Hellobee Boards

Totally true on the childcare costs adding up. Most women I know will eventually stay at home (at least until elementary school years) once they have 2 LOs - even the higher-earning ones! If your pay is just average, it's almost even to just stay home.

Childcare costs for one won't be more then my paycheck (I make about 40% of the household income), so I will be going back to work for sure.

It's sad but it plays a huge factor in considering One and Done in our family. I don't think we could afford childcare for 2. Maybe when our first is in Kindegarten would we add to our brood but even then, it would greatly impact our lifestyle (even more then children already do!)

Good article. Childcare costs and really just all the expenses that comes with kids is why I just want one.

So the answer to her question in the third-to-last paragraph is: Because it is too expensive. These articles always look wistfully at Norway and France and ponder the eternal question of why the US is so backwards in comparison. Another paragraph is merited, one that notes that both of those countries have the highest rates of taxation as a percent of GDP in the world. The lack of government-run creches here isn't because we have too many nuclear aircraft carriers--it's that we don't want to pay taxes at a rate of +50% of income. And it doesn't work to just raise taxes on the 'rich'. Everyone has to pay a lot more to implement a policy like this.

It is so true. You pay as much for the first 4 years as you do for the 4 years of college. Doing IVF there is a chance of multiples. We are going to do 2 embryos put back and so twins are possible and triplets are a remote possibility. 2 kids we can afford (only 1 year of overlap), 3 we could make work. 4 kids and there is almost no way. And no way they will get the same as the first child. Our first son is going to Montessori preschool but if we have multiples, the multiples would have to go to the low cost preschool/daycare (about $300 cheaper than montessori).

But even in elementary school, there is after school care (significantly cheaper but still a cost). Schools should go from 8:00 am - 5:00 pm add back recess, art, music, sports (why can't the leagues go to the schools and use their facilities). Start school at a lot younger (seriously, the increase in taxes can't be $12,000 the amount I pay for child care). Pay the people that care for and teach our children more and better.

@shopaholic: Or you don't live close to them. My parents are 9 and 6 hours away.

Can I be honest here, I think that affordable childcare is the elephant in the room. We need it for working mothers to get back to work, extended maternity leaves are not the answer in our society.

Just curious, how do you guys see this as tied to the minimum wage? Do you think increasing that would help with this issue?

@T.H.O.U.: I do not. (But you'd expect me to say that.... ) Four percent of workers age 25 and over who are paid by the hour are making minimum wage or less: http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2010.htm. Raising the minimum wage might help some very young workers (ages 16-25), because they make up over half of those who make MW, but it would be unlikely to solve the problem here, which is whether people have more than 1 child. The mean age of first birth for American women is 25.4. So, women aren't making the decision as to whether to have a second child when they're making MW (mostly), they're making it when they're older and not making MW anymore.

@lizzywiz: I don't disagree with you on the point about wages. Here's something I found (I'm assuming this reporter has his stats right...no time to check BLS now!):

"The good news in all this: wages overall are up since the recession’s start. The bad news: They’re down from the end of 2008, broadly flat over the past decade, and on an inflation-adjusted basis, wages peaked in 1973, fully 40 years ago. Apart from brief lapses, like in the late 1990s, wages have been falling for a generation."

Here: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/04/16/the-best-indicator-of-u-s-health-is-wage-growth-or-lack-thereof/

But I don't think adding government services fixes that problem. Maybe we'll add some preschool jobs and some spots for lawyerly types in D.C. if the President's proposal becomes law (there will need to at least be a new wing of HHS for this, if not a new agency...), but that will all come with a massive tax increase. It has to--we're running a deficit as it is. If you get government-run daycare, but have your take-home pay decimated by taxes, are you better off? Would you prefer to have to scrimp to shell out for daycare for 5 years or pay higher taxes for your entire working life? (Rhetorical questions, but important ones. )

@lizzywiz: I don't know that I think that having a family should be subsidized BUT I do think that education should be. Our society has changed, we aren't farmers we don't need summer off so our kids can pull in the harvest but the school system hasn't changed with it. It is known that many kids now aren't going home to parent but to some sort of child care. So why isn't school longer allowing us to return some of the things that we aren't doing because of various laws (NCLB) that have come about. School from 8 -5 makes sense because we can return recess and we reduce some of the hassle for working parents.

A kindergartener now needs to know all of the letters in the alphabet (by sight) and numbers to 20 in the first 3 weeks of kindergarten. If that is what is required than they need to have school before kindergarten. This isn't childcare, this is education. We also pay our teacher a terrible wage.

@brownie: I agree with everything you wrote.