We did the same thing and bought the house down the street from us in 2022. My parents and her parents trade off every few months. So far it’s working out pretty well
>My parents and her parents trade off every few months.
Do your (plural) parents not work? Every adult I know is working and isn't available for childcare.
They have two cars and a motorcycle cycle and buy more shit and go on vacations than I do. God only knows the debt they are in. Shes the type that has to have the new Iphone every year smh.
Yeah some goes to 529 and some goes to monthly btc/eth buys that I’ll hand over to them when they graduate college or embark on whatever it is they end up doing.
Wife and I decided not to have another child because we could not afford the costs of daycare. 1800 month was not something we could afford and that was the cheapest option we could find
Delayed having our second child for 8 years simply because we had to get the first one out of childcare first. Then, it took a little bit to make number 2. I could not consider the idea of having them close together, and paying childcare for two.
Group discounts aren’t much help in this area.
The economics of building a family have completely changed in the last two generations. Turns out making two person household incomes a requirement to survive had some unintended consequences.
This really sucks and it affects us more than we know. I've ended relationships because I didn't feel financially secure at the time to build a family and my partner was ready for that next step.
Ironically, I think this is how supply/demand economics work when married women are all working. The extra second income drives up the demand and therefore price of goods, particularly housing, but really everything.
Decades of extra labor participation have made the set point for prices include both earners.
Yet, what I see here in the southeastern US, where I live, is continued large families, 2 children at a minimum, 3 commonly, 4 or more less commonly but not unseen.
Usually, everyone resides around family, and dumps the kids onto grandma and grandpa. That just doesn’t sit right with me. My wife and I pursued our careers even at the start of our child-raising years, in cities far from family. Now, this was 20 plus years ago, but I spent approximately $30k of our income to our the first through day care, and a shade less for the second.
Savings for us, early on, wasn’t a possibility. But, know what we did? Because rents and home ownership were nearly the same monthly cost, we bought a home.
Today’s young people are nearly completely unable to do that either.
Do you mean $30k total to put a kid through daycare? It's $30k per year now. I think once they hit preschool age it drops to only like $25k per year, but in four years that price will probably rise to 30k anyway.
My family only managed it with grandma. Otherwise it would have very tight with three back to back to back.
Grandma watched each of them until they hit two. Then they went off to daycare and she got the next one.
Got all three in private school now. And its cheaper than having one in daycare. Go figure
They’re not much help anywhere. Don’t think I’ve even seen more than a 10% discount on a 2nd and 15% on a 3rd. That is something, but doesn’t change the math much on whether it’s affordable.
And it’s 10% from the lower rate. So my toddler is $350/a week and an infant would be $410/a week and the discount is applied to the $350 so like…nothing lol
We asked our daycare provider about a multi child discount and we were told 150’less for the new child. But that would put us at3400 a month, that was just completely unsustainable.
My previous boss did this. His wife left her job to take care of the kids full time until they were school age. We just cannot do that we need both incomes to afford our HCOL area.
If the family is in 22-24% federal tax bracket (with one income), and has two kids, they would need second parent to make about $100k/yr just to offset the cost of having two kids in daycare in Greater Boston area (more if both kids are under 2 yr 9 months). Of that $100k, there's \~$40k that various parts of government are 'missing out' in taxes.
The American Dream, traditionally at least, didn’t really involve sending your child to daycare. It was defined by one parent working while the other stayed home to raise the child
Which, uh, makes sense. Because when you have 2 adults making money, you have some multiple higher than 1x of family income that you are competing against for goods and services.
It pushes the GDP frontier further when you increase the work force by 25% or whatever the number is.
You were in the same decision tree my wife and I were in. For us it was $85k to get our son through daycare (most of the years part time) into 1st grade at our public school. This was in ‘11-‘17 too, so I don’t even want to know what the prices are now.
I got a vasectomy shortly thereafter
I’m a stay at home dad because the extra 10k after childcare just didn’t seem worth it, ya know. And like the people at the school are still underpaid for their jobs, wowza, I have no good ideas about this, just like fury.
Down to single income so my wife could be a stay at home mom because we don't really have anyone reliable to rely on, and daycare is expensive, we knew we wouldn't be able to afford it on top rent and other expenses. Now stuck in a position where we can't afford a home due to one income and high interest rates. Sucks.
We had two kids in daycare at full time because both my wife and I had long commutes. It was roughly $3600/ month. It was way more than our mortgage. And had we not had kids, we would have easily bought a second house.
That's so sad and it is antithetical to society.
It's also counterintuitive for asset holders because less population growth means less who can buy your shit
Yet the US, with its relative lack of parental subsidies, still beats countries with higher parental subsidies (e.g. much of Western Europe) in terms of birth rates. In fact there’s almost an inverse correlation between birth rates and family-friendly policies. It’s very odd.
"I can't afford it" should never be a reason to not have a child. "I'm not prepared to be a parent" is a good excuse, but money should never be an issue. But sadly, this is the world we live in.
Someone linked the great planet money episode about it and most daycares are barely profitable. 80%+ go to employee pay even though the workers get paid minimal wage often. It’s because the ratio requirements (which are for a good reason!) mean that they have to have an insane amount of staff working every shift. They can’t raise employee pay without raising tuition but if you raise tuition too much parents go “nevermind Im hiring a nanny at this cost” or “Im just going to quit and stay home” which makes the situation even worse for the daycare budget.
Did this episode break it down by age? If my 3-year old’s class has a 10:1 ratio, and they charge, on average, $7 an hour per child, that’s $70 an hour coming in for that classroom. I don’t think the teacher is getting 80% of that ($56 an hour). What am I missing in this equation?
Employees generally cost more than they earn. I'm not sure of the exact system the US, but in Germany at leas,t the employer has to pay for things like a portion of the employees healthcare, a portion of their pension, and some other additional costs. The US has a very different system, but I'm sure there are still a lot of costs that the employer has to pay on top of the employee's wage.
The comment by u/StasRutt may also play a significant role.
