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Time is critical in both the domain of paid work and the domain of family life, and the growth in women’s paid work is posing particular challenges for contemporary families. Recent international policy discussions about work/life balance have focussed on “reconciliation policies” which the OECD has defined as ‘all those measures that extend both family resources (income, services and time for parenting) and parental labour market attachment’(OECD 2002). But family time is a finite resource and the extent of parental labour market attachment is dependent on time available in the context of family life. We propose a new framework, the family time economy, which allows for investigation of the interrelated and complex temporalities of work and care in contemporary family life. Using the Australian case, we argue this framework may more fully reveal family experiences of work and care, the transitions between work …