Checkout this article from the New York Times about the costs of child and infant care in the US. The study shows that Infant Care for one year costs more than one year's college tuition and fees to that state's public university!!! This is obscene and yet another example of how truly anti-children, anti-prosperity, and sex-phobic out nation is.
Exact numbers vary — from a low of $4,550 per year for infant care in Mississippi in 2009 to a high of more than $18,750 in Massachusetts. Infant care was particularly expensive — the yearly cost of care in a center is higher, on average, than the the yearly cost of food in every region of the United States. But even as children graduate to the toddler room, care hardly becomes a bargain. The monthly costs for center care for an infant plus a preschooler are higher than the median cost of rent, and nearly as high as the monthly mortgage for most families. (Costs for school-age children ranged from $2,160 in Mississippi to $10,400 in New York.)
Yes, you read that right, care for one infant and one toddler exceeds the median cost of rent! Much like health-care, the costs of child-care grows at a much faster rate than inflation or wages. This is a problem, but since it so often is cast as "a woman's issue" it is neglected until it cripples many families. In France and Sweden, child-care is considered a "right of the child" just like public education. Here, we do have a public education model, but infant/toddler age children (as well as college students--remember, most European nations finance you through University) is supposed to be managed by parents alone. This will not work in our new economy--where both men and women not only "get to work" but HAVE TO WORK!!! This issue will grow and grow until it hits a breaking point, but let's not let that breaking point be toddlers left in ramshackle apartments alone enmass.
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