baby? or rent?

I had lunch today with two women in my department, both of whom have two kids in the 7-13 age range. After giving them a brief update on the status of my move, how I'm settling in, etc., the topic quickly turned to summer camps. More specifically, what to do with your kids during the summer while you're working*?

I was having a rough day in the halls of the Ivory Tower, so I nearly offered to quit my job and babysit for these four kids for the summer. I'm looking forward to having kids of my own someday, but until today I hadn't really stopped to think about the actual costs of having a childcare. So let's do some simple math.

One of these mothers puts her kids in a fantastic day camp that's run by our university for the summer. It sounds like a blast -- field trips, daily swimming, art projects -- and the it runs from 7am to 6pm daily. For faculty members, the camp is a steal at $300 per kid per week. That works out to 55 hours of childcare per week at just $5.45/hour. But for two kids, that comes to $2400/month, which is exactly double what I'm paying in rent for my apartment here.

The second mother also sends her kids to camps during the summer...but she has a nanny who drives them to and from camp and watches the kids on non-camp days. I suppose there's no tactful way to find out what she's paying, but my guess is that it is more than $300/week.

The summer is the real killer. Once the little money suckers are in school, it's probably just a few hours a day during the school year. Again, a little math.

Back when I was in junior high I babysat for my neighbor's daughter, who envisioned herself a 10-year old Bette Midler. The tasks were pretty straightforward, which was good because I was only 13. I met her at the bus stop, walked her home, fixed a snack, and clapped at her every rendition of "The Rose." At $5/hour, 3 hours/day, 5 days/week, it was a total racket. Maybe the parents saw it that way as well -- $75/week for childcare seems pretty reasonable. But then again, they were leaving their little prima donna with someone who couldn't even drive yet.

According to PayScale, the going rate for a babysitter in my part of the world these days is $8-10/hour. So after school daycare for 15 hours/week would cost about $600/month, or exactly half of my current monthly rent.

So for two kids, we're looking at a total of $5400 during the school year and $7200 for the summer. Grand total = $12,600.

I suspect that this estimate is on the low side for those pre-preschool years, and on the high side for the high school years. But according to the National Child Care Information Center, I'm not too far off.

Is this worth it? Not being a parent myself, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's the price you pay to stay sane and part of the adult working world. And maybe if you absolutely love what you do, you'd pay twice as much. But what if you just *like* your job? In that case, there's no way to know for sure whether you want to keep working or drop out until the kids arrive.

This topic is way to rich to cover in a single post, huh? It will be a long while before my boyfriend and I actually have to make decisions about childcare, and a long while before we have to answer the question "Is this worth it?" Until then, I'll try to glean as much information as I can from the successful women around me.


*Families around the world have been thinking about this for decades, I'm know, so I won't even pretend to be original in this post.