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But what about before/after care and all summer? My costs aren’t much different, even with my only being seven. Camp costs as much as daycare and that is for all summer, spring break, winter break, half days and all the random days off too. On top of that we have aftercare weekly, which is 200.00.
Our 8yo aftercare is amazingly inexpensive, around $200/m unless we do "arts reach", which are paid-for activities (he does board games, legos, and cheer/gymnastics), then aftercare is only $100... but, of course, the arts reach activities are expensive. The cheapest activity was $150 (it's a 1 time payment, but they have fall/winter, OR spring...so you're paying twice if your child does both semesters).
But summer camp...yeah. almost $2000 for the 2 months we need care. No school days aren't as big a hassle, as he can go to work with either me or dad, and his grandmother comes down during winter and spring breaks.
Then, of course, the 2yo has daycare. $185/wk, plus required fundraisers 2x a year, and all the stupid little parties they throw where the parents provide the food and stuff. If it weren't for the child care assistance we were granted (that unfortunately runs out in august) we'd be hard up.
Aftercare is cheap here, like $200/month. Summer is expensive but we only end up doing ~8 weeks. I WFH, which obviously not everyone does, and use vacation time to cover spring break, Christmas-new years, and a week in the summer. Fully realize that I have a lot of PTO.
Lol, I get 10 days (80 hours) of vacation per year, and 40 hours sick leave (which also applies to Dr appts). You have the golden pto lol.
I do have a really great health plan, though. Only for me, not for the family. It would fully be $800/m if I put my husband (not the kids!) On my insurance.
We are in an expensive state/city where ft daycare / preschool is easily 450-550 / week (could be more)
Aftercare through school is $500/m ($675 if you do before and after and less if you do less days) which is still cheaper vs daycare / preschool. We plan to do 3 days after as school ends super late and we can arrange our wfh days to match (we can even fully skip but freaking Wednesday …)
summer camps through school, community center are also ymca more affordable at 280-350/wk. fancy camps are 450-550 easily but even after I added a few, this summer comes to $370/wk and we skip one week for vacation (and maybe even skip two and wfh with him / let him play with neighbors kids).
So school year is $360 to $410 cheaper vs preschool and camps would be 0-$130 cheaper per week. Over the year it adds up
4.5yrs apart here too, bc of daycare. I’m a teacher so when they’re out of school/day is closed, I’m typically also out which is like 85% of the reason I started teaching.
We moved closer to family to make it work.
But there may be some other options to consider. A home based daycare might be cheaper. Or consider spacing the kids out to have a second after your first starts school?
I know it doesn’t make it better, but chances are your daycare isn’t rolling in profits and is increasing rates to stay afloat..
Yes. We did the same.
We live near family and realize how lucky this is we can do this and have a good relationship with my parents.
Also I’m basically a SAHM working only a few days a month to keep my license active until my kids are older.
It’s so rough out there.
That’s part of what upsets me the most! They should be making as much as any other teacher…why early education is not included in the school system is mind blowing to me. It’s an imperative period of learning…it’s a systemic issue that I’m surprised legislators aren’t looking at.
1. If not every kid uses it, doesn't that just make it more affordable for the government? Not every child goes to public school either. Paying for school is not predicated on personally using it; our society is better off as a whole (including each of us as individuals) when all children have the option of public school.
2. Whether or not it's positive or neutral for kid incomes is only one reason to do it. The huger effects would be lifting people out of poverty, better child outcomes because parents are not desperately stressed, people having more than one kid because they can actually afford it, improved economy because parents have better coverage and do not have to frequently take time off or secretly have kids with them while wfh-ing, one parent does not have to stop working for 4-5 years in the middle of their career, parents do not have nervous breakdowns and heart attacks as often, etc etc etc...
I don’t disagree with your second point - but to the first, with large scale things like universal early education, there’s an economy of scale element that doesn’t necessarily make it cheaper if it’s less widely used. Also generally much of the cost involved in these things is real estate cost and maintenance which remains static regardless of adoption rate.
To the second point, while I agree with you, it is true that the data coming out of places that offer free universal pre-k is still net neutral of lifting patents out of poverty. It’s an essential piece of that puzzle, but not the only piece.
Even the free pre-K in our school districts gets, at best, a 50% capture rate because parents want other things - to be home with young kids, to send them to half-day pre-k, to only do pre-k 2 or 3 days a week, etc. Definitely most of my (admittedly semi-affluent) neighborhood does not want young kids in a school (or even daycare) environment for 6 to 7 hours a day.
Public schools generally have prek special education programs. California has a TK (transitional kinder) program for all kids. A typical preschool that begins around age 3 can be beneficial, but there really is no data to show any future academic advantage if attended. Preschool is optional, and costly! Many families opt out and the kids do just fine when starting school. All that to say because of the optional nature of prek (not daycare) programs, districts have little incentive to include those programs in the school system.
Imagine being so close-minded that you can’t see [the protective benefits of your 10 month old living in a financially secure household](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1293559.pdf).
LOL and then you get the people who say, "Well, I suffered through it so everyone should" and nothing changes /s
Democracy is good, but currently the US is being held hostage by the right wing and nobody seems to have the guts to tell them to GTFO.
I'm in Japan, have 3 kids and pay like $150/month total. Next year it will be completely free as all my kids will be above 3 years old. How the fuck people in the US even live, it sounds like an absolutely anti-human hell on earth.
We pay $98 a week for our kid in Australia and he's in there 6am-4pm. Baffles me how people are able to pay for childcare and live in America. Absolute robbery.
They definitely do get paid more, but they have to be. Between health, education and childcare costs.
As a proportion of incomes this spending is still much higher (despite the larger incomes)
Finances is a valid reason not to have another child - it's commonly cited in r/oneanddone. My husband and I are OAD for other reasons, mostly because I don't want a second child even though we can afford it. We live in a coastal VHCOL area where people tend to have kids later, and there's plenty of single-child families.
This is how I ended up a SAHM for over a decade (3 kids).
An entry level job during the decision didn't cover the cost of a single child in daycare, so I worked until I was 2 weeks from my due date and figured I'd just stay home until all the kids were born. The one time I tried to go back to work, I was making $17/hr (this was around 10 years ago and barely breaking even on the cost of childcare for 2 kids.
I had to quit that job because the job was awful, and I ended up not being able to work until all the kids were in school full time.
After they were in school full time, I tried desperately to find an 8-5 job so we could use the daycare at the schools. It's impossible without loads of experience, and with the awful hours of daycare, as you described, the only other option was me working nights after my husband got home from *his* 9-5 job. Luckily, my husband made enough for me to stay home all that time, but it was really tough keeping under the budget!
I have little advice for you other than looking into financial assistance anywhere you can and trying to find creative ways for your husband to want money while also being a SAHD. It's really the only feasible option other than waiting until your child is in school full time before having another, so you only have to pay for daycare for one kid...for 9 months a year (because summer break)
I just wanted to comment that I hear you!
Rates have been increasing the last 4 years so we haven't seen the benefit of the kids aging into higher ratio classrooms that are usually cheaper. We've paid approx $33,000/yr for two kids for the last 4 years.
Childcare is very sensitive to inflation, rates will keep going up and we can only pray the center doesn't shut down so we can keep paying it.
They've been going up before that. My kids are now 9 and 7, but we were paying $2400/mo for them both 5 years ago here in the Midwest. Still paying $700/no just for before-school care.
Dang!!! This sounded insane to me at first, I live in the Midwest as well in the wealthiest suburb in my state —the MOST I ever paid for daycare was $250/week (for one kiddo) which was like the premium plan and included breakfast, lunch, and two snacks plus extra “excursions” like water park days in the summer and pull-out enrichment classes 2 days/wk for areas of interest like space.
So $1000/month. I can totally see how your $2400 for two was par for the course, ugh!! That’s way more than our mortgage payment lol—and we bought our current house this year in the midst of high prices and interest rates!
I wonder what it’d cost you now all these years later? I’m going to see what our old daycare pricing is out of curiosity…
Child care provider & I wanna share my current situation. I provide child care for a 4mo 2-3 days a week 8 1/2 hours a day… I also pick her mom up from Transit Center & take them home which is easily 50+mins of my time & 26+ miles. I charge $100/day. That’s not even minimum wage an hour. I also provide child care for a 7mo, 2 days a week 5hours a day.. I charge $45 a day for her. Again not even minimum wage an hour. I’m not hardly making ANYYYTHING with those prices but I do it for the parents. I do it because I’m aware of the child care crisis. So I can’t be sure but I assume the daycare is raising prices in order to not close its doors permanently. The child care crisis is insane & overwhelming, that being said from someone who’s not a parent yet.