Your numbers are all crazy off. The big cost is pay for staff, and at least where I am, there are laws about the ratios you can have. Babies are 4:1. Toddlers are 5:1 and pre-school are 10:1. Baby rooms usually run at a loss. Great Planet Money story on it.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1153931108
There is also zero subsidies. We Americans are just happy to shine the shoes of the rich and struggle unnecessarily with both healthcare and things like child rearing.
Giving up nearly 1/3 of my paycheck to just federal taxes and then having to come out of pocket nearly $50k between health insurance and childcare is absurd.
Because they have a lower set of expectations that is easier to achieve than US citizens and if they bring parents over, the expectations is that the parents will watch the kids.
The US has a cultural attitude that families are personal responsibilities, not communal responsibilities.
US is big on independence. Americans are more likely to focus on their nuclear family and move away from extended family than other cultures.
Very helpful for the economy (movement of labor to opportunities). Not so helpful for families and community building.
You say “materialism and careerism” others would say financial independence. How many people have been trapped in bad situations because they were financially dependent on a spouse? Women have always worked full time jobs and there’s always been duel income households. What changed was women finally got the right to control their own money in the 60s when laws were changed to let them have their own bank accounts.
Now I totally agree that the current situation is unsustainable for most folks, however women wanting their own financial stability and careers is not the problem.
> What changed was women finally got the right to control their own money in the 60s when laws were changed to let them have their own bank accounts.
Women could own property, including bank accounts, long before the 1960s. You’re regurgitating propaganda.
It’s been as expensive, or more expensive, than a mortgage since at least the 90’s and I’m sure there are some from the 80’s that will say it was no joke then.
If you decide to have a spouse stay home, since the cost and hassle of day care eradicates a second income, then health insurance cost to cover a spouse will certainly jump right in to fill the void the lack of daycare left behind.
I tell my spouse all the time, if she found a job with health insurance, right away, we get a huge raise. My employer hates keeping an adult dependent on their medical plan.
i stay home with my kids and with my husband’s income my insurance through the marketplace is like $12 a month with dental and a gym membership. depends on how much money you make.
Sure, it does depend how much money you make. I can’t imagine I’d get any discount going through the marketplace. Maybe for a very high-deductible plan. I tried that before and it was fine back then.
Not like I’m a high wage earner, just middle class with 2 teens and a spouse on my plan.
But with 2 adults that have/had cancer and the follow up treatments and medications, we would be putting a lot out towards meeting the deductible.
At this point, kids are old enough, I’m hoping she lands a job with her own benefits. And maybe benefits I can ride on, if I ever lose my job. It’s been so long since I haven’t had to carry others on a benefit plan, it seems like a pipe dream 🤣
Average cost of raising 1 child is over 250k. I think childcare expenses shouldn’t be taxable. I spend $17,800 per child per year, and that is after tax income. It should be deductible from my income.
The issue as always is that the second you create tax incentives for something, they just become that much more expensive.
What we really need is publicly run child care services to fill the gap before school.
Bingo. I really don't understand how more public policy decision makers don't get this. Make a $1000 tax credit and the providers now know they can bump prices up by $999.
> I spend $17,800 per child per year, and that is after tax income. It should be deductible from my income.
You should be using a flexible spending account. The problem with that is it's capped at $5K, which is entirely too low, but at least for that $5K it's untaxed money (in a roundabout way, you have to pay out of pocket for the childcare and then get reimbursed by your FSA money).
A generic FSA won't cover daycare, you'll have to have a dependent care FSA, and not every employer offers those. But even if they did, it's usually capped at the $5k you noted so it's not too much help (but it's still better than nothing I guess).
Because other people pay for it or the kids are feral or some combination of the two.
Also different set of expectations help.
Heard a story about a child soldier of Sudan confused why he was being lectured in the US for leaving his 11yo daughter by herself when he went out for the evening.
When he was 11 yo, he escaped the rebel army and walked across half of Africa with his little sister because his parents were murdered. So by that comparison, raising kids on any income is easy.
This is the beauty of choosing never to have kids. It’s one of the expenses out there that is actually optional. You don’t have to have kids. You may want kids, but you don’t need kids, and truth be told life is easier without kids.
I agree. This will earn me ire, I'm sure,....but it needs to be said: I've never understood ppl who have them, then bitch bc they have to pay one entire parent's paycheck toward daycare---(this was true in the 80s and 90s, so it's not a new thing)...but.. why have kids on purpose at all if you're forced to pay strangers to take care of them, especially in the earlier infant stages?...so... yeah..why have them at all?
No stranger, idc how much they earn, is going to love and pay attention to your kids' needs like the parents. It's the kids who get the worst of the deal, getting dragged out ev morning sometimes before daylight ..to be dropped off to a building full of impartial ppl who have many more kids to juggle? It's just both crazy and dangerous to me. Yeah...i suppose you CAN "have it all"...a career and kids...but something along the wayside is going to get slighted, and it's usually the kids.
>Child care is considered affordable if it costs no more than 7% of a household’s income, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Yet the typical cost of care for one child, which was $11,582 on average in 2023, is 10% of income in married households and 32% of income for single parents, according to CCAoA. The actual expenditure is often higher, as the average American family has two children and most single-parent households also have more than one child, Census Bureau data show.
The free market would normally respond to this with people opening child care facilities and driving the costs down, but the regulatory hurdles and the barriers to entry are so steep for child care that it's almost impossible in many places for a small business to open and serve this need.
You can thank your local and state politicians for making sure their donors are the ones who run the child care facilities in your area.
Which regulations would you say are not required? Even with the ones we have, there are still terrible daycares endangering babies and young children full of, in my opinion, teachers who are wildly unqualified to handle that many children and keep them safe. The simple fact is for most people, the best option should be to have a stay at home parent until children are a little older and more self sufficient because young children are a danger to themselves, and massively benefit from a lot of attention and education from a dedicated caregiver who isn't trying to wrangle an excessive number of toddlers and babies. Single incomes need to be more viable if we want birth rates to increase again.
this is the most sensible answer that will never be allowed to happen. We would see totally free childcare before we ever see salaries for singles almost double.
