No, not scary at all, just good things to be aware of! Although what IS scary to me is that they're not subject to the same standards and requirements...that's insane, right?!

Apparently, I'm part of the 5% of SAMs. While staying at home works for my family, if anyone is considering staying home for a few years with the intention of returning to the workforce, I agree that it might be easier to just stay working and power through the daycare expense.

THIS. THIS. THIS. ^^^ I am a single lady now, but I was married when my teenager was young. I "stayed at home" with her when she was an infant and went back to part time work when she was oh, 18 months old. The gap on my resume is now virtually non-existent and I'm at the the VP/Director level career wise. It's as if…

These are some excellent points of consideration. I think like anything it's a decision that needs to be weighted among multiple factors including money and quality of life (again, privilege). For us, it's a good time for me to stop due to my personal preference for staying home with my young children, the cost of…

Except Social Security probably won't be there for most of us.

Umm..okay. No snark here and no disrespect. I stayed home when my children were young, it was busy and it was hard and I am grateful that I could do it. However, now that they are teenagers and in multiple sports? I need a nanny, or a wife, or a chef…or freaking someone to help! I work at home now and still…

Good that Dads get a mention, its weird that child-care is still seen as 100% the woman's responsibility> Men are just as capable of taking care of infants as woman - the only difference is they're not socialized to do so, and don't produce milk... 21st Century people

I posted a comment on this above, but just consider that even if daycare would eat up your entire salary, there are long-term benefits to staying in the workforce. Think of it as an investment. For social security and IRAs, the longer you pay into the system, the more security you will have when you are old. Not to…

Everything you said is 100 % true. I see it from the perspective of later years. But when you are in the trenches of daily child care, it's hard to see ahead.

I, too, thought I would be going back to work once the kids were in school. What I discovered was that while they are in school, an available parent is still very much needed. I picked them up when they were sick without having to have the argument with my husband over whose turn it was to piss off our boss by…

We live in Arkansas and for two full days for two children we pay 188 a week. Granted there are cheaper places but none that are secular or not in some random craigslist lady's garage.

For people who are considering quitting their jobs because the cost of daycare eats up almost their entire salaries: think deeper. Maybe staying home is the right choice for you because you would find it fulfilling. But if you are only staying home because of the daycare-to-salary ratio, consider long-term investments…

I was raised by a stay-at-home dad in the late 80's-early 90's (In those day I think it might have only been weirder if I had 2 dads) and I will attest that having a parent around during my early years was a great gift and a huge blessing.

As someone staring down a potential $2000/month for infant daycare in Queens NYC, we need subsidized daycare. Like, yesterday.

My autistic first cousin posted something similar the other day—Autism isn't a glitch, it's a different operating system.

Make sure they know that Austism Speaks is so awful. A lot of people, including people who should know better, don't know anything about them.

No, really, people pay huge sums of money to "cleanse" their autistic kids of the heavy metals they ostensibly got through vaccinations, despite the fact that most of those haven't been used in over a decade.

This is really unethical of me and I still feel bad about it. That said…it is my only revenge story, and it is epic.

I was in AP Physics C, the calculus-based class, when I was a senior. I was awesome at physics. In our class we'd often present problems from the homework. Our teacher would go around the room and check our work, then assign students to write their work on a portable white board. The problem would then be presented to…

I don't know if this constitutes revenge but I worked for an agency a long time ago (before my professional career), where they were repeatedly abusing non-verbal adults in this crisis home. It was through over-restraints. There was a veil of secrecy in all of this—I only saw glimpses of the worst because I worked on…