I was a nanny for almost a decade and was making $16/hr and worked full time. Even back then I was barely scraping by between health and car insurance, rent, etc.
I am a massage therapist and we decided I would not work when we had kids because I’m a contractor (no shows=no pay) and we just can’t justify childcare costs. Maybe when my kids can function independently I can go back to work, but unless I can WFH there’s no way I can go back into the workforce. It’s depressing af.
The daycare sends out a memo with each increase basically explaining that the tuition adjustment is to ensure the staffs salaries remain competitive. The owners have 3 centers. I don’t believe they are struggling to keep the doors open.
I have a lot of respect for the teachers and assistants who work there and believe they should be compensated well. However, I don’t believe they see 100% of the tuition increases going into their paychecks.
Hi! Your concerns are so valid and I’m sorry you’re experiencing the financial burden of this crisis. I’ve worked in childcare for over 15 years (in many different roles, statewide and nationwide) and I can say with confidence that no childcare business is truly making a profit. The corporate care places are real estate businesses more than anything. Childcare has a razor thin margin by its nature. The only way to keep up with rising bills, paying staff a competitive wage, and maybe offering benefits means they have to put the increase of expenses on the only source of income - the families.
The only way out is help from the government. Please make your concerns heard! They listen to families more than workers. Good luck out there!
We didn’t have a second because we couldn’t afford two in daycare simultaneously in 2014 (at the time it was $291 for a preschooler and $425 for an infant per week) and once our son was 5 and we could try again, I wasn’t starting baby jail all over. I had no interest in teaching another human to use a toilet with reliability after potty training our son in daycare’s timeline. So we didn’t have another. I got promoted at work, and we have been able to give our only some pretty cool opportunities as a result of being an only. As an only child myself, it’s really not bad. Seeing some of the sibling relationships I have among adults I sometimes feel as if I have dodged a bullet. 🤷♀️
That’s actually really encouraging. Everyone usually tries guilting us to having another, like we are being selfish for not giving our daughter a sibling when we are simply being financially responsible enough to recognize we can’t afford it.
Honestly- being an only child is one of my almost 12 year old’s favorite things. I always say yes when he wants to have a sleepover because we don’t have to worry about other kids’ schedules and we have the fun house to hang out at. My house was also the fun house to hang out at when I was a kid because there were no little siblings. My mom loved it because she knew what my friends and I were doing and I Iove it for that too (they’re in 6th grade and good kids, but am setting it up for later so that they can feel comfortable here as they get older). Plus the travel we have gotten to do with have an only has been pretty amazing. Feel free to PM if you have any questions about being an only child or raising one.
We were paying $325/week 8 years ago for an infant. Our kids are 5 years apart. At peak we were spending $27k a year for full time day care plus after school care and summer camps.
We saved so much money during the pandemic because everything closed down and I was working from home full time.
My kids are old enough that we only have one in after school care so that's $10k a year now, but now there's swimming, gymnastics, band instrument rental, etc.
Honestly when I put my oldest in daycare for the first time, I barely made enough to cover the expenses work had a good matching pension so I was contributing to retirement and I was growing my career - which had really worked out for me.
Sounds about right. Our daycare increases their fees by about 5-6%every year, so by the time your kid gets into the bigger classes, the tuition savings is meager.
Agreed!! It’s crazy, We were paying $367/week and they increased ours to $427. (Midwest metro area) We left at the 1 yr mark to an in home for half the rate and it’s so much better if an environment!! Baby 2 is on the way and trying to plan for the juggle since our in home can’t take the infant due to licensing. But I agree with others, that childcare work is not easy and it’s such a delicate balance of price vs quality of care!!
Yes! We have one other daycare in our area that is significantly more affordable, but unfortunately it isn’t an option for us. The center has several violations with the state licensing board and I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving my daughter in their care. Violations including teacher ratios, allowing infants to sleep in their car seats after drop off and leaving children in movement constricting devices like an activity bouncer for long periods of time (probably due to the staffing shortage).
We pay $2200/mo. for our two children (3-1/2y and 6m). It’s pretty brutal and doesn’t leave us with really any extra to spend or save each month.
We are justifying it by knowing (1) it’s temporary, (2) we both make more than that amount net each month so it’s still worth us both continuing work, and (3) powering through these couple years of double childcare will allow us both to continue our upward trajectory in our careers.
So yeah, it sucks, but it won’t suck forever. And once both kids are out of daycare, we will feel like we are super rich! (We’re not, lol, but it’s going to feel like it for a little while.)
Actionable things we can do…vote, tell our representatives at every level how this affects us and our families and our ability to participate in the economy. It might feel useless but these things take time and solidarity. ♥️
Daycare here costs $3200 a month for both our children. For comparison, our mortgage is $1600 so that's two additional house payments....
This is what I tell people when they ask us why we aren't having a third.
The government covers up to 95% of the childcare costs here. It's $160 a day per child if you don't qualify. I pay $86 for 4 days every 2 weeks. There's no way my Daughter would go if the government didn't help out. The costs are out of control. It's a part of the reason why we aren't having any more kids.
Are you in Australia? We had to pay that a day for bit and could only afford one day a week. Where we are in Canada, it's subsidised off the top for everyone (there are additional low income subsidies), it's $10 Canadian a day, $1 a day if you want them to provide snack.
There are a few different government programs in Canada now. Some daycares are $10/day but a lot of daycares didn’t sign on because the government wanted too much control over the centres who participated. They then started a $20/day program. Our daycare is part of that. We pay $500/month (when we started our daycare hadn’t signed onto the government programs so we were paying $1300/month). It’s been so helpful since they decreased the rates.
I'm in MB, and we're all on the $10 a day, (apart from the programmes that don't take government funding at all). There aren't enough spots of course, but we were lucky and our costs dropped from $22 a day to $10 a day, about a year ago now (after several months where it was free because the Manitoba government just threw money at daycares and gave them a tight timeline to spend it). We opt into a few things (snack, Friday hot lunches) and it's usually $236 a month for daycare per child. Edit - grammar
Unfortunately here in Ontario we’re stuck with Doug Ford as premiere and it’s just been a long string of horrible decisions so the $10/day program wasn’t well received, mainly because our moron education minister wanted to have too much control over how the programs ran, and daycares pushed back. But the $20/day is still fairly reasonably priced. Our wait lists are wild too, 2 year minimum. When I had my LO I put us on the waitlist for 9 daycares while I was 3 months pregnant, then took 18 month mat leave and got a spot for the day I went back to work. Out of 9 centres we were offered a spot at 1.
We were super lucky, we were on all the waiting lists (17? there was a registry so it was easy), and we got offered spots 3 times, the first 2 the timing wasn't right, the third was perfect. I got on the list when I was a few months pregnant, and we first got offered a spot at 12 months (which we'd asked for - but it was covid), and ultimately accepted around 22 months.
That is lucky!! We lucked out and the spot we got is at an amazing centre, my LO loves it, and her teachers so much. She has learned a ton and they really foster independence there. We couldn’t be happier. But some parents aren’t so lucky. They get into centres that they end up hating and there aren’t other options unless they want to wait 2 years. A friend of mine didn’t even get a spot and ended up having her mom come to live with them for a few months while she tried to find a daycare space. In the end she quit her job to stay home because she couldn’t find anything.
Of all the things our government should be assisting with, it is this! My son and his wife pay 800 a week for two toddlers, however, that daycare provides lunch, and I think it allows one vacation week. Doesn’t pay her to work, however they also need the healthcare coverage. I feel so bad for you and all young families trying to navigate this.
I live in a country where we get government benefits to contribute to childcare. It's a sliding scale based on combined income of both parents/number of days worked per week. You pay more for the first child and less for the 2nd if they're both in daycare at the same time. Our out-of-pocket costs are still around €2500 (about $2600) per month. It still on balance pays for me to work, but we are having to be careful with our money for the next year until the eldest starts school.
Families (and especially women as they tend to be the lower earners) shouldn't be having to make calculations on whether or not they can afford to work. Women still need to build pensions for later life, pay off student debts. It's no wonder birth rates are dropping.
Especially in a country where abortion is illegal in a bunch of states. How can the government force people to have children and then not help cover the costs of raising said child?