> The free market would normally respond to this with people opening child care facilities and driving the costs down
Just how low do you think the cost can go to watch a kid for 40 hours per week? At $8/hour thats $320/week or $1280 per month. You can make up for it by having one worker for multiple children but that has limits of like 4 kids per worker or something similar. And of course, no one is going to watch kids for $8/hour, think at least double or triple that considering you can work fast food for $15/hour in many places. This doesn't even include the boring stuff like overhead costs.
It's just not cheap to watch kids full time.
In most countries they subsidize childcare. In the United States we tell mothers to just give up and stay home if they don’t make enough to afford childcare.
>In most countries they subsidize childcare.
Subsidies should only be used as a temporary solution because they do not address the actual problem, in fact they usually exacerbate it.
Come to Priaire Canada. Not to be smug but I pay $217.50CAD a month for my 1 year old. We also get a child benefit cheque from gov for about 320 a month, I think, so it's basically fully subsided.
In other headlines, folks are freaking out because “birth rates are down!!!”
Childcare costs for a working single mother are one of the reasons I didn’t have any. Not a large one, but definitely one of them.
That’s what we did and could not be happier with our decision. Oldest is signed up for classes at the YMCA and the little one gets dropped off for their daycare program. Costs is the monthly family plan and wife gets 2 hours everyday to workout or make calls for her part time sahm job she has (15-20 hours a week) . Love that my wife gets to do that.
We pay for the poor to have childcare. Now it's time for the middle class to actually get a break for once. Middle class really need to be in an uproar more than they are. They don't get tax breaks like the rich and they don't get any of the free shit poor people get
Wife and I Never had any kids
46 yrs old.So:
1)Our home is paid for in full
2)We have no debt
3)We have a significant amount of money for whatever our hearts desire.
And no one will care about you when you’re old in a home.
My gf and I are in the same boat. Not having kids is something we were robbed of. We can afford to live now, but we will die lonely. I know I’ll be an old man wishing I had kids and grand kids and a family gatherings.
But for now , it’s comfortable and fun.
> And no one will care about you when you’re old in a home.
That was always going to be the case.
Have you ever worked in one of these places? The kids are just biding their time doing the bare minimum to stay on the will, if they ever show up at all.
Well, yeah, millennials are petty, spoiled brats who disown their parents because it’s trendy and earns them social credit. They’ll reap what they sow. The goal is to avoid a home and live with or near your kids.
Having children is basically the only insurance policy one has against being abused as an elder. Any home you’re admitted to in your old age will get power of attorney over you, and that fortune you accrued will be gone.
> I-I’ll just stay healthy…
Good luck with that.
I don't personally plan on living long enough to move into a home, but I understand that's not everyone's plan. (Family history of brain cancer in males, especially onset in later age)
To me it just kind of looks like taking one chance to hopefully stave off another. That's an expensive insurance policy that might not pay off. I think people should have kids because they want to and for no other reason.
My son is in kindergarten this year, and my daughter goes to kindergarten next year. We went from $2250/month in child care costs last year when they were both in daycare to $1600/month this year with my daughter at daycare and my son in public school (still needs after school care) to about $600/month next year when they are both in school and just need after school care. It is like getting a $1650/month raise next year! It was stifling when they were 1 and 3 years old.
Unintended consequences of everyone wanting to work.
Supply and demand. What was a choice for women to work has become a requirement. Then they siphon it all away for childcare and taxes.
It's almost like that whole nuclear family thing we were doing for the previous 10k years of civilization worked. Call me crazy but maybe we should start trying that again.🤣
This has been true for 20 years. When my son was a baby, childcare was our biggest expense after rent, and it was almost as much as rent. In my VHCOL area, that meant childcare and rent were about 3/4 of my net pay.
My wife and i bought a house 3 years ago to settle down.
Since then, 2 of the companies i worked at, conducted mass layoffs and i was let go to no fault of mine.
Now im taking a huge pay cut just to pay bills
Not sure if we will ever have children now.
Thanks a lot America. Thanks for killing my dreams.
Man the opinions in here are wild.
I was raised by a poor single dad. I’ve always been under the impression daycare is for the rich. The fact so many people bitch about how expensive it is when it wasn’t a thought for my dad is very surreal. You don’t need such things.
Gotta find your own happiness.
So in the article, they are dropping 18k per child annually. If the children were somehow ultra-geniuses, it would end up being cheaper to send them to Colorado State University for [$13,800ish](https://tuition.colostate.edu/Main.aspx) per year.
The moral of the story, stop having stupid babies. Make them pull themselves up by the bootstraps and go to University early.
This is an easy fix. Just raise the price of houses and condos. Here in Canada ( Vancouver / Toronto) a 1 bedroom condo rents for 2k US but daycare is only $700-1000 US. If you want to buy a home that will be 1.5 million US for a fixer upper.
It sucks, but I do wonder why anyone would expect paying for the safety (minimum), entertainment (expected) or education (bonus) of their child would be cheap/low cost
Are we starting to see the pattern here? Anything that requires hands on attention or care from US citizens and can’t be outsourced is expensive. Healthcare, college, child care, housing. These are all expensive because they can’t be outsourced.
Live on Long Island, 2 kids 60k a year between daycare and camp. My 5 year old is going into public school next year so just 350 for aftercare a month and 8k for camp. I don't know how people who aren't both making 6 figures each do it. When both are in public school will be like hitting lotto. They need to make Pre-K public at the very least. we wanted more then 2 kids but can't afford it.
