Many moms assume burden of child-care costs

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

One of the biggest hurdles for working couples trying to balance work and family is finding good and affordable day care. But for some reason, many mothers think arranging and paying for child care is mainly their concern.

Take, Karen M., a stay-at-home mom from Pennsylvania who is considering returning to work. Her husband is a sales manager for an environmental company who saw his pay slashed by 30 percent due to the down economy.

“I want to help our income, but my boys aren't in school yet. Day care would eat up any money I make outside the home,” said Karen, who has 3 1/2-year-old twin boys. She did not want her full name used because she did not want to jeopardize her husband's job.

Although women now constitute virtually half of the work force, many still see child-care expenses as coming out of their paycheck — not the household's overall budget.

The number of women in the labor force with children under 18 has jumped to 71 percent in 2007, from less than 50 percent two decades ago, according to the Families and Work Institute’s 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce. Also, women are contributing more to the household budget. In 2008, women’s earnings among dual-income couples made up an average of 44 percent of the annual family income, according to the study.

And dads need more help than ever these days from their spouse. Men have been hit hard by this recession, with a jobless rate of 10.3 percent in September, compared to 7.8 percent for women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But still, women who work full time continue to make less than men. Data released by the BLS on Friday, shows women working full time make $657 a week, compared to $812 for men.

There seems to be more equity when it comes to who’s bringing home the bacon, but for some reason, child-care expenses are seen as coming out of a mom’s ka-ching.

This perception often creates undo burdens on working moms and can even keep some women out of the work force, at a time when many feel compelled to return because of the recession, experts say.

A mother's work?
“Our belief as a society is that mothers are responsible for the care of children, not the couple,” said Nora Bredes, director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership. “We give lip service on how it’s a family priority, but it really is all on her.”

Laura Pagles, who works as a marketing coordinator for FatWallet.com and recently returned to work after being out on maternity leave, had always seen handling day care as her task. “Child care, either the act or the expense when I'm not performing the act, feels innately like my responsibility,” she explained.

And Michelle Poteet, a professional organizer from San Antonio, Texas, saw it that way when she put her kid in child care in 2004. “I think ultimately I felt that if someone were to stay home it was going to be me. So since I was working, I automatically associated the cost of it with my income.”

But Poteet changed her perception after taking financial classes with her husband. “Instead of feeling as if I was the one paying for the child care, I realized it was a combined effort. It was coming out of our collective budget, not out of my paycheck,” she said.

For some women, it’s a “cost-benefit analysis,” said Nicole Else-Quest, an assistant professor in Villanova University's department of psychology. “There’s still a stigma of having kids in day care, so at the end of the day, you wonder if it was worth it.”

Clearly, day care is a big expense for working parents. Depending on where you live, the price of full-time day care at a facility for an infant last year ranged from $4,560 to $15,895 annually; $4,056 to $11,680 for a 4-year-old; and $2,160 to $10,720 for school-age kids who needed part-time care, according to the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies.

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