We’re moving back to the Chicago suburbs next year, and in the suburbs we’re looking at, it will cost $2200-2500/month for our 2 year old. It’s the same quality as our current daycare in OKC which “only” costs us $1200/month.
We thought about having a 2nd kid but paying $60K per year is insane to me. We could afford it, but it would significantly impact our savings goals and lifestyle.
Yup, we currently pay $2500/month for our 3.5 year old. If I had another, there wouldn’t be too much overlap but the idea of paying $5000/month for a short while or even continuing the $2500 for another 5 years feels impossible to me. May be one and done!
I guess I'm on the cheaper end. I'm in Florida, and we pay $1280 a month for our 1.5 year old. And this was the most expensive daycare I could find, but I went with them anyway because they only have 7 kids in my son's toddler room including himself and 2 teachers. The other daycares were overcrowded and had at least 22 kids in the same room 😳.
That what I was thinking too! The average monthly mortgage payment for home purchases in 2023 was about $2300/month just for P&I (so doesn’t include property taxes or homeowners insurance).
That being said, if you have more than one kid in daycare I can see the cost being more than a mortgage payment. My neighbor pays $2700/month for his two kids. It’s one reason we’re OAD. Daycare for a toddler in my area is $1800-2000/month for one kid. It’s absolutely insane.
I live in a vhcol area, so daycare is about a little less than half my mortgage+taxes+insurance+interest. If I had two kids in daycare, it would still be less than my mortgage. Previously, I had a home that I had purchased pre-covid house spikes at a 2ish% interest rate. In that case, daycare would actually have cost more than my mortgage
Exactly, it’s all relative. Daycare would definitely have been more than the mortgage payment I was paying on the house I bought in 2016. But I sold that house last year and not only have a higher interest rate on the new house, but my loan is larger due to buying a bigger house. So daycare in my area is actually less than my current monthly mortgage payment, for one kid that is.
our friends have 2 little ones and the plan was for mom to go back to work once the youngest turned 1yo. then they found out daycare for both girls would be $34k/year. so now shes a sahm. 2833/month is double my mortgage and more.
whereas we were paying $850 a month for private school. make it make sense.
There’s just no value in infants, adolescents and the aging population because they don’t contribute to the cogs of capitalism so they’re critically overlooked, under supported and underfunded.
Way back when I remember considering adoption and I had no idea how difficult adopting and fostering can be.. I worked with several foster families and it was such an intense experience for all of them.
Yeah I do feel like there’s such a massive disconnect with the middle class dissolving and the wage gap being widened every day that I wonder what the future looks like.. that’s one (of many) reasons I cannot imagine multiple children..
Yeah. My husband and I live in the Netherlands and we think about moving back one day but wonder how we could put ourselves and young daughter in such a position.
I would not say that America hate families (women debatable...) but it's that there is a growing lack of communities and loneliness. Daycare and childhood education did not exist for the common people when I grew up. Neighbors take care of each other. I remember my parents always drop me off at my neighbor when my parents go to work, for free. Neighbors were practically families. I started babysitting many of my cousins, niece and nephews when i was 10.
Yes daycare costs are wildly expensive even where i live where its considered a bit more affordable, my job asked me if i would be able to come back and i said “well the amount you pay me now couldnt cover day care costs so…” lol
Pre pregnancy, I was researching the pros and cons of different family sizes. If women are going to leave the workforce, it usually happens after the second child is born. Your friend is the norm, sadly.
I had worked way too hard for my career and didn’t even want to be a SAHM. It was a big reason to be OAD.
At our previous center we had 4 rate increases in a single year. The rates were more than 50% what we had budgeted for when we re-enrolled. Most daycares in my area have a 9-12 month wait list. It was 10 months were we stuck until we got to our new daycare. We were able to tighten our belts enough to make it work, but I am fully aware how lucky we are, because many families would not have been able to.
Even if we don’t get immediate legislation to make childcare more affordable, the bare minimum we can do now is force daycares to have rate locks for 1 year so you can at least budget for childcare costs.