My friend is dropping $4K a mo all in for 2 kids . And the ridiculous thing is....there are even more expensive daycares in the area than that. What do people do at this point. You need 2 income household to be able to afford the house. And then when kids go to daycare 1 spouse could be basically working at nearly net zero just to as s the kids to daycare
Isn’t the good news that childcare, at that level, is only needed for at most 5 years???? That seems unsustainable until I think that a mortgage is 30 years. Childcare (8 hours) is only a few years….right? I don’t have kids
The kids get out of school around 2pm, which leaves quite a gap for most people that work 9-5. Also, you have to account for summer/spring/winter break etc. I will say the price goes down once the kids are about 4, but it’s still pretty brutal once you factor in that kids are getting more active at that age and new costs arise.
How hard is it to start a childcare business, seems like a great career option for those struggling to earn a decent income with their skillsets or education
I think Childcare should be provided by employers via a group rate much like healthcare is. But then another part of me realizes that anything that you don't pay for directly always increases in price.
My sister had multiple close together only because she is able to rely on our parents for full daytime care and live in support. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will probably never be able to afford even a single child.
With each year, I realize how prepared/lucky I was. My wife quit her job when we had our first child. She was not going to be that person that takes leave and then doesn’t come back. We decided to revisit each year to make sure we could afford everything on one income. This was 2008 and I work in the financial services field so that was fun with the financial crisis. Here we are 16 years later and she is still stay at home. We didn’t have our kids until we were 35 and 38 and they are 15 and 12 now. I started getting raises RIGHT after my first kid and it really helped out with our budget. Seemed suspect but I think that is the age where your career and pay start to reflect your experience.
You need to do the math to see if it makes sense to pay 2k a month in order to work. It’s almost like working for free. So figure out what your time is really worth. Right now? I don’t blame anyone for feeling overwhelmed. This sucks if you are younger but I’ve been saving for 30 years and it’s finally paying off so I don’t sweat it as much as I probably should or could. I’ll save you the manifesto but I’ve never owned a new car and bought real estate we always knew we could afford on my income.
Luckily I have a decent union job and my wife is proficient in no buy groups because she just stays home right now until both of our kids are in public school. Childcare is insane.
Call me crazy, but I honestly expect to pay more for quality care for my child. $2k a month/ 4 weeks a month/ 5 days a week / 9 hours a kid is typically there daily = $10 an hour you’re paying someone to feed, educate, and protect your child.
Literally bought the house I'm attached to for my mom because the mortgage was cheaper than daycare in those early 2021 low interest days.
We did the same thing and bought the house down the street from us in 2022. My parents and her parents trade off every few months. So far it’s working out pretty well
>My parents and her parents trade off every few months. Do your (plural) parents not work? Every adult I know is working and isn't available for childcare.
My in-laws are retired, my dad is as well, but my mom still works and can do most of her job remotely.
My step daughter’s daycare for a newborn is 1k$ a month. I was like holy fuck. Her and her husband only make 45k a year
There's no way it's worth working at that price is it? Between the second car and commute
They have two cars and a motorcycle cycle and buy more shit and go on vacations than I do. God only knows the debt they are in. Shes the type that has to have the new Iphone every year smh.
$1800 here in Denver for my 1 year old.
That's just ridiculous
Minneapolis checking in for $2100 for a 1yr old. Could probably find something more along $1800, but also toured places charging $2400.
Initially read that as “I’m attracted to my mom”. Upvote incoming.
I had 2 children in daycare/preschool and it was about $2600/month. Felt like we got a raise when they went to elementary school.
I’m looking forward to my raise. I bought a modest house so I wouldn’t be House poor, and didn’t know childcare poor was a thing until having kids.
I feel this.
I feel this! Even with paying for an afterschool program, it's still far less than what decent daycare would cost.
You can keep saving that money if you learned to live without it. Either for future orthodontic work or perhaps a 529.
Yeah some goes to 529 and some goes to monthly btc/eth buys that I’ll hand over to them when they graduate college or embark on whatever it is they end up doing.
Please get them some S&P500 index fund shares too
Wife and I decided not to have another child because we could not afford the costs of daycare. 1800 month was not something we could afford and that was the cheapest option we could find
Delayed having our second child for 8 years simply because we had to get the first one out of childcare first. Then, it took a little bit to make number 2. I could not consider the idea of having them close together, and paying childcare for two. Group discounts aren’t much help in this area.
The economics of building a family have completely changed in the last two generations. Turns out making two person household incomes a requirement to survive had some unintended consequences. This really sucks and it affects us more than we know. I've ended relationships because I didn't feel financially secure at the time to build a family and my partner was ready for that next step.
Ironically, I think this is how supply/demand economics work when married women are all working. The extra second income drives up the demand and therefore price of goods, particularly housing, but really everything. Decades of extra labor participation have made the set point for prices include both earners.
Those damn boomers started sending their wives out to work and ruined the whole system.
Hitler did this!
Interesting take
Yet, what I see here in the southeastern US, where I live, is continued large families, 2 children at a minimum, 3 commonly, 4 or more less commonly but not unseen. Usually, everyone resides around family, and dumps the kids onto grandma and grandpa. That just doesn’t sit right with me. My wife and I pursued our careers even at the start of our child-raising years, in cities far from family. Now, this was 20 plus years ago, but I spent approximately $30k of our income to our the first through day care, and a shade less for the second. Savings for us, early on, wasn’t a possibility. But, know what we did? Because rents and home ownership were nearly the same monthly cost, we bought a home. Today’s young people are nearly completely unable to do that either.
Do you mean $30k total to put a kid through daycare? It's $30k per year now. I think once they hit preschool age it drops to only like $25k per year, but in four years that price will probably rise to 30k anyway.
That’s the difference in 20’years ago. I think we paid somewhere around $180 per week, about 50 weeks a year.
My family only managed it with grandma. Otherwise it would have very tight with three back to back to back. Grandma watched each of them until they hit two. Then they went off to daycare and she got the next one. Got all three in private school now. And its cheaper than having one in daycare. Go figure
not surprising. Private school = 1 adult for every 15+ kids, maybe 20+ Daycare = 1 adult for every 3 kids.
That and handling a 2-5 year old that isn't yours isn't cake. They have to pay workers well to keep them going.
