We Pay More for Childcare Than We Do for Rent...

My husband and I sat down last year to talk about buying a house, and the conversation kept circling back to the same wall. Our monthly childcare is significantly more than our rent. More than what I used to bring home working as a part-time pediatrician.

Childcare for us includes a full-time nanny and preschool for our daughter. Our son is also in a private school, which is a whole other conversation on cost. 

I've only said our childcare cost number out loud once before, and I felt guilty saying it. Like admitting to a privilege I should be quietly grateful for instead of frustrated by.

My guest this week, Paige Connell, knows that guilt well. She's a mom of four who went viral almost two years ago for doing the same thing, naming her real childcare number out loud. She didn't set out to become an advocate. She just answered a question honestly, and the response told her everything she needed to know about how many families are quietly drowning in the same math.

Why we don't talk about it

We treat childcare costs the way we treat salaries, like it's rude to ask, private to share, and somehow ours to solve quietly on our own. Paige pointed out that childcare isn't rising at a normal pace, though. It's climbing 5 to 20% each year, faster than inflation, faster than the grocery prices everyone's already furious about. Right now, childcare costs more than rent in all fifty states and more than a mortgage in forty-five of them.

That's not a "you overspent" problem. That's a market failure.

And to be clear, that money isn't going to the people doing the work. Childcare workers are some of the lowest paid in the country, which is part of why centers struggle to stay staffed and open in the first place. The cost isn't high because someone's overpaid. It's high because the whole system is priced wrong.

And it doesn't end when your kid starts kindergarten, either. Paige told me the pattern she's noticed isn't happening at the daycare stage, it's happening later. Parents aren't leaving their jobs when their kids are two, they're leaving when their kids are closer to ten, because the patchwork of before care, after care, summer camp, and half-day kindergarten gets harder to manage the older kids get, not easier.

What it costs beyond the monthly bill

I talk constantly about being a regulated, grounded parent, about responding instead of reacting. But you cannot be a calm, centered parent while your brain is running a second, silent spreadsheet, who watches the kids if they're sick, what happens if daycare closes for a week, how do we still save anything for a house.

I lived that math during the pandemic, cutting back my own hours during a season when people needed pediatricians more than ever. I felt guilty constantly. Underneath it, my husband and I were quietly negotiating who could afford to be the one who stayed home when a kid got sick, because his income mattered more to our bottom line than mine did.

It made sense on paper, which is why the decision feels right. And when I brought that same pattern to Paige, she confirmed it, backed by the numbers. Women are twice as likely as men to be the ones adjusting their careers around childcare gaps, and it's rarely just a pause button. A short break can mean lost raises, lost retirement contributions, a license that's gone stale, a resume gap that reads differently than it should. So it isn't really a break at all. It's often a full restart, years later, from further behind than where you left off.

None of this is a knock on anyone who wants to be home with their kids, that's a real and valid choice for plenty of families. This is about the parents who don't feel like they have one, the ones doing the math and realizing staying in their career was never actually on the table.

I don't think we talk enough about how deliberate that math feels in the moment, and how expensive it turns out to be over a lifetime. And it isn't only a women's problem. Men lose out too when the system forces this decision onto one parent by default. So does the economy. Some companies have started figuring this out. One company gives employees $36,000 a year toward childcare, because they realized it's good for retention and good business. If companies can see that math clearly, I don't understand why policy still hasn't caught up.

Part of the problem I see is that we keep calling this a personal decision, but I don't think it ever really was one.

So what can we do with this?

Paige's answer wasn't complicated, and I liked that about it. Talk about the real numbers. Bring it to your workplace if you can. Support the local and state level efforts even when nothing is moving federally. And stop assuming grandma is the backup plan, because plenty of grandparents are still working, aging, or simply don't want to spend their retirement on full time childcare, and that's allowed to be true too.

Mostly, though, it starts with saying the number. Paige's video didn't go viral because she said anything radical. She just said the truth out loud in a culture that tells parents to keep it to themselves.

I'm not pretending saying it fixes anything by itself, but it’s a good place to start because silence definitely doesn't.

Listen to my full conversation with Paige Connell wherever you get your podcasts.

I am so grateful that you continue to make space for these conversations. If the podcast has been helpful to you, leaving a review wherever you listen is one of the simplest ways to help more parents find the show.

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