Australian governments have long held-up the high rate mothers' part-time employment as the Australian way of reconciling the demands of work and family. However, an analysis of the most recent Time Use Survey shows that average time devoted to paid and unpaid work by couples in these so-called "one-and-a-half earner" families is very similar to the average among families where both husband and wife are in full-time paid employment. Similarly, compared to mothers who are not in the paid workforce, women in these one-and-a-half earner families report only marginally lower levels of perceived time pressure than women in full-time employment. In fact the effect of part-time is much smaller than the effect of the having pre-schooler in the family. So why isn't part-time work the mothers' panacea it is claimed to be? This paper explores how the ages and numbers of children, working hours and the use of non-parental care contribute to paid and unpaid workloads of parent and their perceptions of time pressure.