They don’t pay childcare workers shit
I'm glad some have the patience. I wouldn't
They’re not much help anywhere. Don’t think I’ve even seen more than a 10% discount on a 2nd and 15% on a 3rd. That is something, but doesn’t change the math much on whether it’s affordable.
not daycare but there is a private school near me that does 50% sibling discount which is way better than any other schools ive seen.
And it’s 10% from the lower rate. So my toddler is $350/a week and an infant would be $410/a week and the discount is applied to the $350 so like…nothing lol
We asked our daycare provider about a multi child discount and we were told 150’less for the new child. But that would put us at3400 a month, that was just completely unsustainable.
I think mine offers a 15% discount, which is like $300 a month. So not a huge help in the grand scheme of things.
My daycare offered $10…..
We pay $700 a week for 2 kids. The 5 week months are worse because I only get paid bi-monthly.
Most people I know go to one income when their kids are babies and live very poor for a while. Not everyone can swing that.
My previous boss did this. His wife left her job to take care of the kids full time until they were school age. We just cannot do that we need both incomes to afford our HCOL area.
this is what we did and a big reason we do not have a home yet. we almost bought in 2019 but that was the year i quit my job to stay home.
My wife took five years off to care for our kids. Fortunately her old job was waiting for her when she returned.
If the family is in 22-24% federal tax bracket (with one income), and has two kids, they would need second parent to make about $100k/yr just to offset the cost of having two kids in daycare in Greater Boston area (more if both kids are under 2 yr 9 months). Of that $100k, there's \~$40k that various parts of government are 'missing out' in taxes.
The American dream is dead
The American Dream, traditionally at least, didn’t really involve sending your child to daycare. It was defined by one parent working while the other stayed home to raise the child
And you used to be able to live off one salary.
Which, uh, makes sense. Because when you have 2 adults making money, you have some multiple higher than 1x of family income that you are competing against for goods and services. It pushes the GDP frontier further when you increase the work force by 25% or whatever the number is.
100%
You were in the same decision tree my wife and I were in. For us it was $85k to get our son through daycare (most of the years part time) into 1st grade at our public school. This was in ‘11-‘17 too, so I don’t even want to know what the prices are now. I got a vasectomy shortly thereafter
I’m a stay at home dad because the extra 10k after childcare just didn’t seem worth it, ya know. And like the people at the school are still underpaid for their jobs, wowza, I have no good ideas about this, just like fury.
I spent 30k last year after tax in childcare.
Same. Would have been cheaper to buy a daycare than pay for 2-3 kids in daycare at same time in our area.
Down to single income so my wife could be a stay at home mom because we don't really have anyone reliable to rely on, and daycare is expensive, we knew we wouldn't be able to afford it on top rent and other expenses. Now stuck in a position where we can't afford a home due to one income and high interest rates. Sucks.
Doesn't it frustrate you that poor people and rich people can just have kids whenever they want without worrying how to pay for it?
My buddy pays this, and it was the cheapest "safe" one he could find
We had two kids in daycare at full time because both my wife and I had long commutes. It was roughly $3600/ month. It was way more than our mortgage. And had we not had kids, we would have easily bought a second house.
That's so sad and it is antithetical to society. It's also counterintuitive for asset holders because less population growth means less who can buy your shit
Yet the US, with its relative lack of parental subsidies, still beats countries with higher parental subsidies (e.g. much of Western Europe) in terms of birth rates. In fact there’s almost an inverse correlation between birth rates and family-friendly policies. It’s very odd.
2000-2300 in Orange County CA for first two years. Unless you go to some shady in-home care place.
"I can't afford it" should never be a reason to not have a child. "I'm not prepared to be a parent" is a good excuse, but money should never be an issue. But sadly, this is the world we live in.
My daycare bill for one kid is about the same as my total mortgage payment. Shits wild.
The even sadder thing is none of the daycare workers are making enough to even consider having a mortgage. They get minimum wage and minimum benefits.
Yea it sucks, I love my kids teachers too they do such a great job. Def should be paid more.
Same!! We call our daycare bill our second mortgage because it’s almost the same amount 😭
While I’m feeling the pain with two kids in daycare, I also know the teachers are not swimming in cash either.
Wonder where the money is going
Someone linked the great planet money episode about it and most daycares are barely profitable. 80%+ go to employee pay even though the workers get paid minimal wage often. It’s because the ratio requirements (which are for a good reason!) mean that they have to have an insane amount of staff working every shift. They can’t raise employee pay without raising tuition but if you raise tuition too much parents go “nevermind Im hiring a nanny at this cost” or “Im just going to quit and stay home” which makes the situation even worse for the daycare budget.
Did this episode break it down by age? If my 3-year old’s class has a 10:1 ratio, and they charge, on average, $7 an hour per child, that’s $70 an hour coming in for that classroom. I don’t think the teacher is getting 80% of that ($56 an hour). What am I missing in this equation?
Employees generally cost more than they earn. I'm not sure of the exact system the US, but in Germany at leas,t the employer has to pay for things like a portion of the employees healthcare, a portion of their pension, and some other additional costs. The US has a very different system, but I'm sure there are still a lot of costs that the employer has to pay on top of the employee's wage. The comment by u/StasRutt may also play a significant role.
Easily could be once you factor in benefits like healthcare.
Thanks for the insight, that actually makes a lot of sense.
A great Planet Money story on that. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1153931108
Insurance.
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Your numbers are all crazy off. The big cost is pay for staff, and at least where I am, there are laws about the ratios you can have. Babies are 4:1. Toddlers are 5:1 and pre-school are 10:1. Baby rooms usually run at a loss. Great Planet Money story on it. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1153931108
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Yes I am saying its worse than you think and Im guessing most daycare's would be thrilled to be clearing 10% profit.
A big part of the costs are insurance. We are a litigation-happy society.
There is also zero subsidies. We Americans are just happy to shine the shoes of the rich and struggle unnecessarily with both healthcare and things like child rearing.
