I am preparing myself for the shock of childcare jobs costs, but haven’t a specific number yet. Since it is very early for me to be calling places, I was hoping for some input from others in the group who are closer to using daycare, or who have other children in daycare. I’m hearing $175 a week in Mass for commercial day care centers; $150 for at home moms who can take in up to 6 children in their homes (Mass laws allow for 6 in a home, up to 2 who are children of the provider). Are these numbers in the ballpark? If so, I’m thinking au pair, which I HAVE researched, and that is between $190-205 a week. I think it will be worth the extra money (if it is indeed extra per week – obviously the extra household costs are not included in this figure).
I can not stay at home, since I make 2X what my husband does. He just finished a law degree at night, and it is important to us that he starts a legal job ASAP. We feel that if he doesn’t use this degree to change careers soon, that he will have a hard time getting a legal job after a few years off with baby. Despite our healthy income, we struggled for 7 months while my husband took a leave of absence from his job to study for finals, graduate, study for the bar exam, take the bar exam (he passed!), and do some volunteer work for legal aid. This doesn’t mean we can’t do better, but I know our costs will be going up and want to create a realistic budget.
If one thinks doing home daycare would be good for her then that might be an option. You can make quite a bit of money while being able to stay home with your children. And since, her kids would be playing with the other kids; her job wouldn’t take her away from being with her own children. For me, this has been the ideal job. Who knows, when my children are in school full time, I may return to work outside of the home, but for now, we are quite happy with this arrangement and it may work for your friend also. Presently, I have 4 full time daycare children. Potential $100.00 per day!! ($500.00) a week!! I couldn’t make that working out of the home and having pay $1000.00 per month for my two children to be in daycare. Mention it to her. You do have to be cut out for this type of work, though. It isn’t for everyone.
Specific kinds of educational experiences provided for children by both parents and teachers, from preschool through high school, can make a significant difference in their reading ability as young adults. Two national studies have recently confirmed the particular home, school, childcare jobs and extracurricular experiences that impact an individual’s reading achievement over the course of development. These studies analyzed comprehensive data gathered from 3,959 high school students in 24 school districts across the U.S. The first study, the Kindergarten Reading Follow-up (KRF) Study, examined the long-term effects on children of being taught to read in kindergarten (Hanson and Siegel, 1988; 1991.)
Child care tends to have a lot of “just passing through” workers and high turnover lends itself to lower wages. I’ve never heard anyone say “Oh, I think I’ll mop floors for a year or two before deciding on college,” whereas I know many people who do that with childcare jobs. Of course, there are “passing through” janitorial jobs such as student- custodian in the dorms. The pay is low for such jobs. Some of the pay of child care is non-monetary. It is personally rewarding. Time spent in child care is good essay material for medical school applications, scrubbing toilets isn’t. If you want a teaching job, especially in the lower grades, you can’t be hurt with some child care experience.
Our Youth Group has an annual slave day at the church. Actually we’ve changed the name to rent-a-kid. We have members of the congregation sign-up with chores they need done, or babysitting jobs, or errands to run, whatever. Then the members of the youth group are assigned childcare jobs to do one Saturday (or whatever day hire-er needs) and are paid in a donation. The money gets split evenly between all who work because some people may pay like $75 for a car wash just because it’s for a youth group kid while another person may pay just $20 to have all their windows washed.
I had my son 10 weeks ago today, and was supposed to return to work full-time 3 days ago. As the time approached, however, I just couldn’t do it. I was a third grade teacher this past year, but I worked in child care most of the last 9 years before that, so I thought I could go back to that field and take my baby with me, but none of the centers I applied at were willing to agree to that, so here I am at home. I had the experience of caring for children 6 weeks through 16 years in different environments, and I saw many “DI” families where the kid was a minor consideration.