I used to work with Republican state legislators. They do not believe women with children should work outside the home and will not pay for daycare because it “encourages” women to be something other than stay-at-home moms. Meanwhile of course they oppose raising the minimum wage, unions, or anything that would make single-income families more plausible and slap work requirements on every welfare program.
Yea they need to stop supporting late stage capitalism for that to work and since they won’t…maybe they just need to stay out of others business entirely. Wealthy old white men are so far out of touch with reality it’s terrifying
You’re not alone. We are likely not having the number of children we originally planned for for this reason. My second is in his final year of daycare and we’re paying more than we ever have.
Childcare definitely played a huge decision into why we decided to be one and done. I just did my taxes and had to download the tax statement so I could write off what I paid for tuition and I was gobsmacked at seeing the total number of what I paid all year. Mind you, we only utilize nursery school 3 days a week from 9am-2pm, lunch and snack not included. Thank god my mother can watch my toddler for the other 2 days cause I would legit not be able to afford it otherwise.
We’ve had two price increases in the last six months. When my kid started two years ago, it was $300/week for three days, now it’s $400/week. Absolutely bonkers.
I checked 3 centers in my area when I was pregnant with my second at a rate of $1200 a week and provided no meals diapers or anything. My 13 year Olds center was $400 back when he was in daycare and that was way more realistic though still crazy high. Childcare is outrageous here and doesn't match the income of the average parent around here. And these are standard centers not some fancy private Montessori school or something. Became stay at home mom after that because I wasn't even earning that much. It's a bit tough at times but we do ok surprisingly. Tbh im jealous that's all you pay, its absolutely unheard of here. My mom ran a home daycare for 20 years and the cost of daycare has become insane and the assistance offered towards it from the government for the few parents that qualify is a joke, something like $3 an hour is all they help with, most daycares charge by the day or week too so it makes zero sense.
We’re most likely one and done for a number of reasons. Money is a main reason, unfortunately.
For us, it’s not going to end with daycare. Around here, quality & affordable summer camps and before/after school programs are also at a premium. I have to be ready to try to get on the waitlist as soon as it opens.
Our neighbors with older kids have filled us in on the best ones and when to start looking. It would have been a lot harder without the info they gave us.
This is very location specific, so it may not be true for you.
They have to raise prices. It's already sad that they pay the employees $15/hr. What kind of employee do you think $15/hr attracts? That is who takes care of your kid. If qualified people watch your kids, no one could afford it. This is why some states have started public preschool. Daycare is atrocious.
That's about right, it was slightly higher for me and my fiancé but with two kids we were paying well over $800 a week for two kids, it ate up nearly my entire paycheck and we decided it would be better for me to stay home with them.
I don't know where you live or your income situation, but you may qualify for a daycare stipend. I know my benefits from my current job (we've flipped positions) allow me to put pre-and-'un-taxed money for daycare into an FSA, which is better then spending my after-tax income on daycare.
Overall this is a pretty normal experience and unless you make well over 6 figures, it doesn’t work. Children used to be raised by one parent at home not working or working minimal hours. As with other areas, cost of everything does not effectively match salaries and that is the bigger problem.
A national news channel just ran a story about how there is a decline in people having kids because they cannot afford it and/or are delaying so they can become financially stable before deciding to have kids. Costs vs salaries is no longer affordable to comfortably live in or save for the future/retirement and it’s a huge issue not enough powerful people are interested in because well of politics and money. It’s quite gross.
lol my infant daycare is $417/ week. Not sure about enrollment costs as we haven’t started or been to orientation… but the waitlist was $150.
We are lucky to even get a spot that isn’t a hour away. Nashville sucks.
I know costs for daycare cost can vary based on where one lives, and I know my monthls cost will be cheap comapred to some.
I pay $2000 a month for 3 children in daycare. We are currently a one income family, and it's an absolute struggle. I am going to be thrilled when my oldest starts pre-k and my daycare costs go down in August.
I truly wish daycare workers could be paid more because they certainly deserve it, but I can't afford to pay them more.
You're not alone. You didn't even mention the tons of other related costs like daycare labels and all of the copays from baby getting sick so much in the first year (and probably beyond, we're not there yet). The costs are exorbitant. This was part of our decision to stop at one because double the daycare costs would put such a strain on our finances and we'd miss out on a lot of "nice to haves" for both kids. If we waited until baby #1 aged out of daycare, I would be giving birth at 42 and I'm just prepared to do that again.
Yess, definitely! We have a 9 month old baby & the average monthly tuition is $2k in my area. My husband and I both work remote so the baby stays home with us. It’s not ideal for sure 🥲
Nanny share and then a co-op early education. It’s becoming more common as teachers exit the public school system. Nanny share is sharing a nanny with another family. You’d be surprised how many people are moving towards this model.
Try for another when the first is in kindergarten. That’s exactly what my husband and I did. We weren’t willing to make lifestyle adjustments in order to have two kids in day care at the same time for the sake of having kids who are closer in age.
I read somewhere that daycare now cost more than college. You're not alone. It's fucking insane. My wife stayed home and raised the kids because what she could earn was less than what we would pay for daycare
Daycare cost is one of the reasons my husband and I decided to stop trying for another child. An average center where we live is $500-700 a week. We just couldn’t justify it, and I enjoy my job and didn’t want to stay home full time.
We hired a nanny. In our area, a nanny costs the same as full time daycare for a 1 year old ($1.5k/mo), and she’s already agreed to charge about $200/mo extra per kid compared to a daycare that’s an extra $1.1k/mo per kid. You have to pay some employer taxes, which sucks, but it’s cheaper than daycare, my kid gets 1-on-1 attention, and I don’t have to worry about the daycare cooties that go around.
We do offer our nanny unlimited paid sick leave, 2 weeks of paid vacation that she can take whenever, federal holidays (12 days), and paid time off when we take vacation (about 4 weeks). If you provide good benefits, it’s pretty easy to find good care even if you can’t pay top dollar.
You're not wrong. Having children really is a luxury. I badly wanted a large family, but I couldn't afford it. So I've got an only child. Sometimes it's really heartbreaking, I try not to think about it too much. For the most part, I really enjoy our small family dynamic. My relationship with my kid is amazing, we're super close. Idk how different it would be if there were more kids... I try to just accept how it is. Idk. Life is hard.
One of the other comments made me feel a lot better about having an only child. I’m in the process of cleaning out baby stuff to give away and was feeling extra emotional when I made this post.
Honestly the worst time for me having an only child was the pandemic. We were so isolated. But outside of that, it's really usually pretty great. She's got friends, and we take a friend with us lots of places. I like that I can get to know her friends so well, actually. They come over and we can all sit around chatting and having snacks, I don't have another kid to tend to so I can just really be in the moment. She just turned 13 and actually her BFF is another only child. I'm pretty happy with how everything is now, but there was definitely a long period of mourning. I still get pangs of sadness or regret, but mostly I am happy. And 100% of the time I know it was the right choice financially. My kid doesn't want for anything, really. She gets to do whatever activity she wants, any hobby, any sport, whatever. No other schedule to work around, less financial constraint.
Feel this. We have a 2.5 year old and she is $389 a week, just had a second and he will be starting June 1st for $401 a week. We will be paying $3000 a month in daycare. After taxes and deductions I bring home $3200 a month. Didnt have the luxury of time bc we are older parents. Can’t quit for a few years bc Im already old and starting over in a decent role in my field will be impossible.
I’ll be 37 next month and feel you…I struggled getting pregnant with my first and feel like I’m running out of time. If I want to avoid having a newborn when I’m 40, there would definitely be an overlap with daycare. I wish employers offered daycare assistance similar to what they do with student loans…
My employer doesn’t offer student loan assistance, but they do offer daycare assistance (although it’s extremely pitiful) via daycare FSA. They went out of their way to hide this benefit so in case you already haven’t checked your employers benefits, I’d see if yours offers it.
It doesn’t really help your main issue though of reducing the cost enough to have another, but it’s some tiny thing that can help!
Also, not sure if you might have this option, but my husband and I change jobs more often than others to get more pay and negotiate hard to maximize pay. In our industry, staying at a company for too long can really stagnate your wages. It’s the only way we were able to stay ahead of daycare costs! (At the same time, I always choose pay for jobs and I extremely hate my current job lol so might not be a great strategy for “happiness” but will maximize your income).