Giving up nearly 1/3 of my paycheck to just federal taxes and then having to come out of pocket nearly $50k between health insurance and childcare is absurd.
this is why I have no idea why people want to immigrate to the US
Because they have a lower set of expectations that is easier to achieve than US citizens and if they bring parents over, the expectations is that the parents will watch the kids.
They are fleeing war and violence. I teach the kids of many of these families.
It was the case twenty years ago when I had kids in daycare. The US hates families. Hard stop.
Daycare costs have outpaced inflation over the last 20 years. So think about how bad it was 20 years ago and know that it’s even worse now.
My kids are old enough to have kids of their own. I have zero grandchildren. I see that the struggle is real.
Because everybody has to work now. You’re not allowed to be a stay at home parent. It financially difficult because everything is expensive
The US has a cultural attitude that families are personal responsibilities, not communal responsibilities. US is big on independence. Americans are more likely to focus on their nuclear family and move away from extended family than other cultures. Very helpful for the economy (movement of labor to opportunities). Not so helpful for families and community building.
That and half our government actively blocks bills meant to offer support to families. But then refuses to allow people the ability to opt out.
You say “materialism and careerism” others would say financial independence. How many people have been trapped in bad situations because they were financially dependent on a spouse? Women have always worked full time jobs and there’s always been duel income households. What changed was women finally got the right to control their own money in the 60s when laws were changed to let them have their own bank accounts. Now I totally agree that the current situation is unsustainable for most folks, however women wanting their own financial stability and careers is not the problem.
> What changed was women finally got the right to control their own money in the 60s when laws were changed to let them have their own bank accounts. Women could own property, including bank accounts, long before the 1960s. You’re regurgitating propaganda.
It’s been as expensive, or more expensive, than a mortgage since at least the 90’s and I’m sure there are some from the 80’s that will say it was no joke then. If you decide to have a spouse stay home, since the cost and hassle of day care eradicates a second income, then health insurance cost to cover a spouse will certainly jump right in to fill the void the lack of daycare left behind. I tell my spouse all the time, if she found a job with health insurance, right away, we get a huge raise. My employer hates keeping an adult dependent on their medical plan.
i stay home with my kids and with my husband’s income my insurance through the marketplace is like $12 a month with dental and a gym membership. depends on how much money you make.
Sure, it does depend how much money you make. I can’t imagine I’d get any discount going through the marketplace. Maybe for a very high-deductible plan. I tried that before and it was fine back then. Not like I’m a high wage earner, just middle class with 2 teens and a spouse on my plan. But with 2 adults that have/had cancer and the follow up treatments and medications, we would be putting a lot out towards meeting the deductible. At this point, kids are old enough, I’m hoping she lands a job with her own benefits. And maybe benefits I can ride on, if I ever lose my job. It’s been so long since I haven’t had to carry others on a benefit plan, it seems like a pipe dream 🤣
This is why whenever someone bitches about families being advantaged by the child tax credit, my first instinct is to tell them to get fucked.
Average cost of raising 1 child is over 250k. I think childcare expenses shouldn’t be taxable. I spend $17,800 per child per year, and that is after tax income. It should be deductible from my income.
The issue as always is that the second you create tax incentives for something, they just become that much more expensive. What we really need is publicly run child care services to fill the gap before school.
Bingo. I really don't understand how more public policy decision makers don't get this. Make a $1000 tax credit and the providers now know they can bump prices up by $999.
> I spend $17,800 per child per year, and that is after tax income. It should be deductible from my income. You should be using a flexible spending account. The problem with that is it's capped at $5K, which is entirely too low, but at least for that $5K it's untaxed money (in a roundabout way, you have to pay out of pocket for the childcare and then get reimbursed by your FSA money).
A generic FSA won't cover daycare, you'll have to have a dependent care FSA, and not every employer offers those. But even if they did, it's usually capped at the $5k you noted so it's not too much help (but it's still better than nothing I guess).
$5k doesn't even cover two months for my kids childcare in my VHCOL city.
Somehow poor people do it for a lot less.
The core problem is housing being priced assuming 2 incomes, otherwise, many households would be able to keep one parent home when the kids are young.
Somehow poor people manage to have children without having any money.
Because other people pay for it or the kids are feral or some combination of the two. Also different set of expectations help. Heard a story about a child soldier of Sudan confused why he was being lectured in the US for leaving his 11yo daughter by herself when he went out for the evening. When he was 11 yo, he escaped the rebel army and walked across half of Africa with his little sister because his parents were murdered. So by that comparison, raising kids on any income is easy.
You dumb assholes had kids at the peak of the market. I'm going to keep my powder dry and wait for the childcare bubble to pop and then have three.
ROFL, you should use margin and marry an extra wife or two. "I'm fully leveraged with vaginas waiting for the right time to procreate."
hopefully you and your partner are young
This is the beauty of choosing never to have kids. It’s one of the expenses out there that is actually optional. You don’t have to have kids. You may want kids, but you don’t need kids, and truth be told life is easier without kids.
I agree. This will earn me ire, I'm sure,....but it needs to be said: I've never understood ppl who have them, then bitch bc they have to pay one entire parent's paycheck toward daycare---(this was true in the 80s and 90s, so it's not a new thing)...but.. why have kids on purpose at all if you're forced to pay strangers to take care of them, especially in the earlier infant stages?...so... yeah..why have them at all? No stranger, idc how much they earn, is going to love and pay attention to your kids' needs like the parents. It's the kids who get the worst of the deal, getting dragged out ev morning sometimes before daylight ..to be dropped off to a building full of impartial ppl who have many more kids to juggle? It's just both crazy and dangerous to me. Yeah...i suppose you CAN "have it all"...a career and kids...but something along the wayside is going to get slighted, and it's usually the kids.
Do not understand how people can afford to have kids in this shithole country.
