Seeing Deep Patterns of Thinking: The First Step in Moving Mindsets

Working alongside key stakeholders, our goal is to understand and track how Australians think about young children, families, caregiving, and community responsibility — and how those understandings differ across populations and over time. In our first quantitative survey, we examined how a set of  shared patterns of thinking — cultural mindsets — are both held in common and vary across groups. We also looked at how they interconnect or ‘cluster’ and how they predict people’s support for solutions. Based on these findings, we offer some initial ideas for how sector strategy and communications can build meaningful and sustained demand for changes that better support all young children in Australia. 

These findings can help advocates and communicators working in and on the systems that affect children and families — including the early years, housing, employment, justice, health, education, transportation and more — strategically shape conversations around early childhood in Australia.

Cultural mindsets (or mindsets, for short) are deep, implicit patterns of thinking that shape how we understand the world and how we make decisions. In shaping how we think, mindsets structure and produce our beliefs and attitudes and how we act in the world. 

The mindsets that we hold can normalise or problematise the existing social order and, in turn, shape whether we support social change and which sorts. We all have multiple mindsets that we can use to think about a given issue. For example, while people in Australia often think individualistically, they also have access to mindsets that allow them to see that what surrounds us, shapes us. When these more contextual mindsets are activated, they bring social systems into view and highlight the ways that context shapes outcomes alongside individual choices. They also lead us to recognise the need for policies that change contexts and systems.

Shifting mindsets matters for social change efforts insofar as they enable other changes in the world, such as policy or systemic change. While mindset shifts aren’t the only piece to the puzzle of social change efforts, they are necessary to enable other lasting changes that lead to meaningful reforms and improve outcomes. 

We conducted a nationally representative descriptive survey in February 2026. The survey was designed to measure the strength of a set of mindsets Australians use to think about early childhood and related issues.

Explain what government should and must do to partner with parents and help support young children while remaining honest and specific about the ways it isn’t fulfilling its role. Focus on what government needs to do differently going forward to be a better partner for children and families across Australia.

For example, connect it to the Government as Partner mindset to expand understanding of how government should be part of the ‘village’ supporting children and families across Australia. A segmented approach to strengthen It Takes a Village— using targeted framing that expands this mindset for groups that already strongly endorse this thinking (such as Culturally and Linguistically Diverse groups, parents of young children and younger people) — can be especially effective. 

Avoid inadvertently cueing and be attuned to subtle cues that may activate these harmful mindsets. To keep from activating this thinking, emphasise what we all gain when changes take place and we more fully support all young children and families.

Use communications to activate the productive dimensions of this mindset and overcome the passive aspects. Make it clear that what surrounds young children shapes their development and that the relationship between children and their environments is active and dynamic rather than passive and uni-directional.

To increase support for change, communicators can highlight how widely supported policy solutions are in Australia.

Activating one mindset in a cluster activates the others and there are certain mindsets in each cluster with particularly strong relationships to other mindsets. Government as Partner is one of these central mindsets in the productive cluster; using framing and messaging to activate this mindset can activate other productive mindsets in the Collective and Structural cluster, such as It Takes a Village and Structural Racism. Similarly, framing that counters Otherism can undercut other individualistic and reactionary mindsets such as Government Interferes with Parenting and Family Bubble.