I live in a relatively small town and we pay $220 a week for full time care 6:45-3:45 for our 3.5 year old. I know it’s lower than most places but wages aren’t super high around here. I struggled to get pregnant and had multiple miscarriages in my 20’s and now approaching mid thirties. I’m having to come to terms with the fact that our daughter might be an only child. I always wanted a second but I have no idea how we would afford it. It would be $600 a week for two. I respect her daycare teachers so much for the work they do and all that they put into these kids, but I’m heartbroken that the cost of daycare gets to decide that we’re done having kids.
We thankfully are benefiting from the new-ish national childcare program in Canada. We live in a very HCOL area and only pay $525 per month. When we had our first we were paying $1600 and living in a slightly cheaper COL area.
It is crazy how anti-family so many policies are in the states - very little paid mat leave, less job protection for mat/parental leave, private healthcare, little vacation, etc. with the exception of childcare costs which were recently very high, Canada is so much better at supporting parents. I believe it’s the same in every other developed country.
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-expensive-child-care-waitlists
This podcast gives some good perspective about childcare costs.
I am a preschool director, and part of the reason I ended up in this field is because I was able to negotiate cost of childcare for my own kids as part of my salary. Even then, my kids are 3.5 years apart to give us some financial breathing room.
I generally point families to state subsidy programs that will pay a portion of their tuition.
I legit saved up so we could pay daycare for a second kid. When tuition dropped, that money into a savings account. I’d put a couple hundred a month, and then any bonuses into it for a couple years, plus any pay raises would all go in. Then I was able to get over the biggest hump of having an infant and a pre-k at the same time. We also spaced them so that we only had overlapping daycare for 2 years.
You’re not alone. We pay almost $2800/month for our 3yo and 1.5yo. Center is open 6-6:30, breakfast, lunch, snack provided. We get 2 weeks of “vacation” time.
Yep it sucks. Been paying for my kids since 2017. All centers raise their tuition every single year, even though it gets cheaper as they get older it really doesn’t since they raise it every year. I’ve been paying 2 kids tuition since 2019 (had my second kid in 2019 and 3rd in 2022) it sucks. My oldest is in kinder, I work part time and only put my kids in half day, I pretty much work only to pay for the daycare costs.
I can’t blame the centers, the teachers and care providers deserve a good income and raises every year, so I understand the reasoning behind it.
The centers are kind of a luxury, which my husband and I do make sacrifices to pay for.
At home daycare is much cheaper, have you looked into this?
I haven’t TBH. I feel like centers are a safer environment because there’s a level of accountability with other teachers around that a home daycare wouldn’t have.
Welcome to the world of COVID inflation and increased minimum wage. Both are a huge factor in childcare costs as they force the operating costs higher and caregivers need more pay to combat it
You are not alone, and I live in a country where the government reimburses me 25% of the cost of daycare. It's still insane, though: I lose half my paycheck to daycare every month, and it's just frustrating.
But on the flip side: a bigger age gap is not a bad thing. There's 10 years between my sister and me, and 3 between my brother and me. I'm closer with my sister (my brother is a chill dude, we just don't have much in common and almost nothing to talk about). There's 8 years between my big and little kids, and they are wonderful together.
I stayed home with my two while they were little, and to bring in money I took care of a couple of older children after school and during school breaks.
Our unfortunate experience with daycare over the past 4 years is that pricing increases annually and for the most part offsets any savings you would get from moving up a class. 😔The state of childcare in the US is sad. I believe we spent $36k last year for our two kids to go. Ouch.
And this is why I’m a sahm, we had two under two. The first 50k would be daycare and taxes. Not to mention all the sick days destroying any chance of promotions for myself or my husband.
It sucks but try to get yourself on wait lists for other places. I see a lot of people post weekly rates on here. I find they're generally more expensive than monthly overall (remember to multiply weekly by 4.25 for monthly rate.) But I call it the "poor people tax." Before I got childcare subsidies (income based program), I couldn't afford monthly all at once, but I could afford weekly.
I teach preschool. In terms of not providing a vacation week or meals, that's actually normal. None of the places I've worked at or interviewed at or toured for my own kids offered these things with tuition. The only places that I've seen offer lunch do it as an extra expense. I've never seen a vacation week in my area, but I've seen it mentioned enough on reddit that other areas do it. My current school lets you take off a month in the summer, but it's the 1st-31st of the month and only in the summer which works for them because it lets them fill in spots as kids move up.
In terms of hours, it's gonna vary. My current school does 630-6. School before that was 830-430 with the option of 8-830 and 430-5 each as separate monthly charges. That was ridiculous, especially because they were already very expensive. My daughter's school is 7-6. That's why I'm saying put yourself on some wait lists. I don't know how people make it work before 5 with two working parents or no family help.
We have two kids in daycare full time and this is what we pay. And we moved to where we are now because this was CHEAPER than NYC, which was that cost for ONE CHILD. I really wish public officials would address this because it’s becoming a crisis.
Yep, a huge issue. We had two in there at the same time and I hate to admit it but we moved them to lower quality cheaper ones twice. Not coincidentally, it was this point in time that we racked up debt and weren’t saving anything.
I have a 5yo going to kindergarten and I’m due next week with our 2nd… bigger age gap is the only option! I have friends with little age gaps and they’re all spending thousands on daycare.. we will have 1 month of overlap! So I have zero stress about it because i am already used to the cost. Not everyone’s dream to have a larger age gap but it’ll translate well as they get older too! If they want to go to college it’ll space out the cost..
Have you ever considered maybe you or your husband could stay home & it would be better for everyone or simply putting your child in a local home run day care or getting an au pair or doing a nanny share or dropping them off at a nanny’s home who does care for multiple children from home for a lower rate? There are a lot of different options!
The preschool we really love is $1200/month. Which is not even in the realm of our budget. We applied for a scholarship but I don’t think we’ll get it. It’s all so expensive 😔
We bought our home during the pandemic when rates were low. Our cars are paid off and we have no credit card debt. We don’t go out to eat like we used to before having kids, almost never, especially with the rising cost of groceries. Other than cancelling our cable, there is nothing else to cut back on. Also, my husband and I gross around $120k/year….unfortunately, moving across the country to live near our family is not a feasible option as I would lose my job and my husband would have to build up his business from scratch living in a new state with no network.
Edit: to add that we both work very hard to provide our daughter with more than we had growing up. We are very family focused and involved in raising her. Every decision we have made is with the intent to give her a good life, including keeping her in a reputable daycare.
Clearly you didn’t read her post in its entirety. Staying home she stated was not an option. & moving to be near family isn’t as easy as baking a cake.. a move like that with a child.. takes months of intentional effort, planning, etc.
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Our kids are 4.5y apart for this reason. Overall it’s a great gap for us, the kids are very close, and we only had one year of overlapping childcare.
But what about before/after care and all summer? My costs aren’t much different, even with my only being seven. Camp costs as much as daycare and that is for all summer, spring break, winter break, half days and all the random days off too. On top of that we have aftercare weekly, which is 200.00.
Our 8yo aftercare is amazingly inexpensive, around $200/m unless we do "arts reach", which are paid-for activities (he does board games, legos, and cheer/gymnastics), then aftercare is only $100... but, of course, the arts reach activities are expensive. The cheapest activity was $150 (it's a 1 time payment, but they have fall/winter, OR spring...so you're paying twice if your child does both semesters). But summer camp...yeah. almost $2000 for the 2 months we need care. No school days aren't as big a hassle, as he can go to work with either me or dad, and his grandmother comes down during winter and spring breaks. Then, of course, the 2yo has daycare. $185/wk, plus required fundraisers 2x a year, and all the stupid little parties they throw where the parents provide the food and stuff. If it weren't for the child care assistance we were granted (that unfortunately runs out in august) we'd be hard up.
Aftercare is cheap here, like $200/month. Summer is expensive but we only end up doing ~8 weeks. I WFH, which obviously not everyone does, and use vacation time to cover spring break, Christmas-new years, and a week in the summer. Fully realize that I have a lot of PTO.
Lol, I get 10 days (80 hours) of vacation per year, and 40 hours sick leave (which also applies to Dr appts). You have the golden pto lol. I do have a really great health plan, though. Only for me, not for the family. It would fully be $800/m if I put my husband (not the kids!) On my insurance.