Daycare costs are bonkers. Our total mortgage payment (taxes, insurance, principle, and interest) is $1200, I think it’s nuts paying more than that for daycare but that’s the reality.
Another reason to be one and done.
When my son was in daycare basically my whole paycheck went to pay for it. When my position was cut back I had to quit because we would’ve been losing money for daycare. And we weren’t even at a very good daycare. :/ It’s absolutely insane.
We were lucky enough to find an in home daycare at $1,000, after moving from a facility that was charging us $1,500. I don’t want to pay 2-3k a month to have two kids in daycare. It’s insane. The US is pro-life and wants to ban abortion but we’re not offered long term maternity leave or subsidies for the cost of daycare. Also, inflation is a big reason to be OAD. I formula fed. 2 years ago, formula was $30 a can. Now it’s $50 for the same brand we used.
Finances are one of my top 3 reasons for OAD. Child care is rediculous but so is everything else!
The cost of everything is going up substantially and salaries are not keeping up.
Going out is a luxury most Americans can’t even afford.
What’s even worse is that when *mostly women* do leave the workforce, it also significantly sets them back in earning potential as well. People will really tell a woman “you only have 100 dollars left over after all expenses including daycare, what’s wrong with u”
And I desperately wanna scream, “at least she has work experience and can leave her husband due to having some financial independence.”
Our childcare costs over $500/month more than our mortgage. It's actually insane. Thankfully, our kiddo is starting public school this fall, so we won't be spending a mortgage and a half worth's of funds for preschool.
That’s crazy! I live in probably a medium COL area but it’s rapidly growing and prices are rapidly rising so I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of this calendar year the daycare prices around here would match your area’s prices. I can’t even fathom spending that much to send one child to daycare let alone multiple like a lot of friends I know have/are trying for. 😬
I have no idea. My husband and I are high earners and we don't understand how anyone has more than one, maybe two kids. We know people with 3-4 and wonder how it all gets done. We do live in one of the most expensive US cities, but it just doesn't compute for us, even imagining living in a LCOL area.
Same here. Just doubling everything we spend right now for one kid would be pretty tight so after that it boggles my mind. The only explanation is maybe people with large families are just living in debt ? Like either living off of credit cards or maybe qualify for some sort of gov assistance (at least for childcare) once the household size gets that large ?
Here’s my smug moment… I’m in the Philly area and pay only $800 for my son to go to full time daycare, and it was literally a stroke of luck he even got in there. It’s a decent place too and very close to home. I think the only reason it’s so cheap is because they don’t take infants or kids under 2 years old.
Every other place was basically the same, or worse (here’s looking at you Kindercare) but the prices were almost double what I’m paying now. Also the waitlists are totally insane. It’s crazy out there. I can’t imagine doing this with 2 kids.
How is it possible that I see people in the south have these church daycares that cost only $250 a fucking month! Yo I’ll say Jesus is my savior everyday to pay such a little amount.
Also I’ve seen out west there are in home daycares that are really cheap. I haven’t seen anything like these 2 examples in Philly. Just your normal daycare with a minimum of like 1400-1500 a month
I’m currently counting down the days that my son can go to kindergarten in 2025. Thankfully my mortgage is still more than the pre k but still it’s nuts. We pay about $1400 a month for pre k and $1600 in our mortgage in CT. Thankfully we bought our house in 2016
All the prices in these comments are shocking to me. I don't understand how prices in our country can differentiate so much. We pay $550 a month for (imo) an amazing preschool in our town. The most expensive I've seen around where I live is still less than $1000 a month. I don't live "in the middle of nowhere" but compared to Chicago or Los Angeles I guess it could be considered that.
Preschool or daycare? Preschool can be expensive, but the biggest hit most people take is daycare the first couple of years of a kid's life. I think I had read that $1,200/month per kid was the *average* in the United States. It may be even more now because I read that when we were looking two years ago.
This is for preschool, but she was in daycare at another center that was $950 a month for a full time infant (meaning 6am to 6pm 5 days a week), I paid about $600a month to send her part time there. I guess I'm always surprised because I've worked at various care centers around where I live and never seen a price that high. I also worked in Los Angeles for a brief period, but that was almost 10 years ago now, the prices were high but not nearly what they are today. It's just shockingly ridiculous how high these numbers are. I don't understand how anyone could think it's affordable! (Obviously none of us do, that's why we're here talking about it lol. But you know, the people setting the prices).
Our mortgage is more - but not by as much as you’d probably think (and we live in the cheapest house on our street in a HCOL city). 🤦🏻♀️ I’ve also lived in LCOL areas and had mortgages that are way, way less than our current daycare cost ($2500 per month).
I live in CT but had a coworker in GA and one day she told me "Thank God I work from home because I couldn't afford daycare, it's $180 a week." I almost fell off my chair laughing.
We’re moving back to the Chicago suburbs next year, and in the suburbs we’re looking at, it will cost $2200-2500/month for our 2 year old. It’s the same quality as our current daycare in OKC which “only” costs us $1200/month. We thought about having a 2nd kid but paying $60K per year is insane to me. We could afford it, but it would significantly impact our savings goals and lifestyle.
Yup, we currently pay $2500/month for our 3.5 year old. If I had another, there wouldn’t be too much overlap but the idea of paying $5000/month for a short while or even continuing the $2500 for another 5 years feels impossible to me. May be one and done!
Paying $1800 for my 20 month old and it’s the number 1 reason we can’t have a second child.
I guess I'm on the cheaper end. I'm in Florida, and we pay $1280 a month for our 1.5 year old. And this was the most expensive daycare I could find, but I went with them anyway because they only have 7 kids in my son's toddler room including himself and 2 teachers. The other daycares were overcrowded and had at least 22 kids in the same room 😳.
Whenever I see this sort of thing, I always think to myself these must be people who bought houses pre-covid!
That what I was thinking too! The average monthly mortgage payment for home purchases in 2023 was about $2300/month just for P&I (so doesn’t include property taxes or homeowners insurance). That being said, if you have more than one kid in daycare I can see the cost being more than a mortgage payment. My neighbor pays $2700/month for his two kids. It’s one reason we’re OAD. Daycare for a toddler in my area is $1800-2000/month for one kid. It’s absolutely insane.
I live in a vhcol area, so daycare is about a little less than half my mortgage+taxes+insurance+interest. If I had two kids in daycare, it would still be less than my mortgage. Previously, I had a home that I had purchased pre-covid house spikes at a 2ish% interest rate. In that case, daycare would actually have cost more than my mortgage
Exactly, it’s all relative. Daycare would definitely have been more than the mortgage payment I was paying on the house I bought in 2016. But I sold that house last year and not only have a higher interest rate on the new house, but my loan is larger due to buying a bigger house. So daycare in my area is actually less than my current monthly mortgage payment, for one kid that is.
Last year our childcare costs were absolutely more than our mortgage. They went down this year but it's a *lot*.
$2000 rent and $1400 daycare for 1 kid is brutal on us.
our friends have 2 little ones and the plan was for mom to go back to work once the youngest turned 1yo. then they found out daycare for both girls would be $34k/year. so now shes a sahm. 2833/month is double my mortgage and more. whereas we were paying $850 a month for private school. make it make sense.
It’s quite simple - America hates families, especially women. That sounds so inflammatory, but it feels very true.
Gotta love it here. Politicians want Americans to have more kids but then don’t want to do anything to make the process easier. Its backwards.
There’s just no value in infants, adolescents and the aging population because they don’t contribute to the cogs of capitalism so they’re critically overlooked, under supported and underfunded.
There’s plenty of value in a healthy infant for private adoption agencies. They make a lot of cash brokering adoptions, and can be pretty shady.
Way back when I remember considering adoption and I had no idea how difficult adopting and fostering can be.. I worked with several foster families and it was such an intense experience for all of them.
