I have a kid who’s unable to have a child. They would have to find a surrogate and that is so very expensive even in a high income 2 career situation. Besides it’s full of pitfalls.
I think one of the reasons people have one child is maybe the cost but if you are starting your family in your 30’s, many need to use fertility treatments. They are expensive, you have to really think about going through that entire ordeal again. I think it’s easier to be one and done.
Both of my kids own their homes but neither live in nyc or sf.
My nephew is in NJ. Cost of daycare is 2200/child/month. Around Park Slope, it is 2500-3500. D1 has a nanny. She pays 30/hr for 10 hrs/day for 2 kids, even though one of them is in K and the younger one is in ore school few days/week. Assuming 3000/month for daycare, that’s 36000/yr after tax, and with two it would be 72k. Most young people do not have parents or relatives nearby that they could get free babysitting. I hate to say it, but that’s why so many low earners do not work because they can’t afford to. I remember I paid 350-400/week for a nanny when my kids were little. Relatively to my salary, it wasn’t a lot. Everything has gotten so expensive for young people.
I don’t think it’s quite so simple, after controlling for age, workplace participation is higher among families with children than without. When child is age 6+, workplace participation rate among young persons is very high for both genders. ~30% of children live in single parent families, giving the parent little option to not work and depend on partner.
Rather than not working, the more common solution is find less expensive alternatives than spend $30k/year on day care. Getting support from family/relatives is common, which contributes to why many families with kids tend to live nearby relatives. However, there are many other options. For example, when I grew up, the stay at home mom at the house next door to me ran an informal daycare for neighborhood kids. She’d look after other kids in the neighborhood while their parents worked. She was far from the only person on the street who did this. There are also often free or subsidized options, options within work place, options to shift hours or work from home, etc.
The result is that many not high income families have kids. A commonly cited stat is that 45% of young parent households with children qualify as “low income”, with low income typically defined as 200% of federal poverty level (~$50k household income).
After a parent stays home for 6+ years it would be hard for that parent to get a similar job (professional) later.
“For example, when I grew up, the stay at home mom at the house next door to me ran an informal daycare for neighborhood kids”
I am sure she wasn’t doing it for free. It was a way for her to make some extra money while staying home.
“There are also often free or subsidized options, options within work place, options to shift hours or work from home, etc.”
Name those options. When I was raising kids, the biggest barrier for women working was childcare. Now almost 40 years later, things have gotten worse, not better. I have 2 adult daughters. They still have the same concerns.
I didn’t say it was common for a parent to stay home 6+ years. I instead implied that the rate of workface participation was higher among women with children who are age 6+ than among women with children that are age 0-5. Both workface participation rates are high, but one is higher than the other. Among the minority of women who stop working for more than standard leave after their child is born, I expect few do not work continuously for 6+ years.
My point was it was a lower cost option than the referenced ~$30k/year cost for day care. It was affordable to typical families in the neighborhood, which were not high income, even though it wasn’t free.
Among the previously listed possible options, which specific ones would you like me to expand on? Available options depends on many factors including, company, position, state, and financial situation.
I have just seen some research (it’s proprietary so I can’t share the actual doc here) that low and middle income households (on average) spend 8,6% of their household income on childcare, while for high income that drops to 7.3%. I admit to being a bit surprised that the difference isn’t bigger, but I am guessing that the high income households are choosing more expensive options too.
They note that the federal affordability benchmark is 7% of income.
I’m not really surprised. I think lower income families typically have jobs with less traditional schedules ( shifts and such) so are more able to use family help and tag team care with a partner.
D and SIL have high paying jobs ( MBA’s) and pay over 40K / year for 2 children. But that’s a a very high quality daycare with language immersion, music specialists, etc. This is in a large city in the Midwest.
I’d say that my kids are more comfortable than they feel. Childcare and housing take big chunks out of their income. For one of mine she decided on just one child as the daycare costs alone are a big strain on the budget. Plus food and fuel prices as they both have commutes. They are debating whether to do TK next year at the public school for free but that means finding before school and after school care or keeping my grandchild at preschool for another year.for 20,000 a year.
