My Childcare Cost Rant
We get a lot of questions about childcare costs from clients and, since having a child of my own, I’ve gotten a whole lot more questions, many of which imply that whatever I’ve chosen must be the correct financial choice. Unfortunately, child care, like most financial decisions, isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of deal.
First off, childcare of any kind (even the free kind) is expensive. Here are some averages for Los Angeles:
Full time nanny: $4,300/month
Full time daycare at a center: $2,000/month
Hourly babysitter: $20/hour
Family babysitter: Free? Potentially monetarily free or less expensive, but often comes with other strings attached or emotional complications
Some other places may be less expensive, but it isn’t “cheap” anywhere.
And in some ways maybe that’s okay.
As a parent, making sure that your child is safe and cared for is the most important thing you can do, right? So, paying a fair amount of money for good care makes sense.
Except it doesn’t.
As a society we decided that educating young children (elementary - high school) is important enough that we’d provide this service “free of charge” paid for by property taxes (so not free, but not a direct pay-for-service model). If someone chooses to send their child to a private school they still pay the property taxes that support the public school options in their neighborhood. I have LOTS of feelings on this system and will happily get deep into them in a future newsletter if you request me to, but for now, let’s just leave it there: we’ve decided education is important, so we created a public good to provide it to all children.
Early childcare is a little different in that we aren’t as clearly educating babies and toddlers to become productive members of society. However, we are socializing them and laying the foundation for early elementary education. And, early childcare, like elementary and secondary school later in life, allows for parents to work outside the home. I don’t think working outside the home is inherently good, but the fact that many parents (namely mothers), don’t feel like they have a choice in the matter is inherently bad. This problem is even more clear after a year of disrupted schooling and childcare. Over 2.3 million women have dropped out of the workforce since February 2020 (as of February 2021) and only 57% of women are participating in the workforce -- the lowest number since the 80s. Check out this article for more bleak statistics.
I’m happy that the current administration is moving towards supporting families in more substantial ways, but there is a very long way to go before parents don’t feel punished or pushed into a corner by deciding how or if they’ll pay for childcare. If you’re feeling that way, please know that you are not alone! As described in this article, working families with kiddos under 5 years old, spend an average of about 10% of their income on childcare. That is 40% higher than the US Department of Health and Human Services’ definition of affordability. This problem is huge and one that, in my opinion, has been largely ignored because childcare responsibilities tend to fall on women. If you agree, I highly encourage you to reach out to your elected officials and share your thoughts. It isn’t glamorous, but until the powers that be really see the problem (or rather, hear about the problem), they won’t have the incentive to make any changes.
XOXO
P.S. Because sharing personal money decisions is kind of our thing, I’ll let you in on how we handle childcare in our household. While I’m working our daughter is in daycare at a lovely place in our neighborhood. We love the school and she loves her teachers and little friends. It isn’t cheap and I wish that it was a public good, but it does feel like the right fit for our family.