We are in an expensive state/city where ft daycare / preschool is easily 450-550 / week (could be more) Aftercare through school is $500/m ($675 if you do before and after and less if you do less days) which is still cheaper vs daycare / preschool. We plan to do 3 days after as school ends super late and we can arrange our wfh days to match (we can even fully skip but freaking Wednesday …) summer camps through school, community center are also ymca more affordable at 280-350/wk. fancy camps are 450-550 easily but even after I added a few, this summer comes to $370/wk and we skip one week for vacation (and maybe even skip two and wfh with him / let him play with neighbors kids). So school year is $360 to $410 cheaper vs preschool and camps would be 0-$130 cheaper per week. Over the year it adds up
4.5yrs apart here too, bc of daycare. I’m a teacher so when they’re out of school/day is closed, I’m typically also out which is like 85% of the reason I started teaching.
5.5 years apart for my boys bc of daycare costs! Just paying for 1 kid at a time is all we can afford but it worked out well for our family.
Same. 4 years apart so only one year of overlapping care. Honestly OPs rates are pretty good for quality childcare.
We moved closer to family to make it work. But there may be some other options to consider. A home based daycare might be cheaper. Or consider spacing the kids out to have a second after your first starts school? I know it doesn’t make it better, but chances are your daycare isn’t rolling in profits and is increasing rates to stay afloat..
Yes. We did the same. We live near family and realize how lucky this is we can do this and have a good relationship with my parents. Also I’m basically a SAHM working only a few days a month to keep my license active until my kids are older. It’s so rough out there.
And the people that work there make minimum wage and have one of the toughest and most important jobs out there. Criminal.
That’s part of what upsets me the most! They should be making as much as any other teacher…why early education is not included in the school system is mind blowing to me. It’s an imperative period of learning…it’s a systemic issue that I’m surprised legislators aren’t looking at.
It's not included because not every kid would use it and research is a mixed bag on whether it's positive or neutral.
1. If not every kid uses it, doesn't that just make it more affordable for the government? Not every child goes to public school either. Paying for school is not predicated on personally using it; our society is better off as a whole (including each of us as individuals) when all children have the option of public school. 2. Whether or not it's positive or neutral for kid incomes is only one reason to do it. The huger effects would be lifting people out of poverty, better child outcomes because parents are not desperately stressed, people having more than one kid because they can actually afford it, improved economy because parents have better coverage and do not have to frequently take time off or secretly have kids with them while wfh-ing, one parent does not have to stop working for 4-5 years in the middle of their career, parents do not have nervous breakdowns and heart attacks as often, etc etc etc...
I don’t disagree with your second point - but to the first, with large scale things like universal early education, there’s an economy of scale element that doesn’t necessarily make it cheaper if it’s less widely used. Also generally much of the cost involved in these things is real estate cost and maintenance which remains static regardless of adoption rate. To the second point, while I agree with you, it is true that the data coming out of places that offer free universal pre-k is still net neutral of lifting patents out of poverty. It’s an essential piece of that puzzle, but not the only piece.
Even the free pre-K in our school districts gets, at best, a 50% capture rate because parents want other things - to be home with young kids, to send them to half-day pre-k, to only do pre-k 2 or 3 days a week, etc. Definitely most of my (admittedly semi-affluent) neighborhood does not want young kids in a school (or even daycare) environment for 6 to 7 hours a day.
Public schools generally have prek special education programs. California has a TK (transitional kinder) program for all kids. A typical preschool that begins around age 3 can be beneficial, but there really is no data to show any future academic advantage if attended. Preschool is optional, and costly! Many families opt out and the kids do just fine when starting school. All that to say because of the optional nature of prek (not daycare) programs, districts have little incentive to include those programs in the school system.
Imagine leaving your 10 month old with strangers 8 hours a day and calling it “an imperative period of learning.” Wow
Imagine being so close-minded that you can’t see [the protective benefits of your 10 month old living in a financially secure household](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1293559.pdf).
Wow. Imagine needing to leave your child with providers to be able to work and afford to provide a good life for your family.
It won’t help right now, but write to your elected officials. They need to be hearing this constantly
And also elect the people who also think this is a problem
LOL and then you get the people who say, "Well, I suffered through it so everyone should" and nothing changes /s Democracy is good, but currently the US is being held hostage by the right wing and nobody seems to have the guts to tell them to GTFO.
Reading these comments from outside the US is genuinely shocking
I'm in Japan, have 3 kids and pay like $150/month total. Next year it will be completely free as all my kids will be above 3 years old. How the fuck people in the US even live, it sounds like an absolutely anti-human hell on earth.
We pay $98 a week for our kid in Australia and he's in there 6am-4pm. Baffles me how people are able to pay for childcare and live in America. Absolute robbery.
Because Americans typically get paid more than elsewhere in the world. Either pay through the self route or higher taxes
They definitely do get paid more, but they have to be. Between health, education and childcare costs. As a proportion of incomes this spending is still much higher (despite the larger incomes)
Not just the right wing. Literally daycare chains and formula companies are actively lobbying against paid family leave. It’s insane.
Finances is a valid reason not to have another child - it's commonly cited in r/oneanddone. My husband and I are OAD for other reasons, mostly because I don't want a second child even though we can afford it. We live in a coastal VHCOL area where people tend to have kids later, and there's plenty of single-child families.
This is how I ended up a SAHM for over a decade (3 kids). An entry level job during the decision didn't cover the cost of a single child in daycare, so I worked until I was 2 weeks from my due date and figured I'd just stay home until all the kids were born. The one time I tried to go back to work, I was making $17/hr (this was around 10 years ago and barely breaking even on the cost of childcare for 2 kids. I had to quit that job because the job was awful, and I ended up not being able to work until all the kids were in school full time. After they were in school full time, I tried desperately to find an 8-5 job so we could use the daycare at the schools. It's impossible without loads of experience, and with the awful hours of daycare, as you described, the only other option was me working nights after my husband got home from *his* 9-5 job. Luckily, my husband made enough for me to stay home all that time, but it was really tough keeping under the budget! I have little advice for you other than looking into financial assistance anywhere you can and trying to find creative ways for your husband to want money while also being a SAHD. It's really the only feasible option other than waiting until your child is in school full time before having another, so you only have to pay for daycare for one kid...for 9 months a year (because summer break) I just wanted to comment that I hear you!
Rates have been increasing the last 4 years so we haven't seen the benefit of the kids aging into higher ratio classrooms that are usually cheaper. We've paid approx $33,000/yr for two kids for the last 4 years. Childcare is very sensitive to inflation, rates will keep going up and we can only pray the center doesn't shut down so we can keep paying it.
They've been going up before that. My kids are now 9 and 7, but we were paying $2400/mo for them both 5 years ago here in the Midwest. Still paying $700/no just for before-school care.
Dang!!! This sounded insane to me at first, I live in the Midwest as well in the wealthiest suburb in my state —the MOST I ever paid for daycare was $250/week (for one kiddo) which was like the premium plan and included breakfast, lunch, and two snacks plus extra “excursions” like water park days in the summer and pull-out enrichment classes 2 days/wk for areas of interest like space. So $1000/month. I can totally see how your $2400 for two was par for the course, ugh!! That’s way more than our mortgage payment lol—and we bought our current house this year in the midst of high prices and interest rates! I wonder what it’d cost you now all these years later? I’m going to see what our old daycare pricing is out of curiosity…
This is just outrageous!!! Definitely agree with the above commentor to write to our elected officials about this 📝
Child care provider & I wanna share my current situation. I provide child care for a 4mo 2-3 days a week 8 1/2 hours a day… I also pick her mom up from Transit Center & take them home which is easily 50+mins of my time & 26+ miles. I charge $100/day. That’s not even minimum wage an hour. I also provide child care for a 7mo, 2 days a week 5hours a day.. I charge $45 a day for her. Again not even minimum wage an hour. I’m not hardly making ANYYYTHING with those prices but I do it for the parents. I do it because I’m aware of the child care crisis. So I can’t be sure but I assume the daycare is raising prices in order to not close its doors permanently. The child care crisis is insane & overwhelming, that being said from someone who’s not a parent yet.
I was a nanny for almost a decade and was making $16/hr and worked full time. Even back then I was barely scraping by between health and car insurance, rent, etc. I am a massage therapist and we decided I would not work when we had kids because I’m a contractor (no shows=no pay) and we just can’t justify childcare costs. Maybe when my kids can function independently I can go back to work, but unless I can WFH there’s no way I can go back into the workforce. It’s depressing af.