One of my other kids spends 48,000 for two kids in preschool. That goes down once elementary school starts but again they will need after school care.
Other kid has a special needs child who goes to a free preschool but that just goes to noon. They employ a nanny for the afternoons. It’s a big chunk of income.
It’s a privilege to have high quality care and they know that.
One of my kids has a few friends who have spaced their kids further apart to avoid two in daycare at a time.
My spouse and I (professionals with grad degrees but working in public education…so not in the $500k+ bracket ) ended up with only one kid and the primary reasons were:
We could only afford to pay for childcare one at a time (could not afford to pay for two).
If we had to wait for kid #1 to get into public kindergarten, then I would have been several years past the advanced maternal age threshold, and at the point when the risk of complications for the child would be increasing much more rapidly.
We live in a 2-BR place and if the second child ended up being a different sex than the first, then at some point we would need to figure out a 3-BR living situation, and that extra bedroom would be $$$$.
We could save up enough for college that I felt would be the minimum appropriate based on my family background (in-state flagship cost of attendance), but would not have been able to do that for two kids.
That said, there are people who earn(ed) less than my spouse and I who had multiple kids, who had kids at older ages than us, who figured out how to make things work for themselves. But I would hate for them to think that we were selfish and unwilling to sacrifice because we stopped at one. (Though there was an additional reason we stopped that I will share here as an anonymous user, that others may not commonly share to their general acquaintances even if it is a common occurrence, namely pregnancy challenges and postpartum issues that would cause significant hardship on a family with a young child.)
Wow, it’s incredible that daycare is so expensive this is a thing. I’ve heard of a 4-year gap so that people aren’t paying for college for two at the same time, but this is the first I’ve heard of similar financial considerations for daycare.
Yes, because the preschool teacher in the 2’s classroom cannot commute four states and 500 miles each way to work every day. She faces the exact same cost constraints that the parents do- rent, food, etc.
When GD was in infant care, it literally would have been less expensive to send her to the local big 10 university! No kidding.
Mind you, this is not NYC , this is the Midwest.
As for high COL areas, H and I raised our kids in the DC area. Daycare was expensive ( but not as much as it is now). We could have had much lower housing and daycare costs if we would have returned to the rural Midwest towns we were raised in. But we likely would not have found jobs there.
One of the reasons that I moved D24 out of her first daycare is because it did not provide good benefits to the teachers and there was no appreciable discount for their own children to enroll.
I couldn’t stand the idea that some of those daycare providers were having to leave their own children in a lower-quality childcare situation in order to care for my children especially given some shifts at that center meant they had to find wraparound care or complicated child swaps to make the hours work. When you added the terrible health insurance the place offered their teachers, I am glad that I was able to find a better option for my kids. The teachers at the new place seemed happier and less stressed and they could actually afford to enroll their own children in the center, which I think improved my own kids’ general happiness. Luckily, it had a sliding scale for families. Otherwise, it would have been out of my reach. Even still, the daycare bill was a hefty chunk of my income for those years.
Our son was adamant that he would not have children for reasons I’ve posted several times before. Now that he is married and well able to provide, he and his wife have agreed on one, but regardless of their ability to pay, DH and I will not allow them to waste any of their income on childcare. I will move in with them full-time if I have to to make sure they aren’t flushing hard-earned money down the drain for something I can provide at no cost; this is just wise money management. Though I am not a fan of children, I care even less for waste. Thank doG for retirement flexibility.
While expensive, childcare never felt like a waste of money to me —no more of a waste than music lessons, sports equipment, Christmas gifts, boarding school or other things that I purchased for my kids.. It was hard, but it was only for a limited number of years.
@abasket I second the benefits of good childcare. My grands are thriving. They really enjoy the social aspect as well.
@ChoatieMom are you seriously considering this? I took care of GD one day a week her first year, but now only pinch hit if one of the kids is sick, or the daycare is closed. I have my own activities I am involved with. And it sounds as if the cost will not be a hardship for your S and DIL.
) ended up with only one kid and the primary reasons were: