I often hear from moms who decided not to return to work because of the high cost of childcare. “Daycare would eat up a lot of my paycheck,” they say.
Well, that’s a lame excuse for not working if indeed you want to work, and it could spell doom for your financial health in the long run.
I wrote a column on this very topic for MSNBC.com this week.
Although women now constitute virtually half of the work force, many still see child-care expenses as coming out of their paycheck — not the household’s overall budget.
There seems to be more equity when it comes to who’s bringing home the bacon, but for some reason, child-care expenses are seen as coming out of a mom’s ka-ching.
This perception often creates undo burdens on working moms and can even keep some women out of the work force, at a time when many feel compelled to return because of the recession, experts say.
As you can imagine I got plenty of emails, mainly taking issue with the premise of the piece.
Except for one email from Amy who offered her story as a cautionary tale for any woman who bags out of working because daycare is just too expensive:
Just over a year ago (right before the financial meltdown), I quit working full-time and took a part-time job (leaving my son at his daycare a few days a week). The goal was to bring some much-needed sanity to the household and spend more time as a family. I had many women who looked askance at this, saying “you should just quit entirely, you’re barely going to make enough money to cover his daycare.” My husband and I considered that option, but in the back of my head, I really wanted to make sure I could smoothly transition back into a full-time job if I needed to. My husband’s company was in healthcare (a pretty stable industry) and his job seemed secure, but I just had that nagging feeling of - don’t walk away from your career. I had been working for 10 years and just didn’t feel good about completely giving up something I had worked hard to build for myself, that I might regret not having to fall back on if something happened.
Well, I am glad I didn’t. Sept. 30 my husband was laid off from his job. He’d been there four years and was given 30 minutes to clean out his desk, it was over. My $600/week part-time income doesn’t go far but with his severance and unemployment, it will definitely help us cover bills until he can find something else. I have started applying for full-time jobs and it is much, much easier to explain that I’ve been part-time - maintaining my contacts and my skills - than that I left the workforce and haven’t handled anything bigger than a playgroup meeting in over a year. I know some women in that situation and they are having a tough time even getting called back about their resumes.
Indeed, it’s harder to return to work after an extended period of time off. And there are financial implications beyond this recession for women.
* “A career is an investment you make in yourself, and it pays increasing dividends as time goes on, whereas child care is very costly when your children are young, but becomes progressively less expensive as they get older,” said Leslie Bennetts, author of “The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up To Much?”
* Women also need to consider the long-term impact on future Social Security payments, their 401k and the potential loss of earning power for being out of the workplace for prolonged periods, said Amanda Steinberg, founder of personal finance newsletter for women DailyWorth.com.
There are many things to think about beyond the near term pain of doling out thousands of dollars for daycare. And we have to change our mindset — daycare is not just a mom’s burden, it’s the burden of the entire family. A burden that will pay off in the long run for all concerned.
At least that’s how Amy sees it:
“I really think that my generation of young mothers got sold a bill of goods by the many, many voices that tried to convince us we should stay home, and that we were not good mothers if we didn’t. I was hammered with messages when I was pregnant and when my son was a baby about “I can’t believe you put him in daycare every day,” “how can you leave your baby,” etc.
“The pressure to quit and stay home was unbelievable. The underlying message was that our husbands would support us, that we really didn’t need two incomes, and so I should be a good mother and quit working.
“Well, I am damn glad I didn’t because now I can go out and get a full-time job to support our family if my husband cannot. There are so many things that can happen - marriages can end, husbands can die, people can get very sick, layoffs, etc. It is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS better for a woman to be able to make a living that can support her family if need be.”
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:34 am
Eve, your advice makes sense for women who are advanced in their careers, or at least carrying degrees or in positions that pull down a good wage. Given that you cover the labor force, however, you must realize that the vast majority of women in the workplace are not in such positions. The most common positions for women in the workplace are still jobs that pay much less, and that makes the decision about whether or not to pay for daycare much clearer.
As an example, my sister-in-law has two children, and she has retail management experience. Her store was closed about 18 months ago, and she’s been actively seeking work ever since. The only posisitions she’s found have been positions in retail, but not in retail management. The job she just accepted pays just under $10 per hour (she lives in a bedroom community outside of a major metropolitan area), whereas she had been on a salary plus commission structure before. When she ran the numbers–calculating her gross, then accounting for Social Security, Medicare, Federal, and State taxes, she discovered that, after paying for child care, she would be taking home only about $1.50 per hour. We reviewed her numbers. There was no decision to make–she could not afford to work.
When my wife and I went through a rough stretch (before we had 10 children), we went throught the same calculations. My wife had a two-year degree, and a significant amount of restaurant experience, but she could not find a job that paid well enough to pay for childcare and to bring home needed income. In that situation, I did not have a job, so I dropped out of school and stayed home with the kids. Had I not been available, she literally would have been working just to pay the rent (if we would have had even that much available each month)–there would have been no money for food, utilities, other necesseties, medical care, or recreation.
In getting to know our peers over the years, it has become clear that the two-income family is, for many, more about a lifestyle choice than about necessity. We chose a single-breadwinner structure, but have been flexible enough so that we’ve both worked (on different shifts) in times of severe need. Many of our peers began with a two-earner structure, so all of their spending habit are built on having two incomes. As they’ve hit tough times (and I’m not just talking about this recession), they’ve had more serious problems with debts and delinquencies, because they always used both incomes for daily living. One couple we had the privilege to know, however, decided to live on one income. All income from the second earner in the household was either saved or used for the extras of life–trips, vacations, decorating. When the primary wage earner lost his job, they did not need to go into crisis mode. He finally went back to work after more than a year of being unemployed, and they are starting to rebuild their savings.
You do make a valid point, in that single-earner households would face the most difficult times when faced with a job loss. Yet I must ask if hedging against that possibility is worth the overall cost of having two-earner family. To us, it is a lifestyle choice.
If I did lose my job, I would take anything I could find as soon as I could find it–even if back into retail or into the world of day labor (and that’s a change in my attitude since a year ago). My wife would also look into working. Whichever of us would find work first would become the primary income earner until the point where I would be able to land a good job again. Then we would go back to the lifestyle we chose.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:39 am
Everyone has to look at this from their own financial situation, and their own lifestyle choices. But I still wonder why your sister-in-law looked at this as coming out of her money. Again, I think we have to stop looking at daycare as a mom’s problem, as coming out of the mom’s money. The couple can do the math and decide it may not be worth it, but it should be a burden for both parents.
But again, if mom’s make the choice not to work because of the economics of daycare, they should also know what they may be jeopardizing for the future.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:04 am
Eve, the purpose of her job was to be getting a second income for the family. Whether the amount comes out of her wage or his, what does it matter? Is it really worth having her work that job if the family’s bottom line only saw $1.50 per hour she worked hitting the books? The calculations didn’t account for any work-related extras, like packing snacks, any additional work clothes, or the cost of getting to and from work (fuel for second vehicle, insurance, etc.).
If you don’t need daycare when only one spouse is working, doesn’t it make sense to include the cost of daycare when trying to calculate the benefit of the second income?
Whether or not they hold a joint account or pay the bill out of the primary wage earner’s income, the net gain for the family still would not exceed $1.50/hr in the situation I described. They just decided it didn’t make sense go throught the cost and trouble of daycare for only $120-$180 per month in extra take-home pay (depending on hours), especially when the daycare costs would be fixed each week regardless of the number of hours she actually worked. Most day care providers don’t provide schedules to match a changing work schedule at retail, so she would have had to enroll them for full days of daycare.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:26 am
This is exactly the type of math I don’t understand when it comes to daycare. Why aren’t other expenses taking out of the family budget? Childcare should be one of those top items on the family budget list, along with food and rent, mortgage, gas, etc. Why is this expense one we can so easily put aside? If a husband and wife decide they both want to work then it should just be part of the budget and other items should be scaled back.
If someone feels they don’t want to work, for what ever reason, that’s a different story.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Before I begin, Eve, allow me to say “thank you” for allowing me to argue a divergent view–thanks.
For the record, I believe all family expenses should come out of a common family purse.
If you’re in a situation where you’re already barely making ends meet, however, how can you even consider keeping childcare as part of the family budget list? Often (though not always), having a parent at home can help trim more money in other ares of the budget as well, allowing for the use of fewer convenience foods (e.g., more cooked from scratch, less eating/taking out), air-drying of laundry (where allowed), fewer warbdrobe-related costs (e.g., special clothes, dry cleaning). Why should childcare be “one of those top items on the family budget list” when one of the parents (I don’t necessarily care which) can provide that service without incurring an additional expense?
If both parents are professionals, with combined income in the $70k+ range (of course, depending on the local cost of living, it could be more or less), then childcare will simply be a family budget item. But that is the choice to be made, isn’t it–is it best for the family to have a single-earner or dual-earner structure? If in a household where the combined income is below that level (e.g., two earners in $30k/yr. jobs), the cost of childcare as a percentage of income is significantly higher. We’ve learned over the years that no one should be sinking more than about 35% of their earnings into housing (though some do due to a variety of circumstances), but has anyone ever considered defining a number like that for considering childcare? At what point do the costs outweigh the benefits?
After moving to St. Paul, Minnesota and seeing the end of one of our business ventures, I landed a good job. My wife, who enjoyed working with me in our business, entertained the idea of taking a day job to supplement our budget–sheerly for the pleasure of it. When we priced day care in our area (and for the number of pre-school children we had at the time), day care would have cost us over $40k per year, and we weren’t out there looking for Cadillac-plan daycare!
Unfortunately, in many situations where a husband and wife must both work, many of their other living expenses are alredy fixed (e.g., in a lease, have a mortgage, auto payments). For many families, taking the dual-earner route is not one they chose by any deliberate pre-planning, but rather one they took because they were not making it. They might be able to trim dollars by getting rid of some extras (e.g., Internet, cable, weekly movie night), but you can only trim so much. The stress of living from paycheck to paycheck when you know you only have $100 to pay for food and all incidentals for a two week period cannot be easily measured. Yet, in our situation, we considered the stress of having my wife work outside of the home (e.g., her energy level, househould chore distribution, impact on free time during evenings and weekends) and determined that we were not willing to impose those stresses on our family (this was once child care was no longer going to be an issue for us). Bravo! to those whose households that can survive two careers. It may be a common lifestyle choice these days, but not one embraced by all.
I, for one, don’t believe any couple should segregate their funds as “his” or “hers”. To me, once you become a family unit, all resources go to support the family, so perhaps that’s why your objection of making the calculation against “her” income didn’t register with me. The concept of keeping separate accounts is completely foreign to me. Among those I’ve known who have done it, all it did, over time, was lead to fights about money. And fights about money are considered one of the primary stressors in any marriage.
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Great piece. I do think many still think that the man’s paycheck pays the household “expenses” while the woman’s is pocket and babysitting money.
I also love the fact that you talk about “if indeed you want to work.” You know what…I do want to work. End of story. It is important for my self-fulfillment to work and it is important for my daughter to have a mom who feels fulfilled.
Thankfully my husband gets this. So even though my current earnings aren’t enough to pay for childcare (I’ve just started a business) he has encouraged me to go for it. Maybe my business will never cover these costs and maybe his earnings will shrink and we will need to adjust our work lives. But one thing I know for sure I will continue working. For myself and for my family.
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:54 am
Hooray for you and writing this. I devoted a lot of page time in my book that I co-authored, Women Work and Autoimmune Disease:Keep Working, Girlfriend! to this idea and quoted Leslie Bennetts as well. I also applaud that you acknowledge not everyone wants to work rather than stay at home with her children. But women have to see this as an investment in their future. That’s why it’s the focus of my book — it’s even harder when day care and health make building a career tough!
October 27th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
I’ve held focus groups and surveyed over 700 women nationally on this very topic. The number one thing, up until recent, preventing moms from returning to work was guilt. Just as of late, the percentages shifted in favor of lack of child care options. Well, the options are there but they are not being taken. Obviously because of the aforementioned. In any event, there are choices:
Nanny sharing
In home care
After school care
YMCA’s or churches
Au Pairs
Child care facilities
And, there are answers.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:24 am
* “A career is an investment you make in yourself, and it pays increasing dividends as time goes on, whereas child care is very costly when your children are young, but becomes progressively less expensive as they get older,” said Leslie Bennetts, author of “The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up To Much?”
This sounds like I am some kind of ogre, however did Mrs. Bennetts(Gerard) have babies after maybe 50?Did she adopt children or are her children so sheltered they live with their parents at 30? Somehow from reading some post in Leslie Bennetts’ blog and attempting to look up her history, she makes your work exemplary to a much higher degree.
Eve, you are a mother. You are a Saint as far as I can tell for being so unequivocally laudatory in your in your adroit journalistic pursuits, and God Bless your husband. I wish he would stop in here occasionally and then we can discuss canonization of a married couple with children. I’m not kidding about that either.
Hikingstick is absolutely correct as far as child care being a mutual expense. In fact, marriage with no children is to me absurdly selfish. And marriage as a family unit is absolutely a 50/50 venture. I have boldly challenged on your site, in other blogs and face to face plenty of MEN who are apparently incapable of handling their own children daily as a responsibility. It is an obligation every man should have to his children, and children will do what their parents do. If that means being united in their resolve to be good parents, then that is what your children will ultimately become.
