As a "soon-to-be" working mother, I am looking at day care options for the wee one. To some extent, I have always known that day care is going to be expensive. Once we got to that point, I would work it out.
Well, it is now time to seriously start considering tuition, part-time status, and where to send our sweet babe.
My heart's desire would be to stay home full-time with our little one, but the reality of an option like that would mean moving to a cheaper place to live and continuing to share one car. To me, that is not a "real" option at this point. So, working part-time becomes the desired arrangement. Yet when I start looking into the compounding cost of day care, I just want to throw up.
Sure, $45 dollars a day does not sound like much at first... But then you multiply it by the days you plan to have your child cared for (2) and multiply that by the weeks in a year (52x$90), you come up with a royal chunk equilvalent to 25% of what I plan to bring into the family finances.
This is a cruel arrangement, my consolation prize for working part-time is that 25% of my income goes to baby care.
So now the question comes up, do I try to work more to offset the cost further?
Tonight I plan to go over our finances. I am most certainly thankful that we have the option of good quality day care, and I like the idea of my child being socialized early on... As well, I am thankful that we are in a place where me working part-time is an option...
It does make me wonder how other women feel about this. When such a large part of our "contribution" to the family goes to crap like this, it is hard not to feel disheartened.
The good news is that the day care I am looking at is fairly close to work and perhaps I can go and breastfeed at lunchtime. That would be a definite plus.
Ahh the joys of adulthood- I knew this was coming. I can't live with my head in the sand forever.
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