest when my husband left the house in the morning to go to work.

I didn't realise that in the history of humans prior to the 20th century, the care of a baby was basically never tasked to one person for extended periods of time during the day.

Mothers in some hunter-gatherer tribes, that still exist today, hold their own baby for as little as 25 per cent of the time during the day in the early months.

Historically, and still in many Eastern cultures today, mothers were often afforded many weeks of rest in the postpartum period.

Sharing the care of children is one of our most evolutionary successful human behaviours. It persisted for millennia in the form of tribes, villages, and then multi-generational households relying on a small labour force to run.

Watch: Here's why childcare in Australia needs to change. Post continues below.

Even in archaic societies with rudimentary technology, even as some of the most oppressive, impoverished, brutal, and patriarchal societies on Earth developed, social connectedness prevailed out of necessity, and women remained in close proximity to intensive support networks.

That changed rapidly when the nuclear household began replacing most communal living arrangements or multi-generational households in developed Western nations by the 1950s.

Industrialisation meant machines replaced much of the labour that had once required a team of people. Domestic and caring labour emerged from slavery as one of the worst paid and most undervalued jobs. As conditions improved for domestic workers, hired help became unaffordable for most households.

The mother emerged as the sole housekeeper and primary carer of children. She became isolated in a role that had previously been shared among others for millions of years.

A single person simply cannot sustain the level of emotional and physical labour required to meet such an intensive and high-dependency period.

"I spent my early months and years of motherhood thinking I was the problem," writes Virginia Tapscott. Image: Supplied

I spent my early months and years of motherhood thinking I was the problem, that I simply wasn't really cut out for it.

There was reluctance in asking for help because I felt like I was imposing on people to assist me with a role I should have been able to do myself.

Rather than making a reasonable request for help, I felt stupid and incapable. Instead of asking what is wrong with our mothers, we need to start looking at the environment they are working within.

We need to ask why we have remained wilfully ignorant and even enabled the continued erosion of support systems for mothers.

Rather than cultural and policy shifts that actually supported a mother to give care or rebuild the surrounding community, we began profiting off parental stress and isolation.

Industrialisation and endless economic growth gradually drew most people into the workplace, stripped back the social fabric of communities, and then started selling parents solutions to their newfound isolation.

Over time, we have invented more and more baby accessories and "sets of hands" with the promise that if they just buy this next new gadget or product, things would be easier.

The baby market exploded with bouncers, high-chairs, dummies, bottles, capsules, rockers, and play pens in attempts to compensate for this lack of help.

These products help, but the trend undoubtedly enables the over-functioning of women who are masking societal dysfunction to the detriment of their own health.

Even centre-based childcare, an important part of the village for many parents today, is predominantly run for profit in Australia.

We know that turning care of children into a moneymaking exercise is a bad idea. It leads to poor conditions for children and the people who care for them, high staff turnover, understaffed and under-resourced settings.

Virginia Tapscott is the author of All Mothers Work, out now. Image: Supplied

Yet our leadership continues to prioritise profits over genuine support measures for families.

We put mothers in a problematic situation and then offered to sell them solutions, rather than rebuilding the systems of care they actually needed.

The most obvious way to better support mothers is to ensure that both parents have the choice to be at home with their children. Paid parental leave, flexible paid work arrangements, and direct financial support for parents are not luxuries – they are essential.

A range of care options, including in-home care support, grandparent care and the option for parents to provide care themselves must be recognised as crucial tenets of care infrastructure.

This is the only way to ensure parents have true choice and do not remain a captive market for commercial interests.

Informal care must be embedded in early childcare and education as we know it.

Around the world, where these holistic policies are properly resourced and culturally supported, mothers report better health, better relationships, and better outcomes for their children.

By recognising and resourcing informal carers, we can rebuild the networks of support that mothers have always needed but are now denied. The first step is to treat care work as real work.

This means acknowledging its economic and social value, and ensuring it is visible in policy, research, and public debate.

When we start valuing care properly, we create the conditions for healthier families, stronger communities, and a more humane society.

Virginia Tapscott is the author of All Mothers Work, out now.

Feature Image: Supplied.