I once had a mild argument with a couple I know who felt that she is the better parent and should take care of the kids. At one point he was angry because he felt I knew his wife so well I must be having an affair with her. This was at a work picnic. While the big guy dug into his ribs, his two children were waiting for Mommy to wash their hands and faces. I knew them well enough to ask if he was afraid he’d drown his kids or something with a wash rag. His wife was assisting on the grill and even made sure he had his ‘well-done juicy ribs’. It was a lively conversation. After dinner that is, those ribs were just too good. I pointed out to the wife what I was talking about and her position was a mother should be all things to the children. She further said he was not very good at it. Now, I had known the man for decades, longer than she knew him. When we were children, he was always the clean cut boy. His family room was always spotless. He’d even pick it up after us rowdy Whitaker Rats were there. I even recollect we once wrapped a towel around his waist and called him a maid as we punched him.(We were incorrigible delinquents). Both were working and well his mother lived with them and took care of the children. Perfect situation, except this man was pretty much brain washed and I knew it. My wife saw it too and let me go far with the idea that the only reason he thinks he cannot take care of his children is because the two most influential girls in his life tell him he can’t. Quite a few other couples saw that as well. The one who did not was the old folks, over 50 at the time who mutually declared it is a woman’s job to raise the children. I remember hearing a few moans then. Then ironically when someone asked her if she ever wanted to work, she said raising the kids is hard work, and her husband would have screwed it up. I believe we heard thunder at that point. This was at least twenty years ago. So in all this time, it is still a timeless and endless argument.
I still contend that parenting is simply the most difficult and most unselfish investment that exist. And from being a good parent the results are awesome every time. The dividend you pay yourself with is great, the dividend you pay society is even greater.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I’m a little confused by Robert Graham’s questions about my children, and I don’t claim to understand why my research on the economics of women’s workforce participation has prompted him or anyone else to think that my children might be so “sheltered” that they live with their parents at the age of 30, but just for the record, all of Mr. Graham’s suppositions are incorrect. I did not adopt my children, nor did I have them after 50 — I was 39 when I had my first child and 42 when I had my second — and at present they are both still students — one in high school and one in her junior year of college.
Leslie Bennetts
October 30th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
This career diva is making 14.82hr wage with two children who need childcare, one all day, one after school. Daycare is $900.00 per month.Rent is $725.00. Sometimes I receive child support. This helps cover the daycare costs. Sometimes it is short or doesn’t come in for months at a time. But, the alternatives I have looked at are, not working and living on government funds or going back to school (at the government’s expense.) Working full time and going back to school is not something I can fathom right now.I have worked in the same field for 10 years and am earning my current wage, which is a pretty decent wage in this town, because I opted to move to a town with more affordable housing and living costs. But daycare is high in relation to my income. It took me 8 months to land this job. I can’t imagine jumping out of the workforce now, to finish my degree or just qualify for welfare and expect to find work in a few years when the kids won’t need daycare. I don’t qualify for any state benefits. We are the working poor. And we are many. You should never count on the father to bring in the money, even if he always has before. Times can change and you can be left with the children’s health and well being as solely your responsibility in the blink of an eye.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
For about 5 years, my wife worked part time professionally while we had stay at home day care for our three children. 4 of the 5 years, we broke even. One of the years, we lost about $2,000 bucks.
But…she continued to grow her experience. When the kids were older and in school, she made much more than if she had simply taken the time off. You need to understand the value of your actions, and not just in present terms. working is investing in yourself, and sometimes there is a cost for that…
Rick Smith
November 4th, 2009 at 3:25 am
@Leslie Bennetts
Sincerely I apologize. I did claim, ‘I sound like an ogre…’. Well I most certainly did and that was not my intention. You are reading words from a very common man who is absolutely dismayed by the rude and ignorant behavior of many men whom I have shared my livelihood with for several years. That is a very personal story and if you read CareerDiva.net, you will often see many views I do have. Because you were noted in this article by my favorite journalist, of course I endeavored to read more of your work. Certainly, your personal life is and should be private. I read where you have had a long career in writing and journalism and that you have two children. Normally, that is enough. You will be pleased to know that what you have generously shared on your post is more information about you than even Google can find.
It is certainly not my position by any means to judge anyone. ‘How could you take the splinter out of your brother’s eye when you have a log in your own eye…’ is absolutely brilliant and flawlessly logical. The course of one’s career and the course of one’s personal life are always the same. Your children are, just as my children are the most important and the very best reason to have a life as far as I am concerned. Currently, the last of my six children is waiting for her HS graduation in June. My greatest hope is that my terminally wife to whom I have been married to for 14 years will be able to enrich my life longer as we move toward another chapter in our matrimony. She is my second wife. My first wife is an evil bitch to say the least and she has not spoken to or attempted to make any accordance with our children for nine years now. My beautiful Bride is a wonderful mother. For the three years before we met and fell in love, I had custody that was only shared a few times. I never dreamed in a million years my Darling would want to marry a man with three children and an ex-wife who was basically attempting to commit a homicide. That is truly a captivating story within itself.
You were quite established in your career when you had children. To me, the economics of a marriage is always equal. Our children are everything. Being a parent, whether you are mother of father should indeed be an equal and shared task. Of course, it is difficult at times to make it a shared task as far as work schedules and so on. We have been fortunate in our resolve to accommodate this. However, no matter how you look at it, the time you are a parent is truly the time that really counts. And that parenting will pay far greater dividends.