In my region, the average home price is $800k, and rents are $3k/mo for a 2-bedroom. Both parents have to work fulltime just to make cost-of-living. It’s really not an issue of living high-on-the-horse, the rent is just too damn high. Please don’t be judgmental about this if you’re not dealing with a high…

Two more years to goooooo!!!

there’s no way my family could do that. We tried and nearly lost our house. We cut out cable, had one cell phone, a home phone and didn’t go out to eat. We had one car payment. 1 credit card. No vacations. We coupon cut and ate cheaply and lived frugally. All so I could stay home for 2 years. It was completely fucking…

Discounting for multiple kids: Sorry, but the first thing I thought of was, “The kennel we use does that too!”

Yup. The families I know who are well-off are that way because both parents work high-paying jobs, not because hubby makes bank while the wife hangs around in pricey yoga pants. These stereotypes need to die like yesterday.

That may be possible in some parts of the country, but if you are an ordinary middle-class or working class couple in the Washington DC area, it feels darn near impossible to live on one person’s salary. It’s tough even for a single person to live on one salary. Among my crew of nonprofit employees, teachers, retail…

Having been in a family with a stay at home parent and two working parents,

Because they can’t afford it, or don’t want to? I mean, let’s make a hypothetical case. Mom and dad are both teachers and make $40k/year each and childcare costs $10k. They can have one stay home and try to support a family of, say, 5 on $40k, lol, or they can both work and do family planning and support a family of 4…

Yes, have more kids, stop being a lawyer, and give those kids only that which is essential to their continued existence. That sounds awesome, where do I sign up?

I’ve known some people in similar situations who quit more because their kids were constantly sick and had to stay home from daycare. We were fortunate enough to have a nanny, but if we hadn’t, those 8 billion colds and ear infections would have done me in at work.

*hugs* Depression fucking sucks.

And why isn’t childcare being respected in our society as a career? The article points out that even charging sky high rates all the required amenities (which, if individual families purchased them, would be considered “silly luxuries”) leaves hardly anything for payroll.

I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not...

I will be first in line to see this movie. Dory, besides being the name of my dear, departed kitty, has been an inspiration to me when depression takes hold.

It’s not a popular idea these days for a a number of reasons.

Your coworker is an out of touch asshat. People call the police if you let your kid go outside for 8+ hours a day without checking in, you would have your children taken away from you. You can’t leave your kids for five minutes alone in a public space without some “concerned” person intervening or calling the police.

Thanks for mansplaining that to us. We’d never have come up with that idea on our own, little spendthrifts that we are.

And then when your husband leaves you with the five kids he said he wanted, you’ll easily be able to jump back into the workforce. It's foolproof!

I was discussing the hassle of signing my two elementary school-aged kids for summer camps (it is a hassle because many of the camps are only part time, or won’t take both of my kids because of the age difference, etc.), and my co-worker was like, “what’s with all these fancy camps these days. when i was a kid we went…

I know people who are very explicitly planning their families so they don’t have more than one child in daycare at a time. Given their ages, this means quite a few of them are having one child instead of two or two children when their ideal family size was more like three.