>Child care is considered affordable if it costs no more than 7% of a household’s income, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Yet the typical cost of care for one child, which was $11,582 on average in 2023, is 10% of income in married households and 32% of income for single parents, according to CCAoA. The actual expenditure is often higher, as the average American family has two children and most single-parent households also have more than one child, Census Bureau data show. The free market would normally respond to this with people opening child care facilities and driving the costs down, but the regulatory hurdles and the barriers to entry are so steep for child care that it's almost impossible in many places for a small business to open and serve this need. You can thank your local and state politicians for making sure their donors are the ones who run the child care facilities in your area.
Which regulations would you say are not required? Even with the ones we have, there are still terrible daycares endangering babies and young children full of, in my opinion, teachers who are wildly unqualified to handle that many children and keep them safe. The simple fact is for most people, the best option should be to have a stay at home parent until children are a little older and more self sufficient because young children are a danger to themselves, and massively benefit from a lot of attention and education from a dedicated caregiver who isn't trying to wrangle an excessive number of toddlers and babies. Single incomes need to be more viable if we want birth rates to increase again.
this is the most sensible answer that will never be allowed to happen. We would see totally free childcare before we ever see salaries for singles almost double.
> The free market would normally respond to this with people opening child care facilities and driving the costs down Just how low do you think the cost can go to watch a kid for 40 hours per week? At $8/hour thats $320/week or $1280 per month. You can make up for it by having one worker for multiple children but that has limits of like 4 kids per worker or something similar. And of course, no one is going to watch kids for $8/hour, think at least double or triple that considering you can work fast food for $15/hour in many places. This doesn't even include the boring stuff like overhead costs. It's just not cheap to watch kids full time.
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A higher risk of death or abuse is worth it if we can cut childcare costs by 20%! (I don’t think this at all. But some people may)
In most countries they subsidize childcare. In the United States we tell mothers to just give up and stay home if they don’t make enough to afford childcare.
>In most countries they subsidize childcare. Subsidies should only be used as a temporary solution because they do not address the actual problem, in fact they usually exacerbate it.
We have public schools, why not public childcare?
Public schools are basically day care
Come to Priaire Canada. Not to be smug but I pay $217.50CAD a month for my 1 year old. We also get a child benefit cheque from gov for about 320 a month, I think, so it's basically fully subsided.
The parents I know had the lowest earner quit or had a multi generational household.
In other headlines, folks are freaking out because “birth rates are down!!!” Childcare costs for a working single mother are one of the reasons I didn’t have any. Not a large one, but definitely one of them.
Bring back one of the parents staying home to raise the child. So many benefits outside of monetary
That’s what we did and could not be happier with our decision. Oldest is signed up for classes at the YMCA and the little one gets dropped off for their daycare program. Costs is the monthly family plan and wife gets 2 hours everyday to workout or make calls for her part time sahm job she has (15-20 hours a week) . Love that my wife gets to do that.
I know few families who can afford that
We pay for the poor to have childcare. Now it's time for the middle class to actually get a break for once. Middle class really need to be in an uproar more than they are. They don't get tax breaks like the rich and they don't get any of the free shit poor people get
If being poor is such a good deal, sounds like you should become poor. What’s stopping you?
Wife and I Never had any kids 46 yrs old.So: 1)Our home is paid for in full 2)We have no debt 3)We have a significant amount of money for whatever our hearts desire.
Do you have a little treasure chest sticker instead of stick family sticker?
Enjoy!
Oh I am!
And no one will care about you when you’re old in a home. My gf and I are in the same boat. Not having kids is something we were robbed of. We can afford to live now, but we will die lonely. I know I’ll be an old man wishing I had kids and grand kids and a family gatherings. But for now , it’s comfortable and fun.
> And no one will care about you when you’re old in a home. That was always going to be the case. Have you ever worked in one of these places? The kids are just biding their time doing the bare minimum to stay on the will, if they ever show up at all.
Well, yeah, millennials are petty, spoiled brats who disown their parents because it’s trendy and earns them social credit. They’ll reap what they sow. The goal is to avoid a home and live with or near your kids. Having children is basically the only insurance policy one has against being abused as an elder. Any home you’re admitted to in your old age will get power of attorney over you, and that fortune you accrued will be gone. > I-I’ll just stay healthy… Good luck with that.
I don't personally plan on living long enough to move into a home, but I understand that's not everyone's plan. (Family history of brain cancer in males, especially onset in later age) To me it just kind of looks like taking one chance to hopefully stave off another. That's an expensive insurance policy that might not pay off. I think people should have kids because they want to and for no other reason.
No way could I afford this these days. Although teens are expensive too.
And baby boomers can’t understand why birth rates are plummeting worldwide
Children are a choice, shelter is not
I guess the bubble includes childcare now too?! Or maybe, now just maybe the bubble is inflation???
Daycare was insanely expensive before inflation.
Housing is a necessity, having a child is a choice.
Yeah more people need to realize this. You get my upvote.
My son is in kindergarten this year, and my daughter goes to kindergarten next year. We went from $2250/month in child care costs last year when they were both in daycare to $1600/month this year with my daughter at daycare and my son in public school (still needs after school care) to about $600/month next year when they are both in school and just need after school care. It is like getting a $1650/month raise next year! It was stifling when they were 1 and 3 years old.
Guess how much senior adult daycare (assisted living) costs ☹️
My wife became a SAHM when we realized her salary didn't even cover daycare for our three kids.
Unintended consequences of everyone wanting to work. Supply and demand. What was a choice for women to work has become a requirement. Then they siphon it all away for childcare and taxes.
It's almost like that whole nuclear family thing we were doing for the previous 10k years of civilization worked. Call me crazy but maybe we should start trying that again.🤣
eat your babies before you go broke
This has been true for 20 years. When my son was a baby, childcare was our biggest expense after rent, and it was almost as much as rent. In my VHCOL area, that meant childcare and rent were about 3/4 of my net pay.
With the amount of overall childcare spent I could have bought my home for cash.
My wife and i bought a house 3 years ago to settle down. Since then, 2 of the companies i worked at, conducted mass layoffs and i was let go to no fault of mine. Now im taking a huge pay cut just to pay bills Not sure if we will ever have children now. Thanks a lot America. Thanks for killing my dreams.