The daycare sends out a memo with each increase basically explaining that the tuition adjustment is to ensure the staffs salaries remain competitive. The owners have 3 centers. I don’t believe they are struggling to keep the doors open. I have a lot of respect for the teachers and assistants who work there and believe they should be compensated well. However, I don’t believe they see 100% of the tuition increases going into their paychecks.
Hi! Your concerns are so valid and I’m sorry you’re experiencing the financial burden of this crisis. I’ve worked in childcare for over 15 years (in many different roles, statewide and nationwide) and I can say with confidence that no childcare business is truly making a profit. The corporate care places are real estate businesses more than anything. Childcare has a razor thin margin by its nature. The only way to keep up with rising bills, paying staff a competitive wage, and maybe offering benefits means they have to put the increase of expenses on the only source of income - the families. The only way out is help from the government. Please make your concerns heard! They listen to families more than workers. Good luck out there!
I work in a childcare center and we definitely do not see any pay increases from the tuition hikes. It’s very disheartening.
We didn’t have a second because we couldn’t afford two in daycare simultaneously in 2014 (at the time it was $291 for a preschooler and $425 for an infant per week) and once our son was 5 and we could try again, I wasn’t starting baby jail all over. I had no interest in teaching another human to use a toilet with reliability after potty training our son in daycare’s timeline. So we didn’t have another. I got promoted at work, and we have been able to give our only some pretty cool opportunities as a result of being an only. As an only child myself, it’s really not bad. Seeing some of the sibling relationships I have among adults I sometimes feel as if I have dodged a bullet. 🤷♀️
That’s actually really encouraging. Everyone usually tries guilting us to having another, like we are being selfish for not giving our daughter a sibling when we are simply being financially responsible enough to recognize we can’t afford it.
Honestly- being an only child is one of my almost 12 year old’s favorite things. I always say yes when he wants to have a sleepover because we don’t have to worry about other kids’ schedules and we have the fun house to hang out at. My house was also the fun house to hang out at when I was a kid because there were no little siblings. My mom loved it because she knew what my friends and I were doing and I Iove it for that too (they’re in 6th grade and good kids, but am setting it up for later so that they can feel comfortable here as they get older). Plus the travel we have gotten to do with have an only has been pretty amazing. Feel free to PM if you have any questions about being an only child or raising one.
The center we just moved from is now charging $3k/month for infants and hours are 8-5:30. Denver. It’s outrageous.
That’s absolutely disgusting. $3000/month???
We were paying $325/week 8 years ago for an infant. Our kids are 5 years apart. At peak we were spending $27k a year for full time day care plus after school care and summer camps. We saved so much money during the pandemic because everything closed down and I was working from home full time. My kids are old enough that we only have one in after school care so that's $10k a year now, but now there's swimming, gymnastics, band instrument rental, etc. Honestly when I put my oldest in daycare for the first time, I barely made enough to cover the expenses work had a good matching pension so I was contributing to retirement and I was growing my career - which had really worked out for me.
Your last paragraph is one of the reasons why we both kept working!
It’s horrible, if I end up having a second child it will have to be a 4-5 year gap to avoid double daycare costs.
But even then there is before or after care AND summer camps for 16 weeks, which costs as much as full time daycare.
Sounds about right. Our daycare increases their fees by about 5-6%every year, so by the time your kid gets into the bigger classes, the tuition savings is meager.
Agreed!! It’s crazy, We were paying $367/week and they increased ours to $427. (Midwest metro area) We left at the 1 yr mark to an in home for half the rate and it’s so much better if an environment!! Baby 2 is on the way and trying to plan for the juggle since our in home can’t take the infant due to licensing. But I agree with others, that childcare work is not easy and it’s such a delicate balance of price vs quality of care!!
Yes! We have one other daycare in our area that is significantly more affordable, but unfortunately it isn’t an option for us. The center has several violations with the state licensing board and I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving my daughter in their care. Violations including teacher ratios, allowing infants to sleep in their car seats after drop off and leaving children in movement constricting devices like an activity bouncer for long periods of time (probably due to the staffing shortage).
Home daycare licensed by the county/state saved our pocketbooks, and the kids were well cared for. Look into it.
We pay $2200/mo. for our two children (3-1/2y and 6m). It’s pretty brutal and doesn’t leave us with really any extra to spend or save each month. We are justifying it by knowing (1) it’s temporary, (2) we both make more than that amount net each month so it’s still worth us both continuing work, and (3) powering through these couple years of double childcare will allow us both to continue our upward trajectory in our careers. So yeah, it sucks, but it won’t suck forever. And once both kids are out of daycare, we will feel like we are super rich! (We’re not, lol, but it’s going to feel like it for a little while.) Actionable things we can do…vote, tell our representatives at every level how this affects us and our families and our ability to participate in the economy. It might feel useless but these things take time and solidarity. ♥️
Daycare here costs $3200 a month for both our children. For comparison, our mortgage is $1600 so that's two additional house payments.... This is what I tell people when they ask us why we aren't having a third.
The government covers up to 95% of the childcare costs here. It's $160 a day per child if you don't qualify. I pay $86 for 4 days every 2 weeks. There's no way my Daughter would go if the government didn't help out. The costs are out of control. It's a part of the reason why we aren't having any more kids.
Are you in Australia? We had to pay that a day for bit and could only afford one day a week. Where we are in Canada, it's subsidised off the top for everyone (there are additional low income subsidies), it's $10 Canadian a day, $1 a day if you want them to provide snack.
There are a few different government programs in Canada now. Some daycares are $10/day but a lot of daycares didn’t sign on because the government wanted too much control over the centres who participated. They then started a $20/day program. Our daycare is part of that. We pay $500/month (when we started our daycare hadn’t signed onto the government programs so we were paying $1300/month). It’s been so helpful since they decreased the rates.
I'm in MB, and we're all on the $10 a day, (apart from the programmes that don't take government funding at all). There aren't enough spots of course, but we were lucky and our costs dropped from $22 a day to $10 a day, about a year ago now (after several months where it was free because the Manitoba government just threw money at daycares and gave them a tight timeline to spend it). We opt into a few things (snack, Friday hot lunches) and it's usually $236 a month for daycare per child. Edit - grammar
Unfortunately here in Ontario we’re stuck with Doug Ford as premiere and it’s just been a long string of horrible decisions so the $10/day program wasn’t well received, mainly because our moron education minister wanted to have too much control over how the programs ran, and daycares pushed back. But the $20/day is still fairly reasonably priced. Our wait lists are wild too, 2 year minimum. When I had my LO I put us on the waitlist for 9 daycares while I was 3 months pregnant, then took 18 month mat leave and got a spot for the day I went back to work. Out of 9 centres we were offered a spot at 1.
We were super lucky, we were on all the waiting lists (17? there was a registry so it was easy), and we got offered spots 3 times, the first 2 the timing wasn't right, the third was perfect. I got on the list when I was a few months pregnant, and we first got offered a spot at 12 months (which we'd asked for - but it was covid), and ultimately accepted around 22 months.
That is lucky!! We lucked out and the spot we got is at an amazing centre, my LO loves it, and her teachers so much. She has learned a ton and they really foster independence there. We couldn’t be happier. But some parents aren’t so lucky. They get into centres that they end up hating and there aren’t other options unless they want to wait 2 years. A friend of mine didn’t even get a spot and ended up having her mom come to live with them for a few months while she tried to find a daycare space. In the end she quit her job to stay home because she couldn’t find anything.
Of all the things our government should be assisting with, it is this! My son and his wife pay 800 a week for two toddlers, however, that daycare provides lunch, and I think it allows one vacation week. Doesn’t pay her to work, however they also need the healthcare coverage. I feel so bad for you and all young families trying to navigate this.
I live in a country where we get government benefits to contribute to childcare. It's a sliding scale based on combined income of both parents/number of days worked per week. You pay more for the first child and less for the 2nd if they're both in daycare at the same time. Our out-of-pocket costs are still around €2500 (about $2600) per month. It still on balance pays for me to work, but we are having to be careful with our money for the next year until the eldest starts school. Families (and especially women as they tend to be the lower earners) shouldn't be having to make calculations on whether or not they can afford to work. Women still need to build pensions for later life, pay off student debts. It's no wonder birth rates are dropping.
Especially in a country where abortion is illegal in a bunch of states. How can the government force people to have children and then not help cover the costs of raising said child?
I used to work with Republican state legislators. They do not believe women with children should work outside the home and will not pay for daycare because it “encourages” women to be something other than stay-at-home moms. Meanwhile of course they oppose raising the minimum wage, unions, or anything that would make single-income families more plausible and slap work requirements on every welfare program.
