The most frustrating websites on Earth are those of day cares. They give you tons of vague verbiage about everything under the sun but there is never any information on pricing. I mean, there is always a separate page titled “Pricing” but there isn’t a number in sight on it. I’ve killed over an hour trying to find out with absolutely no results.
Are they concealing the prices because the costs are that bad?
If anybody is at least somewhat aware of day care costs in the US, please feel free to share. But here is a fair warning: if anybody tries to start on the whole “why even have children if you don’t want to stay home with them” spiel, I’ll place such folks on the blacklist immediately and they will be off this blog for good. This is not an opportunity to share pro-housewifery propaganda. This is a simple request for information.
Yes, this stresses me out. And no, I’m not pregnant. I’m just trying to get informed.
Clarissa's Blog 
anywhere from 150-250/week for out of home daycare center
LikeLike
Is that for an entire work week? It sounds like it’s a lot less expensive than a nanny, right? Of course, when they are over 1 year, then obviously daycare is best. But what’s better for infants? Day care or nanny?
I’m very grateful for the feedback!
LikeLike
I have had children in daycare in two different states in the US, one in the southwest and the other one is my current state where it suffices to say it’s much colder and the schools are much better.
Daycare pricing varies with the child’s age, because the staff to children ratio varies with age. At the daycare center where my younger two kids currently go, for infants (1:4 teacher to children ratio) it’s about $1,500 a month, for my preschooler (1:10 ratio) it’s about $1,200. This is a good and a bit pricier center, where all kids go full time (no part time or drop in).
For comparison, with my first kid when he was little and we were in the southwest, we also went to what was considered a good quality center. The prices were nearly half of what I pay now, but the quality was considerably lower. In my opinion, daycare quality is commensurate with the quality of public school education. My current state is pretty high in the public school education quality. My southwest former home is quite low.
LikeLike
$1,500 a month sounds very scary.
If there ever was a feminist cause, this is it.
Thank you for the detailed information, GMP! Does your university have a day care?
LikeLike
Yes, there is a university childcare center, but it costs about the same as the privately owned ones and it has a ridiculously long waiting list. People actually put themselves on the list before they even get pregnant! That’s a whole new level of insanity…
If you can find a good, reliable nanny for the 1st year, that’s great. I know people who have found reliable, long-term nannies who have been a true blessing. However, I don’t trust myself to not hire an axe murderer, so going with the center is my preferred option. The downside of a center is that kids get sick a lot their first year in a childcare setting, no matter when they start. The upside is that the center takes care of staff illnesses and other absences, whereas if the nanny is sick or someone in her family is, you may have no backup.
I also found that having daycare close to home as opposed to close to work is a good thing: I have time to unwind while driving to pick up kids, plus for tired and hungry kids it’s good when it’s only 5 min before we reach home in the evening.
LikeLike
I have a day care right in front of where I live. But it looks and sounds very expensive.
“People actually put themselves on the list before they even get pregnant! That’s a whole new level of insanity…”
-Yes, a colleague recently got pregnant and told me that the very first call she made after finding out was not even to her family but to the day care center to put herself on the list as soon as possible.
LikeLike
We have a woman who does child care out of her home, with whom my kids stayed when they were very small, and yes, $1200/month would have been about right for one kid 5 days a week at 9-10 hours/day, just out of her home, this wasn’t even a brick-and-mortar center. And she was INCREDIBLY cheap compared to everything else we were able to find.
Right about now, with my kids already in school, we pay over $500/month for the two of them together to just go an hour before school and stay 2 hours after.
Amen, yes, HUGE feminist cause. But most of the people aware of it are working so damn hard to pay for child care that they are to exhausted and have no time to fight it.
LikeLike
In Fairfax Virginia, infant care in a day care setting costs between $279 and $309 per week. Fairfax is the second highest per capita income county in the United States, so the price most likely will be lower elsewhere. I suspect that $250 per week ($1,000 per month) is the likely cost for quality infant care in the United States. That is tough on a single parent but manageable for a two parent family where both adults are fully-employed professionals.
