In the US. Over here daycare is paid by taxes, free for everyone regardless of income or employment status, and in the city you'll likely have the daycare within a couple of blocks so no extra car needed either. Yes you'll get a cold more often thanks to all the germs, but sick days don't eat to your salary or holidays (also sick time on holidays gets reimbursed!) so no monetary loss.

You'll miss out on a lot of the time with your kid, but on the other hand they get to socialize a lot more from a very young age already. Some parents also burn out at home after a while, but that of course depends on the person.

I realize this went quite offtopic, sorry about that.

Thanks for sharing and helping reduce my ignorance on the subject. I'll be honest, any social service we have in Canada, I just assume the US has it worse.

I believe we have cheap or free subsidized daycare too but it's generally terrible. There's also 12 month waiting lists where I live. My colleagues all pay tens of thousands.

Sorry if I was unclear, my report was from an European standpoint. I just assumed you're from the US, probably based on the yearly cost you mentioned.

Ohh okay. From Canada. Free if you don't make much money. I thought you were initializing with "I'm in the US".

Poor people don't pay what rich people pay for daycare because they daisy chain together some combination of under the table daycare and relatives.

There's obviously trade-offs to that approach but my point is that upper middle class patterns of behavior shouldn't be projected up and down the economic ladder.

Upper middle class people call a plumber. Poor people call a plumber that owes them a favor.. Etc, etc. and so on and so fourth. It's a whole different economy and a lot of the patterns surrounding the crap in life that saps your money are totally different.