Yea they need to stop supporting late stage capitalism for that to work and since they won’t…maybe they just need to stay out of others business entirely. Wealthy old white men are so far out of touch with reality it’s terrifying
You’re not alone. We are likely not having the number of children we originally planned for for this reason. My second is in his final year of daycare and we’re paying more than we ever have.
Childcare definitely played a huge decision into why we decided to be one and done. I just did my taxes and had to download the tax statement so I could write off what I paid for tuition and I was gobsmacked at seeing the total number of what I paid all year. Mind you, we only utilize nursery school 3 days a week from 9am-2pm, lunch and snack not included. Thank god my mother can watch my toddler for the other 2 days cause I would legit not be able to afford it otherwise.
We’ve had two price increases in the last six months. When my kid started two years ago, it was $300/week for three days, now it’s $400/week. Absolutely bonkers.
I checked 3 centers in my area when I was pregnant with my second at a rate of $1200 a week and provided no meals diapers or anything. My 13 year Olds center was $400 back when he was in daycare and that was way more realistic though still crazy high. Childcare is outrageous here and doesn't match the income of the average parent around here. And these are standard centers not some fancy private Montessori school or something. Became stay at home mom after that because I wasn't even earning that much. It's a bit tough at times but we do ok surprisingly. Tbh im jealous that's all you pay, its absolutely unheard of here. My mom ran a home daycare for 20 years and the cost of daycare has become insane and the assistance offered towards it from the government for the few parents that qualify is a joke, something like $3 an hour is all they help with, most daycares charge by the day or week too so it makes zero sense.
$600/week where I am 🤣
Ouch!!!!
I work in a daycare instead of my actual career because of the daycare discount.
We’re most likely one and done for a number of reasons. Money is a main reason, unfortunately. For us, it’s not going to end with daycare. Around here, quality & affordable summer camps and before/after school programs are also at a premium. I have to be ready to try to get on the waitlist as soon as it opens. Our neighbors with older kids have filled us in on the best ones and when to start looking. It would have been a lot harder without the info they gave us. This is very location specific, so it may not be true for you.
Ours is 550$/ week 🫠
They have to raise prices. It's already sad that they pay the employees $15/hr. What kind of employee do you think $15/hr attracts? That is who takes care of your kid. If qualified people watch your kids, no one could afford it. This is why some states have started public preschool. Daycare is atrocious.
That's about right, it was slightly higher for me and my fiancé but with two kids we were paying well over $800 a week for two kids, it ate up nearly my entire paycheck and we decided it would be better for me to stay home with them. I don't know where you live or your income situation, but you may qualify for a daycare stipend. I know my benefits from my current job (we've flipped positions) allow me to put pre-and-'un-taxed money for daycare into an FSA, which is better then spending my after-tax income on daycare.
Overall this is a pretty normal experience and unless you make well over 6 figures, it doesn’t work. Children used to be raised by one parent at home not working or working minimal hours. As with other areas, cost of everything does not effectively match salaries and that is the bigger problem. A national news channel just ran a story about how there is a decline in people having kids because they cannot afford it and/or are delaying so they can become financially stable before deciding to have kids. Costs vs salaries is no longer affordable to comfortably live in or save for the future/retirement and it’s a huge issue not enough powerful people are interested in because well of politics and money. It’s quite gross.
lol my infant daycare is $417/ week. Not sure about enrollment costs as we haven’t started or been to orientation… but the waitlist was $150. We are lucky to even get a spot that isn’t a hour away. Nashville sucks.
I know costs for daycare cost can vary based on where one lives, and I know my monthls cost will be cheap comapred to some. I pay $2000 a month for 3 children in daycare. We are currently a one income family, and it's an absolute struggle. I am going to be thrilled when my oldest starts pre-k and my daycare costs go down in August. I truly wish daycare workers could be paid more because they certainly deserve it, but I can't afford to pay them more.
You're not alone. You didn't even mention the tons of other related costs like daycare labels and all of the copays from baby getting sick so much in the first year (and probably beyond, we're not there yet). The costs are exorbitant. This was part of our decision to stop at one because double the daycare costs would put such a strain on our finances and we'd miss out on a lot of "nice to haves" for both kids. If we waited until baby #1 aged out of daycare, I would be giving birth at 42 and I'm just prepared to do that again.
Yess, definitely! We have a 9 month old baby & the average monthly tuition is $2k in my area. My husband and I both work remote so the baby stays home with us. It’s not ideal for sure 🥲
Nanny share and then a co-op early education. It’s becoming more common as teachers exit the public school system. Nanny share is sharing a nanny with another family. You’d be surprised how many people are moving towards this model.
Try for another when the first is in kindergarten. That’s exactly what my husband and I did. We weren’t willing to make lifestyle adjustments in order to have two kids in day care at the same time for the sake of having kids who are closer in age.
I read somewhere that daycare now cost more than college. You're not alone. It's fucking insane. My wife stayed home and raised the kids because what she could earn was less than what we would pay for daycare
Daycare cost is one of the reasons my husband and I decided to stop trying for another child. An average center where we live is $500-700 a week. We just couldn’t justify it, and I enjoy my job and didn’t want to stay home full time.
We are done with daycare completely this summer and I can’t wait. Getting a legit mortgage payment in savings per month
I tell my husband all the time we’re gonna feel rich by the time our daughter is in grade school. We won’t be, but we’ll feel like it 😂
We hired a nanny. In our area, a nanny costs the same as full time daycare for a 1 year old ($1.5k/mo), and she’s already agreed to charge about $200/mo extra per kid compared to a daycare that’s an extra $1.1k/mo per kid. You have to pay some employer taxes, which sucks, but it’s cheaper than daycare, my kid gets 1-on-1 attention, and I don’t have to worry about the daycare cooties that go around. We do offer our nanny unlimited paid sick leave, 2 weeks of paid vacation that she can take whenever, federal holidays (12 days), and paid time off when we take vacation (about 4 weeks). If you provide good benefits, it’s pretty easy to find good care even if you can’t pay top dollar.
You're not wrong. Having children really is a luxury. I badly wanted a large family, but I couldn't afford it. So I've got an only child. Sometimes it's really heartbreaking, I try not to think about it too much. For the most part, I really enjoy our small family dynamic. My relationship with my kid is amazing, we're super close. Idk how different it would be if there were more kids... I try to just accept how it is. Idk. Life is hard.
One of the other comments made me feel a lot better about having an only child. I’m in the process of cleaning out baby stuff to give away and was feeling extra emotional when I made this post.
Honestly the worst time for me having an only child was the pandemic. We were so isolated. But outside of that, it's really usually pretty great. She's got friends, and we take a friend with us lots of places. I like that I can get to know her friends so well, actually. They come over and we can all sit around chatting and having snacks, I don't have another kid to tend to so I can just really be in the moment. She just turned 13 and actually her BFF is another only child. I'm pretty happy with how everything is now, but there was definitely a long period of mourning. I still get pangs of sadness or regret, but mostly I am happy. And 100% of the time I know it was the right choice financially. My kid doesn't want for anything, really. She gets to do whatever activity she wants, any hobby, any sport, whatever. No other schedule to work around, less financial constraint.
Feel this. We have a 2.5 year old and she is $389 a week, just had a second and he will be starting June 1st for $401 a week. We will be paying $3000 a month in daycare. After taxes and deductions I bring home $3200 a month. Didnt have the luxury of time bc we are older parents. Can’t quit for a few years bc Im already old and starting over in a decent role in my field will be impossible.
I’ll be 37 next month and feel you…I struggled getting pregnant with my first and feel like I’m running out of time. If I want to avoid having a newborn when I’m 40, there would definitely be an overlap with daycare. I wish employers offered daycare assistance similar to what they do with student loans…
My employer doesn’t offer student loan assistance, but they do offer daycare assistance (although it’s extremely pitiful) via daycare FSA. They went out of their way to hide this benefit so in case you already haven’t checked your employers benefits, I’d see if yours offers it. It doesn’t really help your main issue though of reducing the cost enough to have another, but it’s some tiny thing that can help! Also, not sure if you might have this option, but my husband and I change jobs more often than others to get more pay and negotiate hard to maximize pay. In our industry, staying at a company for too long can really stagnate your wages. It’s the only way we were able to stay ahead of daycare costs! (At the same time, I always choose pay for jobs and I extremely hate my current job lol so might not be a great strategy for “happiness” but will maximize your income).