LikeLike
Thank you, Charles Rowley. This really helps. What causes me anxiety is not knowing. When I have some numbers to operate with, I can plan and feel a lot calmer and in control.
LikeLike
Good grief, I’m a long way from having kids, but this puts a whole new spin on it. I’d have to be earning a LOT more before I could afford $1,500/month in day care.
Of course, I’ve estimated it’ll cost me $400/month to have someone let my dog out to pee each day (in cheap Atlanta), so in that light 3x the amount to take care of a kid for the whole day seems pretty reasonable.
LikeLike
I’m so scared of these numbers that I just downloaded software to track my finances. It isn’t like there is all that much to track, to be honest, but maybe that will make me feel more relaxed.
LikeLike
“…I’d have to be earning a LOT more before I could afford $1,500/month in day care….”
Which is why so many people quit their day jobs to become stay at home parents rather than continuing to work and paying for day care, or change to flex-hour part time work if they can. Suddenly the bottom line benefit from whatever your job is decreases ridiculously.
LikeLike
“Which is why so many people quit their day jobs to become stay at home parents rather than continuing to work and paying for day care, or change to flex-hour part time work if they can. Suddenly the bottom line benefit from whatever your job is decreases ridiculously.”
-This is as reasonable as amputating your leg as a way to lose weight. No matter how much day care costs, the benefits to a child of a parent with a life of their own are untold. Housewives suffer from depression more than any other group in the population, including teenagers and the unemployed. And these statistics are the same from all countries where research was conducted, irrespective of their standard of living. Children of housewives suffer from anxieties, low self-esteem, body image problems a lot more than children of parents who have lives beyond cleaning and watching soap operas. (There are mountains of studies on this and many of them have been quoted on this blog).
The best thing anybody can give a child is fulfilled parents who have lives, plans, career goals, a social position, and an area outside of the lives of the children where they can channel their energies.
I really don’t want this to become a thread on housewifery which I see as a huge social evil and something that invariably inflicts great harm on children, irrespective of their age. Let’s respect each other’s traumas, people! This is mine and it will rankle forever.
LikeLike
My friends in Montana used a daycare which had a sliding pay scale, so depending on what the combined income of the parents was, they’d get various rates, I think the average for a dual income average-salaried household was about $150 a week.
But it was still cost-prohibitive, so my friends ended up often using relatives and friends as babysitters throughout the week, sometimes myself included.
LikeLike
Although: you’re living on one income now and it isn’t actually required to spend hundreds on baby stuff. When N gets a job, pay for day care with that money. Day care won’t last forever and you’ll both eventually get raises so having 2 people working is the best deal in the end. After daycare time is over, that money can go to other things including savings for other things the child will need.
LikeLike
You are right. Thank you for the encouragement!! I will “inherit” a lot of baby stuff from my sister, too.
LikeLike
So you’re seriously thinking of giving motherhood a shot?
If so, I’m really glad you are doing your research. If only most women out there were as organized we would not have so many unwanted pregnancies, abortions, and overpopulation.
LikeLike
Yes, I’m seriously thinking. 🙂 It is a very important decision. I understand that you can’t plan for every contingency and there will be many surprises anyways, but at least some aspects should be addressed reasonably.
LikeLike
For nanny vs. daycare, consider the level of attention your child’s needs. Up until about 12- 18 months, you’d be paying your nanny to spend the day doing her own errands, reading a book, and the like. Babies need constant care, but constant undivided attention isn’t even healthy (the child needs quiet time, the opportunity to begin discovering the self as an individual, and so on). So group care may be very appropriate then.
But once a child starts interacting more with the care provider, there are opportunities to learn via one-on-one interaction that are very valuable. Many people also like nannies who can support efforts to raise bilingual or multilingual children. Nannies also, by serving only one child or family, are able to develop bonds usually deeper than those between a child and daycare provider. My boyfriend’s family still considers his childhood nanny – now elderly and very frail – to be immediate family. Finally, nannies are probably better deals when you have two or more children – another child doesn’t double the rate, only increases it somewhat.
Ultimately though, kids who stay at home with parents and kids who go to daycare usually turn out about the same, so I suppose that kids who have nannies don’t have an objective advantage over those in daycare. The subjective thing though, that’s for you to decide.