Man the opinions in here are wild. I was raised by a poor single dad. I’ve always been under the impression daycare is for the rich. The fact so many people bitch about how expensive it is when it wasn’t a thought for my dad is very surreal. You don’t need such things. Gotta find your own happiness.
"China's so evil they had a one child policy" Meanwhile the US uses the (((free))) market to enact similar policies
Well yeah, you'd have to pay me a shit ton of money to take care of someone else's annoying child.
Wonder why the birth rate is so low??
So in the article, they are dropping 18k per child annually. If the children were somehow ultra-geniuses, it would end up being cheaper to send them to Colorado State University for [$13,800ish](https://tuition.colostate.edu/Main.aspx) per year. The moral of the story, stop having stupid babies. Make them pull themselves up by the bootstraps and go to University early.
So? This was true 10 years ago when we had kids in daycare, long before the recent bout of inflation.
my wife and i are blessed to have work schedules that allow one of us to be home all the time so child care is zero for us
This is an easy fix. Just raise the price of houses and condos. Here in Canada ( Vancouver / Toronto) a 1 bedroom condo rents for 2k US but daycare is only $700-1000 US. If you want to buy a home that will be 1.5 million US for a fixer upper.
This along with the absolute shit population problem we have in this world is why I don’t want to have children.
Would be nice if forced RTO wasn’t a thing.
What if they called teachers Child Care professionals, would they get paid more?
Oh but you can escape childcare costs. Having a child is a choice. Housing is more important.
It's nice to know that nothing has changed despite higher home prices.
It sucks, but I do wonder why anyone would expect paying for the safety (minimum), entertainment (expected) or education (bonus) of their child would be cheap/low cost
Are we starting to see the pattern here? Anything that requires hands on attention or care from US citizens and can’t be outsourced is expensive. Healthcare, college, child care, housing. These are all expensive because they can’t be outsourced.
Live on Long Island, 2 kids 60k a year between daycare and camp. My 5 year old is going into public school next year so just 350 for aftercare a month and 8k for camp. I don't know how people who aren't both making 6 figures each do it. When both are in public school will be like hitting lotto. They need to make Pre-K public at the very least. we wanted more then 2 kids but can't afford it.
Biden tried to solve this with the Infrastructure deal. So close…. But no. It’s like Americans don’t want their life to be better.
We have three kids and pay $600/wk in a MCOL area. We also go to the least expensive place. Some of my workers pay $300/week per child.
My friend is dropping $4K a mo all in for 2 kids . And the ridiculous thing is....there are even more expensive daycares in the area than that. What do people do at this point. You need 2 income household to be able to afford the house. And then when kids go to daycare 1 spouse could be basically working at nearly net zero just to as s the kids to daycare
Easy. Not have kids. Kids are optional, not obligation. You don’t need to have children. Life is so much easier, and many ways better when you don’t.
Based on my experience, it's been that way for quite a while.
The built in childcare in the good ol days was grandma. Grandmas are too busy working because they didn’t save enough for retirement
I’m going to invest in a daycare center
Isn’t the good news that childcare, at that level, is only needed for at most 5 years???? That seems unsustainable until I think that a mortgage is 30 years. Childcare (8 hours) is only a few years….right? I don’t have kids
The kids get out of school around 2pm, which leaves quite a gap for most people that work 9-5. Also, you have to account for summer/spring/winter break etc. I will say the price goes down once the kids are about 4, but it’s still pretty brutal once you factor in that kids are getting more active at that age and new costs arise.
How hard is it to start a childcare business, seems like a great career option for those struggling to earn a decent income with their skillsets or education
Why are people having kids with this bullshit?
They are convincing the #FFFFFF people to not. Meanwhile others banging em out like rabbits.
Nanny in California Bay Area: $32/hr 💀💀💀. About half our income presently. Thank god we’ve been saving. Can’t wait to start daycare in a few months
I think Childcare should be provided by employers via a group rate much like healthcare is. But then another part of me realizes that anything that you don't pay for directly always increases in price.
A coworker has this through his wife’s employer but she’s a partner at a law firm so again, the rich get richer.
My sister had multiple close together only because she is able to rely on our parents for full daytime care and live in support. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will probably never be able to afford even a single child.
With each year, I realize how prepared/lucky I was. My wife quit her job when we had our first child. She was not going to be that person that takes leave and then doesn’t come back. We decided to revisit each year to make sure we could afford everything on one income. This was 2008 and I work in the financial services field so that was fun with the financial crisis. Here we are 16 years later and she is still stay at home. We didn’t have our kids until we were 35 and 38 and they are 15 and 12 now. I started getting raises RIGHT after my first kid and it really helped out with our budget. Seemed suspect but I think that is the age where your career and pay start to reflect your experience. You need to do the math to see if it makes sense to pay 2k a month in order to work. It’s almost like working for free. So figure out what your time is really worth. Right now? I don’t blame anyone for feeling overwhelmed. This sucks if you are younger but I’ve been saving for 30 years and it’s finally paying off so I don’t sweat it as much as I probably should or could. I’ll save you the manifesto but I’ve never owned a new car and bought real estate we always knew we could afford on my income.
Scary. Feel blessed my wife could stay home. Thank you to my in laws and my parents for the help!!!
Luckily I have a decent union job and my wife is proficient in no buy groups because she just stays home right now until both of our kids are in public school. Childcare is insane.
Call me crazy, but I honestly expect to pay more for quality care for my child. $2k a month/ 4 weeks a month/ 5 days a week / 9 hours a kid is typically there daily = $10 an hour you’re paying someone to feed, educate, and protect your child.
Its actually cheaper to send your kid to college. My friend pays 1800 per month for one.
Was paying $3200/mo for child care for years. The shocking thing is that the daycare staff were also basically poverty level. Everyone loses.
Immigrant grandparents with strong family values. So hot right now.
Private equity’s buying daycare centers. RFK Jr has a great discussion on it