May Udy, 32, is “on the verge” of part-time childcare. She works full-time at her outside sales job, and her husband, Jackson, has a steady stream of work as a contract engineer in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Yet the cost of even a few days of child care for their two children, Noah and Hannah, ages five and six, is unsustainable.
Nationally, care for one child ranges from $4,800 to $15,000 per year, and prices are expected to continue to rise. In Tennessee, the average annual cost of childcare is $10,000-$11,000.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle agree that child care poses a significant financial burden. In a recent interview, JD Vance suggested that parents should ask their families to participate. “Maybe Grandma or Grandpa will help a little more,” Vance said. “When that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources we spend on child care.”
That is not an option for Udy.
She’s one of those millennial parents who don’t get childcare help from their parents, either because of distance or because of larger disagreements about raising children.
According to Pew Research, baby boomers are staying in the workforce longer than previous generations, which means they aren’t always around to babysit their grandchildren. Some grandparents also set boundaries around babysitting because they want space to live their own lives.
Udy’s in-laws live a five-hour flight away in Washington state, and she said that when they come to visit, they are only interested in the “fun” side of being grandparents. They “don’t do diapers” and have never offered to babysit. Her parents, meanwhile, are on a church mission off the coast of Fiji for the next two years. It means she and her husband are spread thin all the time.
“We’re always tired,” Udy said. “It’s easy to let jealousy slip in when our friends in similar situations have family support that comes at a moment’s notice.”
Americans are more atomized
For those who live far from family, raising children can be an expensive and isolating experience.
Katie and Anthony Waldron live in Long Island, New York – a seven-hour drive from her family in Buffalo and about a ten-hour drive from his mother and relatives across the pond in Birmingham, UK.
It made sense for them to settle on Long Island with their four-year-old son, whose name they withheld for privacy reasons. Katie is in public relations, Anthony is a TV producer, and they are just an hour’s train ride from New York City, where job opportunities are more abundant than in their hometown.
Still, building a local community of friends who could sometimes watch their child was harder than they expected.
“We are both outsiders and never realized how challenging it could be,” says Waldron, 38.
From the time their son was four months old, they paid $20,000 a year for child care through pre-K, which is free in New York. Now they spend about $700 a month for two hours of care once his school day is over. They also hire a babysitter for $15 an hour when they need to run quick errands, which works out to about $60 every few months.
But when that babysitter isn’t available, Waldron remembers how alone they are. She once had to provide an emergency contact for her son’s pre-K application. They didn’t have one, so in the end they just wrote down the name of a friend, even though she often travels for work. Waldron’s siblings from out of state would like to step in, but they live too far away to be helpful in an emergency.
“That was one of the most disturbing things and really made us think about whether this is the right place for us to live,” Waldron said.
They are considering moving back to Britain, where they met when she was at university, to be closer to family and access more affordable childcare.
Waldron and her husband want to have a second child soon before they are much older, otherwise the age difference between their two children is too big. They don’t see how it would work if they stayed in the US.
“The burden of childcare costs and, equally, the lack of emotional support during our parenting journey makes it impossible to get another one,” she said.
Childcare standards are also changing
Even when grandparents are nearby and readily available, some parents face another obstacle to free childcare: wildly different views on how to do it well.
“Parenting standards have become much stricter,” says Dr. Katie B. Garner, executive director of the International Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship, an academic nonprofit focused on motherhood, told Business Insider. Today, parenting is more child-centered as millennials strive to pay more attention to their children’s mental health than their parents were with them.
Childcare, while expensive, has a certain appeal to millennial parents who have a clear idea of how they want their children to be raised. An employee must listen to what he or she wants and will likely be aware of the latest trends in parenting. A grandparent may gain the courage to do the exact opposite.
Daisy Montgomery tried to appeal to her parents for help raising Ashton, her seven-year-old son who, like her and her husband, Barclay, was diagnosed with ADHD and autism.
“The few times we had my parents babysit my son, they really didn’t have the skills to support him,” says Montgomery, 35. After sharing her son’s diagnosis with her parents, she felt rejected. She said her father told her there was “nothing wrong” with his grandson and that he was being “taken care of” with speech and occupational therapy.
Ultimately, it led to her becoming estranged from them. Because Barclay is also estranged from his parents, they have no family support.
They had to start all over again finding caregivers in Fort Collins, Colorado. “It was really hard and lonely,” Montgomery said. Although they were able to send their son to a free preschool for children with disabilities, they received a call 45 minutes after drop-off asking if they wanted to pick him up. She said they were told the school couldn’t handle him.
Over time, they have found like-minded people, including the parents of their son’s autistic classmates, who can occasionally help with care. They hired a babysitter, who also has autism, for about $120 a month. They also spend about $1,500 a year on respite and short-term care for children with disabilities.
“We built this community with people who understand what it’s like to be autistic and disabled, and that has made a huge difference for us,” Montgomery said.
Parents struggle with it alone
There are even more hidden costs associated with today’s expensive childcare.
In the long term, this has as many consequences for economic growth as it does for individual families. “That’s why people often don’t work more hours, don’t look for promotions and don’t take the more aggressive career path,” says Garner.
Udy, who used to be a chemist in California, changed careers and moved to Tennessee after having a second child, raising childcare costs in the Bay Area to more than $3,000 a month. Waldron limits the number of clients she accepts because she also has to care for her son.
Garner believes American parents need much more government help. The US has one of the most expensive childcare systems in the world.
Although Britain also has high childcare costs, Waldron is attracted to options such as 15 to 30 hours of free childcare per week and low-cost extracurricular activities. She said a relative of her husband pays £5 (about $6.50) per session for his son’s after-school Lego club.
“So many parents in America would be so happy if they could have access to something like this,” Waldron said.
Read the original article on Business Insider
