It seems like child raising costs are out of control.
Using an inflation calculator the $20,000/year for day care would have cost my parents when I was that age around $2,643. The $18,000 for pre school would have cost them $2,379.
Yeah, my parents never would have paid that.
I also find it unlikely that a $200,000 household income is “average” for the D.C. area. Considering I don’t live all that far from the DC area, and given the numbers I’ve seen (19% of DC area residents are under the poverty line, median individual income of $56,000) I think we’re in a situation where your moderate affluence has lead you to dramatically expand your costs beyond that which most people of lesser means would see.
I can certainly bet you that the 19% of DC area residents who live below the poverty line aren’t sending their kids to $20k/year day care or $18k/ year private preschools.
I understand that $200k household income actually “doesn’t go that far” in DC, but I go up to DC a lot and there is a lot of extreme poverty in the DC area. The problem seems to be that you and your wife both were living a lifestyle that just wasn’t really that wise at your income level.
It’s unfortunate that people’s extended families have mostly deteriorated as a strength. When I was a kid I lived close to two sets of living grand parents, and both of my parents were children of large families. My father had 5 siblings and my mother had four siblings. Additionally there were many friends in the community. My mother didn’t work outside of the home so obviously the issue of day care or preschool never presented itself. However my mother was often watching her sister’s kids or a neighbor’s kids. Sometimes I’d be taken to an aunt or a grandparent or a neighbor’s house. No one sent their kid to paid-daycare or paid preschool back then.
However, I understand that these days people grow up and move away from their roots and set up shop in totally different regions. I also understand most neighborhoods no longer have any sense of community whatsoever. Unfortunately that has direct economic consequences in this case.
Maybe that is part of the reason those 19% of impoverished DC area residents are able to survive with kids. I’m betting a lot of them are from the DC area and probably have extensive familial networks helping them out.
I can also say that when I was a kid I shared a room with two siblings and it was a small room. There was a bunk bed on one wall and a single on the other wall. There was one dresser in between the beds at the back wall that held all three of our clothes in addition to a single small closet. The space in between the beds was narrow enough that only one person at a time could easily walk through it.
My parents bedroom fit a queen bed with a wardrobe, my dad’s dresser, and a decent sized closet but it was still relatively small.
Of course, we spent virtually no time in our room. Bedrooms were for sleeping in, and nothing else.