Spend money to make money

[laurion]

Did you know that childcare is really expensive? Some of you don’t have kids, and some of you plan to never have kids, in which case, you’ll never know this personally. And this post may not be for you.

Still here? Yeah, so child care is really expensive. As of a 2008 study [1] it was the largest expense on average for middle class families,

Comments

[rufinia]

Holy SHIT. That SUCKS.

[laurion]

Yeah. It's part of the reason why Amanda's post ended with 'when it rains it pours'. And there's more, but it is her turn to post...

[meranthi]

FUCK! Seriously, child care is a major racket where the teachers still get paid crap and you have to choose between working and getting almost nothing take home, or staying home all day.

[laurion]

Indeed. As we get ever closer to that break-even point, recent data has shown a return to single-working-parent households. Not because one income can support a family as it did before, but because if you're going to be spending all of one person's post-tax income on full time child care, might as well not have the money and have more time at home with the child(ren). We're -fiscally- unable to have a second at this time, and may have to wait until J is in public school.

[meranthi]

Yeah, we had the same problem. Boston Public offers 4 y.o. kindergarten which was a godsend. We couldn't afford for T to stay home, but we could only barely afford having him work. Ugh.

[laurion]

Erm... not really an option. We're one of the few families that has the full day option. Most of the parents pick up their kids at lunchtime, or midafternoon. Some of them have the nannies they've hired to pick the kids up.

There are some pretty tight restrictions and regulations on child care in the state (one of the reasons why it is so expensive in general here), so the center based care is actually the cheaper route in almost every case. Paying the salary and benefits and taxes of a fully licensed caregiver, even shared, is more expensive, unless you bend/break the laws by going with an unlicensed provider or exceeding the caregiver to child ratios.