Parents Are Revealing Their Monthly Child Care Cost — & It’s Staggering
It’s a question parents across the U.S. feel like they’re screaming into the void: When are we going to do something about the cost of child care? We keep asking, but there are far too few answers. In fact, the subject is often blatantly ignored by those in power, despite the fact that the cost of child care is higher than the cost of housing in every single state in America.
Moms First, a national nonprofit taking the lead in addressing the glaring silence from politicians, recently asked their social media followers how much they pay for child care in their regions. The results were not only eye-opening but downright infuriating.
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How much are people paying for child care in the U.S.?
On Instagram, commenter Meg says she pays $80K per year for her triplet toddlers, while Kelly reports paying $60K for two children in Chicago. Over $50K for two kids in Michigan. $25K per year for one toddler in the Denver suburbs. “When we could have really used the extra income, I tried to go back to work with a 2- and a 4-year-old,” comments Kate W. “As a certified teacher, I couldn’t make enough for it to make sense. It would have cost $1000k per month per kid.”
Katrina, a commenter on LinkedIn living in North Carolina, says that the cost of child care for her two kids prohibits her family from buying a home. “Our youngest is on the wait-list at my oldest daughter’s school and if she’s accepted on her 3rd birthday in January, we will then be paying $2200 (per month) for full-time care for both kids, excluding summer care.” Single mom Denise B. says she pays $24K per year for one toddler in the Seattle area. Nicole F. says, “Around $40-45k and then add on the cost of summer camps as well. We don’t have grandparents nearby to rely on.” And Jackie C. says, “More than $30k a year for childcare for two-year-old twins in Pennsylvania, and our center is the least expensive in the area.”
“Child care costs more than rent in all 50 states. And moms are feeling the pain. The majority of American families of young children are spending more than 20% of their income on child care,” Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Moms First, tells SheKnows. “Moms First has been mobilizing America’s 85 million moms and their supporters to ensure that candidates up and down the ballot, and on both sides of the political aisle, commit to prioritizing child care if elected. Thousands of moms have shared their personal stories about how the cost of childcare is hurting their families. Moms shouldn’t feel alone in figuring out how to afford child care — or feel ashamed to talk about it. Too often, we think child care is a ‘me problem’ when, in reality, it’s a failure of our society to provide the support we deserve.?”
Moms First successfully petitioned CNN to include a question about this topic in the first debate, when Biden was still the Democratic nominee; the question was flat-out ignored by Trump, who chose instead to harp on the Biden administration’s stance on immigration, and Biden gave a quick and perfunctory non-answer before the conversation devolved into who had the better golf score. And in the second debate, the question wasn’t even asked — underscoring once again just how unimportant this issue seems to be to everyone except parents who are struggling with it.
But though it wasn’t a hot-button debate issue, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have addressed the cost of child care, in bits and pieces, throughout the courses of their campaigns.
Trump’s Stance on Child Care Costs
When asked about his plans to cut childcare costs during a speech at the Economic Club of New York, Trump said, “Child care is child care, it’s something you have to have in this country. You have to have it,” and that his proposed increased tariffs on foreign imports would “take care” of the issue. But in an email to AP News, UCLA economist Kimberly Clausing said, “I believe Trump has already spent this revenue, to pay for his tax cuts (which it doesn’t), or to perhaps end the income tax (which it cannot). It is unclear how there would be any revenues left over to fund child care.” Trump’s stance on the state of child care is tight-lipped this go round, in contrast to his 2016 presidential bid, during which he pitched paid parental leave — though notably excluding fathers — and sought $1 billion for child care. Both proposals were rejected by Congress.
In early September, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance had an equally baffling (and wildly out-of-touch) solution. “Make it so that, maybe like Grandma or Grandpa wants to help out a little bit more,” he unhelpfully suggested. “If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we are spending on daycare.” But he failed to take into account the plethora of reasons why this scenario is impossible for many families.
Harris’s Stance on Child Care Costs
Vice President Kamala Harris demonstrates a better (and more realistic) grasp on the crisis that is child care in America, stating that no family should pay more than 7 percent of their annual income for it — a cap that was first proposed in Biden’s “Build Back Better” package back in 2001. She also supports raising the child tax credit to a maximum of $3,600 and giving families of newborns $6,000 for the child’s first year. But though it sounds great in theory, she hasn’t been very specific about how she plans to make all this work.
Harris does have a running mate with a strong track record of improving child care for both families and employees. In 2023, Tim Walz initiated a $316 million grant program aimed at increasing wages for child care workers. Following this, in 2024, he unveiled an additional $6.2 million in grants to help expand and stabilize childcare businesses throughout Minnesota.
The point is, thus far neither candidate has satisfactorily laid out a concrete plan to ease the financial burden on families who need care for their kids. And while there are a lot of issues to argue ahead of November’s presidential election, one thing is not up for debate: exorbitant child care costs are hurting American families.
How is the Cost of Child Care Affecting Parents?
Parenting site Motherly asked 14 moms to share personal stories about how rising child care costs are impacting them, and the responses were depressingly predictable. They reported having to choose between paying utility bills or daycare bills, using savings to pay for child care, and having to give up careers because child care costs were more than their salaries — just to name a few things.
Mom of two Maddie K. told Motherly, “The rest of our life is put on pause until our kids are out of daycare. We can’t afford to buy a home, can’t go on vacation, eat out only one day a week and have to budget really hard for the holidays. We both enjoy our jobs and love our kids’ daycare but it’s hard missing out on moments with them and fun moments we could possibly have with the extra money if it was more affordable, like visiting family or going on vacations or buying a house.” And parents are resigning themselves to having smaller families simply because more kids would be too expensive, like mom of two Nicole, who even had to dip into her retirement investments: “We have to work full time to afford child care. We can’t afford to not work or work part-time. Even part-time child care is too expensive for that. It’s been detrimental to our ability to save and I have had to liquidate my 401k. We are only having two kids due to this cost.”
The cost of child care is a mounting problem that can no longer be ignored. It isn’t just a personal burden; it’s a crisis that needs immediate attention. Parents across the country are struggling to balance their careers and family lives, and the high costs are forcing them to make impossible choices. This issue cuts across political lines, affecting millions of American families. It’s time for our leaders to prioritize affordable child care and come up with real solutions to support working parents. The future of our kids and our society depends on it. We need to raise our voices and demand that child care becomes a basic right — not a luxury.
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