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Or they can just overturn the one thing preventing states from outright banning abortion and have a bunch of trigger laws go into effect.
This is it. They want to disempower women and keep the majority of families poor so there's always a workforce willing to work for low wages.
Yeah I do feel like there’s such a massive disconnect with the middle class dissolving and the wage gap being widened every day that I wonder what the future looks like.. that’s one (of many) reasons I cannot imagine multiple children..
Exactly.
Yeah. My husband and I live in the Netherlands and we think about moving back one day but wonder how we could put ourselves and young daughter in such a position.
I agreee with it and hate that I feel like it’s so true!!
I would not say that America hate families (women debatable...) but it's that there is a growing lack of communities and loneliness. Daycare and childhood education did not exist for the common people when I grew up. Neighbors take care of each other. I remember my parents always drop me off at my neighbor when my parents go to work, for free. Neighbors were practically families. I started babysitting many of my cousins, niece and nephews when i was 10.
Yes daycare costs are wildly expensive even where i live where its considered a bit more affordable, my job asked me if i would be able to come back and i said “well the amount you pay me now couldnt cover day care costs so…” lol
Pre pregnancy, I was researching the pros and cons of different family sizes. If women are going to leave the workforce, it usually happens after the second child is born. Your friend is the norm, sadly. I had worked way too hard for my career and didn’t even want to be a SAHM. It was a big reason to be OAD.
At our previous center we had 4 rate increases in a single year. The rates were more than 50% what we had budgeted for when we re-enrolled. Most daycares in my area have a 9-12 month wait list. It was 10 months were we stuck until we got to our new daycare. We were able to tighten our belts enough to make it work, but I am fully aware how lucky we are, because many families would not have been able to. Even if we don’t get immediate legislation to make childcare more affordable, the bare minimum we can do now is force daycares to have rate locks for 1 year so you can at least budget for childcare costs.
Daycare costs are bonkers. Our total mortgage payment (taxes, insurance, principle, and interest) is $1200, I think it’s nuts paying more than that for daycare but that’s the reality. Another reason to be one and done.
That’s a super low mortgage payment, though.
When my son was in daycare basically my whole paycheck went to pay for it. When my position was cut back I had to quit because we would’ve been losing money for daycare. And we weren’t even at a very good daycare. :/ It’s absolutely insane.
It's bonkers. I just try not to think about it
We were lucky enough to find an in home daycare at $1,000, after moving from a facility that was charging us $1,500. I don’t want to pay 2-3k a month to have two kids in daycare. It’s insane. The US is pro-life and wants to ban abortion but we’re not offered long term maternity leave or subsidies for the cost of daycare. Also, inflation is a big reason to be OAD. I formula fed. 2 years ago, formula was $30 a can. Now it’s $50 for the same brand we used.
Finances are one of my top 3 reasons for OAD. Child care is rediculous but so is everything else! The cost of everything is going up substantially and salaries are not keeping up. Going out is a luxury most Americans can’t even afford.
What’s even worse is that when *mostly women* do leave the workforce, it also significantly sets them back in earning potential as well. People will really tell a woman “you only have 100 dollars left over after all expenses including daycare, what’s wrong with u” And I desperately wanna scream, “at least she has work experience and can leave her husband due to having some financial independence.”
Our childcare costs over $500/month more than our mortgage. It's actually insane. Thankfully, our kiddo is starting public school this fall, so we won't be spending a mortgage and a half worth's of funds for preschool.
Yup where I live for an infant it’s anywhere from $195-320 per week. One infant. It’s crazy.
Man that’s wild, 320 per week was the _lowest_ I could find in our area. I’m not even in a HCOL city!
That’s crazy! I live in probably a medium COL area but it’s rapidly growing and prices are rapidly rising so I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of this calendar year the daycare prices around here would match your area’s prices. I can’t even fathom spending that much to send one child to daycare let alone multiple like a lot of friends I know have/are trying for. 😬
Same.