LikeLike
Cool, best of luck. Would be interesting to know the reasons why you have changed your mind on this subject.
LikeLike
I never had made a deicison either way so there was no mind to change. It simply never made sense before because of my relational, professional, financial and geographic instability. And now all that has changed.
LikeLike
From many years of experience in academia, both in the United Kingdom and in the United States, my adivice to any female academic is this: unless age is a critical factor, postpone pregnancy until you have attained tenure. However much support, at home or outside, a young mother receives, her research will be severely impeded during the first three years from conception. The competition for tenure is severe – rightly so because it offers a strong form of job protection for life. It is unwise to jeopardize that prize in any way, unless absolutely necessary. Male academics are not impeded in a similar way – which incidentally indicates where the real burden of child-rearing almost always falls.
LikeLike
charlesrowley, I know you mean well and this type of advice is often given to women academics, but I have to strongly disagree.This type of advice treats pregnancy and childbirth as horrible diseases that take years to recover from. That’s not true — with a supportive partner and a good childcare system, a female academic who has a healthy baby can go back to being productive shortly after birth.
I think it’s irresponsible to advocate that women wait till they have all their professional ducks in a row — women’s fertility drops in late thirties, and in their forties only a small percentage of women are able to have children. I know too many female academics who waited too long to have children because of their careers, and ended up having none, or having only one due to secondary infertility even though they wanted more, or battling infertility and having to use (pretty expensive) assisted reproductive techniques to finally have a child. I cannot endorse “wait till tenure” policy for all, because some women will get tenure at 32 and some at 42 and that’s a world of difference.
Having kids is a personal decision. My recommendation is that if you have someone with whom you want to share your life and start a family, it’s probably a good idea to have kids sooner rather than later. Financially and career-wise you may be less secure when you are younger, but everything else is so much easier. I had one child in grad school (at 26), one midway through the tenure track (at 33), and one recently, after tenure (at 38). Even if we forget fertility for a second, I can tell you from experience that having children is WAAAAY easier when you are young — pregnancy, childbirth, recovery, enduring sleepless nights, everything. Regaining your mental faculties too.
When I interviewed for a TT position I already had a 3-year-old and I would openly discussed it whenever it came up. Several people told me that my CV looked all the more impressive because it was all achieved while raising a kid.
Having a job you love is a blessing, but so are the kids for the people who desire to have them. I don’t see why a healthy person can’t have both or should be made afraid of trying to have both.
LikeLike
To be honest, I don’t worry about my chances for tenure being hurt if I decide to have a child before I get it. My department and my university at large are VERY supportive of my goal to get tenure. I’m doing very well in my progress to tenure right now, the environment at my institution is very nurturing towards young academics. People tell stories about oppressive universities where young scholars get castigated for things like childbirth but I’m simply not seeing this at my school.
To give an example, a week after a colleague gave birth, the decision was announced to transform her adjuncting position into a tenure line.
LikeLike
GMP:
All your points are well taken. Undoubtedly, for any woman already in her mid-30s a decision to postpone pregnancy is fraught with risk. I must admit that I had in mind younger women, in their late 20s or early 30s, who are midway on the route to tenure. A postponement of say 2 or 3 years there is much less risky. The benefits for the tenure track race I still maintain are substantial.
Of course, I do not speak from personal experience. But two of my very best doctoral students who commenced tenure-track positions at 30 years of age, became pregnant in the first two years of tenure-track and failed to secure tenure. In both cases, they had very supportive husbands, but became distracted by child-rearing and fell back irreparably in terms of publications. In both cases those young women had already published two papers each in refereed journals before they graduated under my mentorship. So they had a flying start.
You are absolutely correct for older women. I would still advise caution for younger candidates. Of course, in each case, the individual must decide. Ity is a very personal decision. I am just trying to convey honestly experiences that I have seen over many years in the academy.
LikeLike
As has become evident in the posts, the cost for daycare vary wildly. Here in a small college town, they vary from $600/month to $900/month for infant care.
You can also call a daycare in town and just ask directly.
LikeLike