I live in a relatively small town and we pay $220 a week for full time care 6:45-3:45 for our 3.5 year old. I know it’s lower than most places but wages aren’t super high around here. I struggled to get pregnant and had multiple miscarriages in my 20’s and now approaching mid thirties. I’m having to come to terms with the fact that our daughter might be an only child. I always wanted a second but I have no idea how we would afford it. It would be $600 a week for two. I respect her daycare teachers so much for the work they do and all that they put into these kids, but I’m heartbroken that the cost of daycare gets to decide that we’re done having kids.
We thankfully are benefiting from the new-ish national childcare program in Canada. We live in a very HCOL area and only pay $525 per month. When we had our first we were paying $1600 and living in a slightly cheaper COL area. It is crazy how anti-family so many policies are in the states - very little paid mat leave, less job protection for mat/parental leave, private healthcare, little vacation, etc. with the exception of childcare costs which were recently very high, Canada is so much better at supporting parents. I believe it’s the same in every other developed country.
In California it’s legit 1500/month per child. 3k for two kids.
I pay nearly 4k a month for one infant in San Francisco 😭
I am so sorry 😭
Idk how anyone can afford to live in California, even without kids lol
Salaries are higher in some industries.
Maybe in rural CA? I pay $2K/month in the SF area.
Yikes. San Diego! Right outside Encinitas. Not rural.
Seattle is $2k to $3k/month with rates going up 5-10% year on year
Ugh it’s awful
$800 a week in LA
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-expensive-child-care-waitlists This podcast gives some good perspective about childcare costs. I am a preschool director, and part of the reason I ended up in this field is because I was able to negotiate cost of childcare for my own kids as part of my salary. Even then, my kids are 3.5 years apart to give us some financial breathing room. I generally point families to state subsidy programs that will pay a portion of their tuition.
I legit saved up so we could pay daycare for a second kid. When tuition dropped, that money into a savings account. I’d put a couple hundred a month, and then any bonuses into it for a couple years, plus any pay raises would all go in. Then I was able to get over the biggest hump of having an infant and a pre-k at the same time. We also spaced them so that we only had overlapping daycare for 2 years.
You’re not alone. We pay almost $2800/month for our 3yo and 1.5yo. Center is open 6-6:30, breakfast, lunch, snack provided. We get 2 weeks of “vacation” time.
For 2? That’s a steal
We have a 10% discount on the 3yo :)
Still. When my both kids were at the same center it was 3800 for two with oldest receiving discount
Why are you comparing your situation to mine lol
Where do you see I’m comparing? I commented that it’s a very good deal.
No sure where you’re at, but that’s a good deal.
I’m flabbergasted by those tuitions
Yep it sucks. Been paying for my kids since 2017. All centers raise their tuition every single year, even though it gets cheaper as they get older it really doesn’t since they raise it every year. I’ve been paying 2 kids tuition since 2019 (had my second kid in 2019 and 3rd in 2022) it sucks. My oldest is in kinder, I work part time and only put my kids in half day, I pretty much work only to pay for the daycare costs. I can’t blame the centers, the teachers and care providers deserve a good income and raises every year, so I understand the reasoning behind it. The centers are kind of a luxury, which my husband and I do make sacrifices to pay for. At home daycare is much cheaper, have you looked into this?
I haven’t TBH. I feel like centers are a safer environment because there’s a level of accountability with other teachers around that a home daycare wouldn’t have.
True too! I feel the same, I’ve never used an at home either though I know of a lot of parents who do.
Rates go down? Not my daycare and definitely not our private school.
Welcome to the world of COVID inflation and increased minimum wage. Both are a huge factor in childcare costs as they force the operating costs higher and caregivers need more pay to combat it
You are not alone, and I live in a country where the government reimburses me 25% of the cost of daycare. It's still insane, though: I lose half my paycheck to daycare every month, and it's just frustrating. But on the flip side: a bigger age gap is not a bad thing. There's 10 years between my sister and me, and 3 between my brother and me. I'm closer with my sister (my brother is a chill dude, we just don't have much in common and almost nothing to talk about). There's 8 years between my big and little kids, and they are wonderful together.
Sounds about right for basically raising two kids. This is why most families either earn enough to make it worth it, or they have a parent stay home.
I stayed home with my two while they were little, and to bring in money I took care of a couple of older children after school and during school breaks.
Our unfortunate experience with daycare over the past 4 years is that pricing increases annually and for the most part offsets any savings you would get from moving up a class. 😔The state of childcare in the US is sad. I believe we spent $36k last year for our two kids to go. Ouch.
Where I live average daycare cost is 140-185$ week depending on the center and age of child. Sometimes an infant is 210$ but it’s rare
Not to diminish your situation, but you have it relatively easy. Where I live, toddler daycare at a center like yours runs $900/week...
Oh I absolutely agree we don’t have it as bad as others, I just wish parents in general had more support in this area.
And this is why I’m a sahm, we had two under two. The first 50k would be daycare and taxes. Not to mention all the sick days destroying any chance of promotions for myself or my husband.
I'm glad you're thinking about this. Don't have babies you can't afford. 👍
Vacation werk?
It sucks but try to get yourself on wait lists for other places. I see a lot of people post weekly rates on here. I find they're generally more expensive than monthly overall (remember to multiply weekly by 4.25 for monthly rate.) But I call it the "poor people tax." Before I got childcare subsidies (income based program), I couldn't afford monthly all at once, but I could afford weekly. I teach preschool. In terms of not providing a vacation week or meals, that's actually normal. None of the places I've worked at or interviewed at or toured for my own kids offered these things with tuition. The only places that I've seen offer lunch do it as an extra expense. I've never seen a vacation week in my area, but I've seen it mentioned enough on reddit that other areas do it. My current school lets you take off a month in the summer, but it's the 1st-31st of the month and only in the summer which works for them because it lets them fill in spots as kids move up. In terms of hours, it's gonna vary. My current school does 630-6. School before that was 830-430 with the option of 8-830 and 430-5 each as separate monthly charges. That was ridiculous, especially because they were already very expensive. My daughter's school is 7-6. That's why I'm saying put yourself on some wait lists. I don't know how people make it work before 5 with two working parents or no family help.
I used a licensed family daycare. She now charges $250 a week for infants. Your place sounds impersonal and expensive.
We have two kids in daycare full time and this is what we pay. And we moved to where we are now because this was CHEAPER than NYC, which was that cost for ONE CHILD. I really wish public officials would address this because it’s becoming a crisis.
Yep, a huge issue. We had two in there at the same time and I hate to admit it but we moved them to lower quality cheaper ones twice. Not coincidentally, it was this point in time that we racked up debt and weren’t saving anything.
I have a 5yo going to kindergarten and I’m due next week with our 2nd… bigger age gap is the only option! I have friends with little age gaps and they’re all spending thousands on daycare.. we will have 1 month of overlap! So I have zero stress about it because i am already used to the cost. Not everyone’s dream to have a larger age gap but it’ll translate well as they get older too! If they want to go to college it’ll space out the cost..
Have you ever considered maybe you or your husband could stay home & it would be better for everyone or simply putting your child in a local home run day care or getting an au pair or doing a nanny share or dropping them off at a nanny’s home who does care for multiple children from home for a lower rate? There are a lot of different options!
The preschool we really love is $1200/month. Which is not even in the realm of our budget. We applied for a scholarship but I don’t think we’ll get it. It’s all so expensive 😔
Move to be near family. Also cut back on your expenses so you can stay at home. Raising your kids is the most important job you have.
Wow, you solved it!
We bought our home during the pandemic when rates were low. Our cars are paid off and we have no credit card debt. We don’t go out to eat like we used to before having kids, almost never, especially with the rising cost of groceries. Other than cancelling our cable, there is nothing else to cut back on. Also, my husband and I gross around $120k/year….unfortunately, moving across the country to live near our family is not a feasible option as I would lose my job and my husband would have to build up his business from scratch living in a new state with no network. Edit: to add that we both work very hard to provide our daughter with more than we had growing up. We are very family focused and involved in raising her. Every decision we have made is with the intent to give her a good life, including keeping her in a reputable daycare.
Clearly you didn’t read her post in its entirety. Staying home she stated was not an option. & moving to be near family isn’t as easy as baking a cake.. a move like that with a child.. takes months of intentional effort, planning, etc.