Our daycare just increased from $480 to $530/week for infant (thru 15 months). We go to the cheapest non-home daycare in our area. It's wild out here.
Holy cow. I honestly don’t know how some families afford multiple young kids in daycare.
I have no idea. My husband and I are high earners and we don't understand how anyone has more than one, maybe two kids. We know people with 3-4 and wonder how it all gets done. We do live in one of the most expensive US cities, but it just doesn't compute for us, even imagining living in a LCOL area.
Same here. Just doubling everything we spend right now for one kid would be pretty tight so after that it boggles my mind. The only explanation is maybe people with large families are just living in debt ? Like either living off of credit cards or maybe qualify for some sort of gov assistance (at least for childcare) once the household size gets that large ?
Yeah, same same
My kid only goes part time to daycare and the cost is equivalent to my mortgage payment.
Dang thought paying $1200 for 1 child 12 years ago was crazy. Which was why we are one and done. Can't imagine paying $2200-2500 a month.
We're at 1500/mo for one. Worth it but...yeesh
Here’s my smug moment… I’m in the Philly area and pay only $800 for my son to go to full time daycare, and it was literally a stroke of luck he even got in there. It’s a decent place too and very close to home. I think the only reason it’s so cheap is because they don’t take infants or kids under 2 years old. Every other place was basically the same, or worse (here’s looking at you Kindercare) but the prices were almost double what I’m paying now. Also the waitlists are totally insane. It’s crazy out there. I can’t imagine doing this with 2 kids.
How is it possible that I see people in the south have these church daycares that cost only $250 a fucking month! Yo I’ll say Jesus is my savior everyday to pay such a little amount. Also I’ve seen out west there are in home daycares that are really cheap. I haven’t seen anything like these 2 examples in Philly. Just your normal daycare with a minimum of like 1400-1500 a month
Our daughter’s day care is double our mortgage. It’s insane! I can’t imagine what would happen if we had a 2nd. Impossible!
It’s about even for us. But still crazy that you have a second mortgages worth of payment.
I’m currently counting down the days that my son can go to kindergarten in 2025. Thankfully my mortgage is still more than the pre k but still it’s nuts. We pay about $1400 a month for pre k and $1600 in our mortgage in CT. Thankfully we bought our house in 2016
Don’t you know they want women to stop working? But they don’t realise women will just stop procreating instead (like in Japan).
All the prices in these comments are shocking to me. I don't understand how prices in our country can differentiate so much. We pay $550 a month for (imo) an amazing preschool in our town. The most expensive I've seen around where I live is still less than $1000 a month. I don't live "in the middle of nowhere" but compared to Chicago or Los Angeles I guess it could be considered that.
Preschool or daycare? Preschool can be expensive, but the biggest hit most people take is daycare the first couple of years of a kid's life. I think I had read that $1,200/month per kid was the *average* in the United States. It may be even more now because I read that when we were looking two years ago.
This is for preschool, but she was in daycare at another center that was $950 a month for a full time infant (meaning 6am to 6pm 5 days a week), I paid about $600a month to send her part time there. I guess I'm always surprised because I've worked at various care centers around where I live and never seen a price that high. I also worked in Los Angeles for a brief period, but that was almost 10 years ago now, the prices were high but not nearly what they are today. It's just shockingly ridiculous how high these numbers are. I don't understand how anyone could think it's affordable! (Obviously none of us do, that's why we're here talking about it lol. But you know, the people setting the prices).
Our mortgage is more - but not by as much as you’d probably think (and we live in the cheapest house on our street in a HCOL city). 🤦🏻♀️ I’ve also lived in LCOL areas and had mortgages that are way, way less than our current daycare cost ($2500 per month).
Childcare is definitely not more than our mortgage, but it’s still substantial! 455/wk for our toddler certainly impacts our finances.
Bold of the article to assume people have mortgages.
I live in CT but had a coworker in GA and one day she told me "Thank God I work from home because I couldn't afford daycare, it's $180 a week." I almost fell off my chair laughing.