The Five Best and Worst Cities for Child Care in the United States
If you are looking for childcare in Boston, we have good news for you. A survey by Care.com, the national online childcare, elder-care and pet-care resource, just declared Beantown the best city in the United States for finding high quality childcare at an affordable price.
According to the New York Daily News, Care.com CEO Wendy Sachs credited Boston’s high rating to a relatively large number of college and graduate students who work in child care, lower costs and high number of providers trained in such things as CPR and other basic safety measures.
The other cities in the top five: Seattle, Denver, Rochester, New York and West Palm Beach, Florida.
As for the dogs of the day care and child care scene, New Orleans headed up the list, followed by New York City, Miami, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh.
It goes without saying that this list points to the fact that the state of childcare in the United States could best be described as pathetic. There are no national standards, and much of what is available is both expensive and not of particularly high quality. (How expensive? In the majority of states, the cost of placing an infant in a daycare setting now exceeds that of tuition at a public university.) State subsidized daycare is scarce, and scandals not infrequent. Good quality daycare is in such demand that in Los Angeles and New York, the two cities I’ve been a mother in, people routinely put their children on wait lists while their babies are still in utero. Others refuse to pull their children out of expensive childcare situations when they lose a job, not because they do not wish to save money or spend more time with their son or daughter, but because they will never, ever get the coveted spot back when they regain employment.
OK, I’ve ranted enough. Now it’s your turn. If you live in one of the cities mentioned, do you agree with Care.com’s analysis and why or why not. If your city was not mentioned, can you tell us about the childcare situation in your town?
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Photo: U.S. Government
I live in Los Angeles and have utilized most forms of childcare available and it is expensive. We started with a home daycare when my first was born because the local daycare in the area was $1100 per child. We did that until it didn’t work any more. It was a wonderful environment for my daughter, but the hours were not set and became a challenge down the road. Then we did a nanny, but that was $15 an hour and was expensive so we had to scale down the hours we needed someone to afford it. We ultimately got an au pair culturalcare.com. We have had three au pairs, and it has worked very well for us. The cost is $340 a week, which was less than we were paying before and for more hours. As someone who works from home, it worked great. There are lot more people with au pairs in California now than there used to be because it’s more affordable.
I’ve been blessed to be able to pay my mother $75/week to watch my son for me. I work full time, but only bring home ~$400/week. I could never afford daycare or an au pair.
I live in Seattle, and while I love my daughter’s daycare, which has morphed now into her pre-school, it’s expensive ($1400 a month) and we definitely had to apply while still pregnant. Both the high cost and the long wait are for downtown locations, further from downtown the cost and wait times go down, but based on where we live that wasn’t an option for us.
I live in Seattle and I’m not sure why our city is supposed to be better than cities in the bottom of the ratings. I got on two waiting lists while 5 months pregnant and haven’t received a call letting me know about a spot for my now almost 9-month old son. Our childcare bill will be more than double in-state tuition at the University of Washington and equal to our rent and we are relatively fortunate that the care we’ve arranged is less expensive than many comparable options. We have two earners in our family, a teacher and a social worker. Child care is a huge, huge struggle and will be more than a quarter of our take-home pay.
It would be around $1000/mo. around here for one child – and we have twins. It’s one of the major reasons I am still with the kids full time instead of working. It doesn’t make sense for me to work so we can break even. And even though the tuition rates are high, the day care teachers don’t make much at all.
Daycare SHOULD be expensive. You can’t stop people from being selfish materialists, but you can make them pay the full price for their choice. That’s exactly what daycare does. If you can’t be bothered to raise your own children, and prefer the hired help to do that while you pay for your SUV and bigscreen TV, well, that’s not free. It comes with a cost. The biggest cost, of course, is to the children, but hey, since when do they matter? I’ll be happy when daycare costs $10 000/mo, and no one can afford it. Families that choose to have children should raise those children.
Yikes Andrea, that’s pretty harsh. There are good arguments for childcare being expensive (like paying teachers well and training them), but it’s not good to exclude children from high quality care because their parents can’t afford it. I know lots of people who send their children to childcare because they need two incomes to meet the most basic needs of food and shelter, and lots of moms who work because they carry the insurance, and some who work to have something to save for retirement and college, and really very few parents who work because otherwise there wouldn’t be enough tropical vacations. Even if the parents work for that, should their children really have to suffer in substandard conditions because their parents don’t have the same priorities as yours?
STFU, Andrea. I’m glad you live in a magical world where all you have the desire to is raise your children, and that’s fulfilling for you. Some of us have kids, and don’t want to spend every waking moment with them, and some of us simply can’t afford it.
And Denver? Really? I, like Amber, make about $400 a week. I keep looking into daycare for my 20 month old, but we need Sundays and three other twelve hour days. If it exists in Denver, it costs significantly more than I make, and I work to provide health insurance. If I stayed at home, we couldn’t afford to get sick.
Andrea, why don’t you follow Kayt’s advice. Really!! we know you know it all but this time you have no idea what you are talking about.
I also live in Seattle and I’ve never considered the daycare situation here to be particularly good. Like others have said, it’d very expensive to use the larger centers and elsewhere, the care is spotty, IMO.
Surprised that Chicago’s not on the list. I’m already on the waiting list at 3 good daycares and am only in my 2nd trimester of pregnancy. These daycares all cost close to $1900/month, and nannies are even more expensive at $13-15/hour. Poorer people in this city have no options but to leave their children with friends or relatives (that they can’t always trust) or unlicensed home daycares. There are very, very few subsidized high-quality daycares, and the ones that do exist have 2-yr waiting lists.
You’re kidding me!!! I live in Boston (well, Cambridge), right by MIT and Harvard, and while our daycare is extremely good it is also costing us over $2000/month for our toddler. I am the main wage earner in our household, and carry our health insurance, so becoming a SAHM is out of the question – and my husband is working his way up the academic ladder so can’t become a SAHF. We are now expecting our second child (I know the arguments, but I’m in my late 30s so waiting wasn’t really an option) and have no idea how we’re going to afford daycare as few places have sibling discounts. Also, subsidized daycares in this area all have waitlists of over a year.
[...] The Five Best and Worst Cities for Childcare in the United States [...]
I am from the Seattle area and know that there are some great companies that offer childcare benefits to help alleviate the stress and costs of childcare for their working parent employees.
Whether a daycare program or backup childcare program; it is important to have a conversation with your HR department to see if they are looking at a childcare benefits program. Companies like On Call Nanny or Bright Horizons offer great solutions to the organization and the working parent.
Parents need to know they have a voice, they are the greatest asset to a company and employers know this. Therefore letting them know what your needs are, to help you stay with their organization, is very important and needs to be heard.
Wow!!! I’ve been a nanny and got paid 12$/hour, and worked in good daycares that charge 500-700$ a month, depending on child’s age. I’ve never heard of anyone paying 2000$, even families of 4!