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EVER SINCE OUR OLDEST was born three years ago, my wife and I have had to confront the cold reality of paying for childcare. We visited four different daycare providers in the Boston area. None was below $2,300 a month. The gap between what we saw as the best and the worst was only $200.
Our monthly childcare outlay—now covering two kids following the birth of our second child last October—is close to $5,000. On top of that, of course, we have formula, diapers, clothes and more.
The reason for high daycare costs isn’t salaries. By most accounts, daycare workers are underpaid. Rather, a major reason is the need for a low child-teacher ratio, which you’ll realize is essential if you’ve spent any time around two-year-olds.
We live in Cambridge, where rents have soared, and yet we pay significantly less per month for our three-bedroom condo than we pay for childcare. We’ve been actively looking to buy a place over the past few years, and we have a down payment set aside that at one time would have been considered adequate.
But with today’s hyper-competitive real estate market, we need to pony up more upfront cash if we’re to buy a home—but that cash has instead been devoured by childcare. I love my kids and I’d rather have them than the $70,000 to $100,000 of additional down payment that we might have socked away over three childless years. Still, when I step back and calculate what childcare has cost us, the sum is staggering.
Perhaps more jarring is that my wife and I are both professionally successful, albeit in the nonprofit education world. I have to remind myself that others are in a far more difficult bind, having to decide whether working makes sense given the cost of childcare. After all, our annual daycare costs are similar to the median U.S. household income. Last fall, I started getting really excited about the prospect of universal pre-K as I imagined what it would mean for our family and, more altruistically, how it might enable society at large to be more productive.
Many parents today face the extreme costs of childcare during the early years and soaring college costs on the backend. If you’re wondering why young adults don’t seem to be in a big hurry to have kids, here’s a hint: Maybe it has something to do with money.
I left my job to stay home with my kids when my husband was transferred to a new city. I also lived in Mass. The amount left from my paycheck, the long commute, the long hours, the stress from being gone from the house (cooking/cleaning, etc), and rushing to/from daycare became too much. I stayed home with the kids for ten years. I went back when they were in middle/high school and it was tough making a re-entry into the working world. Housing was expensive at that time, but comparatively not what it is right now. You and your wife are in a tough situation with no easy answers. I wish you and your family the best and hope things are able to work out for you.
I am currently reading “Secrets of the Sprakkar” by Eliza Reid, Iceland’s First Lady. She is a Canadian immigrant who had four children, spaced two years apart, after moving to Iceland. She writes: “It would barely have been feasible, and not even desirable, were it not for the generous parental leave benefits to which Gudni and I were both entitled, even as freelancers, and for heavily subsidized child care from the time the parental leave expired.” And: “Had I stayed in Canada, I doubt I would have been so prolific in offspring. But in Iceland, somehow, it just seemed so easy to have a child – and then another, and another, and another.”
Those concerned that US women are having fewer children (although personally I think the world is over-populated) should consider that concrete assistance will work a whole lot better than empty exhortations.
US ideology assumes that child care is a private family matter — and thus privately funded. We live in a country who’s economy is based on two incomes and one stay-at-home parent. Let’s not even consider how the pandemic impacted childcare/education. The US spends less on families and children than other advanced countries, ranking 30th out of 33. One in six children live in poverty.
I have always believed in smaller government/less spending/lower taxes. Now I ask the question – and what if we don’t? What if we don’t make it easy for both parents to work outside the home? What if we don’t provide our children with healthy living – food/shelter/healthcare, etc. What if we don’t step up and support our families?
I would also point out that – generally speaking (as the mother of a single father and granddaughter of a single father) – Mothers continue to remain the primary responsible party where children are concerned. What happens when we don’t support women?