> In-home daycare offers a lower price and some better availability, but are often unlicensed.
This is the problem. You're wanting a first class experience for your kid, and this probably causes you to overlook other viable options that are less expensive.
> In my area, the wait is around 18 months for a slot in a different daycare center.
Wait lists? There's likely service available, you're just setting a quality threshold.
> And of course, switching childcare providers is way harder than switching grocery stores. Your kid has feelings, grows attached to the caregivers, and make friends.
We have de-risked our species so much that we now care about children's daycare preferences.
Some other commenter mentioned spending $200,000 on their five year old kid. This is not typical.
As a species, we used to have multiple kids because we just accepted that some of them would die. We are so far on the other end of the spectrum now that children are being treated as princes and princesses.
Kids can be as expensive as you want them to be. People are buying their dogs and cats ridiculous things like treadmills these days, so of course it figures that some parents must be doing even crazier stuff for their human children.
This is learned consumer behavior.
Children are being over-invested in to a degree that some would-be interested people just aren't even bothering to get started (one of several reasons this is happening). I'm not saying don't love your kids, but it looks like having them has become a perfectionist goal that can't be reached.
Yes. This. People are insane around their kids and the de-risking etc. We've gone with a childminer (in-home childcare, but is govt. registered here in the UK) and local school-attached daycare for two days a week each. Saving us hundreds of £'s over the coprorate daycare we were with otherwise and giving him more! The childminder is a husband and wife duo, they love all their kids so much. It's like dropping him with grandparents and cousins/friends for a couple of days a week. He reaches out to be picked up by them when I drop him in off in the morning (traitor, but I digress...)!
In most other OECD states the actual and risk-factor costs of child and maternal healthcare are a ton lower than ours, too. Mine is a US perspective. Healthcare for kids eats a lot of money, here, and exposes you to a ton of risk of very-high medical spending.
I'm not even a parent and I have to deal with this shit. You can't be around adults with kids in daycare for more than an evening in a ventilated space and not immediately get sick. I kinda doubt it but I sincerely hope other places are better. It's easier to count the days my in-laws aren't sick.
It's probably just the reality of lots of really young germ factories in a confined space together but I count my blessings that my mom was out of work until I was in 3rd-4th grade because I got to avoid daycare.
This is the problem. You're wanting a first class experience for your kid, and this probably causes you to overlook other viable options that are less expensive.
> In my area, the wait is around 18 months for a slot in a different daycare center.
Wait lists? There's likely service available, you're just setting a quality threshold.
> And of course, switching childcare providers is way harder than switching grocery stores. Your kid has feelings, grows attached to the caregivers, and make friends.
We have de-risked our species so much that we now care about children's daycare preferences.
Some other commenter mentioned spending $200,000 on their five year old kid. This is not typical.
As a species, we used to have multiple kids because we just accepted that some of them would die. We are so far on the other end of the spectrum now that children are being treated as princes and princesses.
Kids can be as expensive as you want them to be. People are buying their dogs and cats ridiculous things like treadmills these days, so of course it figures that some parents must be doing even crazier stuff for their human children.
This is learned consumer behavior.
Children are being over-invested in to a degree that some would-be interested people just aren't even bothering to get started (one of several reasons this is happening). I'm not saying don't love your kids, but it looks like having them has become a perfectionist goal that can't be reached.
Accept imperfection and less than perfect.