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The cost of raising children without the care of grandparents

The cost of raising children without the care of grandparents

May Wudi, 32, is “on the cusp” of part-time child care. She works full-time in a remote sales job, and her husband Jackson has a steady stream of contract engineer jobs in Knoxville, Tennessee.

However, the cost of even a few days of care for their two children, Noah and Hannah, ages 5 and 6, is insolvent.

Nationally, single child care varies from $4800 to $15000 per year, and prices are expected to continue to rise. In Tennessee, the average annual cost of child care is US$10,000–11,000.

Politicians on both sides agree that Childcare is a significant financial burden.. In a recent interview, JD Vance invited parents to ask their families to participate. “Maybe grandma or grandpa would want to help a little more,” Vance said. “If that happens, you’ll take some of the pressure off all the resources we spend on daycare.”

This is not an option for Udi.

She’s one of those millennial parents who gets no childcare help from parentsbe it due to distance or deeper disagreements about parenting.

According to Pew Research, baby boomers are staying in the workforce longer than previous generations, meaning they aren’t always around to watch their grandchildren. Some grandparents too set boundaries regarding childcare because they need space to live their lives.

Udi’s relatives live a five-hour flight away in Washington state, and she said that when they visit, they are only interested in the “fun” side of their grandparents’ lives. They “don’t wear diapers” and have never offered babysitting. Meanwhile, her parents are on a Church mission off the coast of Fiji for the next two years. This means that she and her husband are scattered all the time.

“We’re always tired,” Udy said. “It’s easy to let jealousy slip away when our friends in similar situations have the support of family that will come at a moment’s notice.”

Americans are more atomized

For those who live far from family, raising children can be an expensive and isolating experience.

Katie and Anthony Waldron lives on Long Island, New York—a seven-hour drive from her family in Buffalo and about 10 hours from his mother and relatives across the pond in Birmingham, UK.

It made sense for them to settle on Long Island with their 4-year-old son, whose name they did not disclose for privacy reasons. Katie works in public relations, Anthony is a television producer, and they are just an hour by train from New York, where there are more job opportunities than in their hometowns.

However, creating a local community of friends who could actually look after their child on occasion proved more difficult than they expected.

“We both, being outsiders, never realized how difficult it could be,” Waldron, 38, said.

From the time their son was four months old, they paid $20,000 a year per day. pre-K care, which is free in New York. They now spend about $700 a month for two hours of after-school care. They also hire a nanny for $15 an hour when they need to run quick errands, which adds up to about $60 every few months.

But when a babysitter is unavailable, Waldron is reminded of how lonely they are. She once had to provide an emergency contact on her son’s Pre-K application. They didn’t have one, in the end they just wrote down a friend’s name, even though she travels often for work. Waldron’s siblings from upstate would be more than happy to join, but they live too far away to help in an emergency.

“That was one of the most disturbing things that made us wonder if this was a good place for us to live,” Waldron said.

They are considering moving back to the UK, where they met while she was at college, to be closer to family and access more affordable childcare.

Waldron and her husband want a second child as soon as possible, before they get much older or the age difference between their two children is too great. They have no idea how it will work if they stay in the US.

“The burden of childcare costs and, equally, the lack of emotional support in our parenting journey makes having another child impossible,” she said.

Child care standards are also changing

Even when grandparents are nearby and always available, some parents face another obstacle to free child care: vastly different views on how to do it well.

“Parenting standards have become much more stringent,” Dr. Katie B. Garner, executive director of the International Association for Motherhood Action and Fellowship, a nonprofit academic organization focused on motherhood, told Business Insider. Raising children these days is becoming more child-orientedHow Millennials strive to be more mindful mental health of their children than their parents were with them.

Child care, while expensive, has a certain appeal for millennial parents who have a clear idea of ​​how they want to raise their children. The employee should listen to what he wants and will most likely be aware of the latest trends in parenting. Grandparents may have the courage to do the exact opposite.

Daisy Montgomery tried to turn to her parents for help raising Ashton, her seven-year-old son who, like her and her husband Barclay, was diagnosed with ADHD and autism.

“The few times my parents looked after my son, they really didn’t have the skills to support him,” Montgomery, 35, said. After sharing her son’s diagnosis with her parents, she felt dismissed. She said her father told her his grandson was “fine” and was being “nursed” through speech and occupational therapy.

Ultimately, this led to her moving away from them. Since Barclay also lives separately from his parents, they have no family support.

They had to start from scratch to find caretakers in Fort Collins, Colorado. “It was very difficult and lonely,” Montgomery said. Although they were able to send their son to a free preschool for children with disabilities, they received a call 45 minutes after arriving and asked to pick him up. She said they were told the school couldn’t handle him.

Over time, they have found like-minded people, including parents of their son’s classmates with autism, who can help with care from time to time. They hired a nanny, who also has autism, for about $120 a month. They also spend about $1,500 a year on respite care, short-term care services for children with disabilities.

“We’ve created this community of people who understand what it means to be autistic and disabled, and that’s made a huge difference to us,” Montgomery said.

Parents go through this alone

There’s another hidden cost to today’s expensive child care.

In the long term this affects economic growth as well as individual families. “That’s why people often don’t work more hours, don’t pursue promotions, don’t pursue more aggressive career paths,” Garner said.

Udy, who previously worked as a chemist in California, switched careers and moved to Tennessee after the birth of his second child raised child care costs in the Bay Area to more than $3,000 a month. Waldron limits the number of clients she accepts because she also has to care for her son.

Garner believes American parents need much more help from the government. The US has one of the most expensive child care systems in the world.

While Childcare costs are also high in the UKWaldron is attracted to options such as 15-30 hours of free childcare per week and inexpensive extracurricular activities. She said her husband’s relative pays £5 (about $6.50) to attend an after-school Lego club for his son.

“A lot of parents in America would be thrilled if they had access to something like this,” Waldron said.