Me! I worked outside the home when my oldest was little. I paid, IIRC, about $60.00/wk (this was about 1987). She was at daycare from 8:30AM to 5:30PM each day in a home-based center with about 5 other kids. Lunch and snacks were included. When I had my second baby in 1991, though, my rate would have gone up to $150.00/wk. Add in cost of gas, work clothes, meals, etc., and I’d have been leaving my babies for, essentially, chicken feed. I’ve done some telemarketing-type work from home from time to time (don’t pit me. It was all like, Goodwill collections type stuff “Our truck will be in your area on the 21st. Will you have any clothes or home items to donate?”). But I’ve mainly been a stay-at-home mom since then.
Well, my daughter’s daycare is $132.75 for 3 full days. I provide bottles and lunch, they provide snacks. They will provide lunch when she is older, but I actually like having some control over what she is fed. Like most daycares, they still charge if she is out sick, if they are closed for snow or a holiday, etc. Although I realize this is standard practice, it does kind of bug me.
They also charge $1/minute if you are late picking up. That adds up.
Last week, I asked them if they could take her for a few hours on what would normally be her day off, as I had an important meeting at work. I have no idea how they decide how much to charge for this. It’s different than their normal rate, and seems weird. When I asked how much it would be for five hours, the woman didn’t miss a beat before saying, "44.75".
Why the .75? Why not just $45?
I am also one who doesn’t use daycare.
Before I had my daughter I was working as a receptionist part time for about $150/week.
We decided that was not enough money for me to bother trying to place her in daycare and I became a SAHM.
I will be having a little boy in October and based on my work experience/earnings potential I will stay a SAHM until the munchkins are in school.
If something changes with hubby’s employment and I need a job we will end up doing the split shift thing where we never see eachother so I am keeping my fingers crossed that that doesn’t happen!
NurseCarmen, would you share where you are going? I am switching from a home daycare (ICK, never again) to a center. Kindercare is going to be 184 a week for my 4 year old. 
Daycare for our 5 year old was $420/mo in Edmonton. That’s very reasonable. For toddlers under 2, it’s about $600 in most places.
What’s a little less reasonable is ‘after school care’. Our daughter is only in after school care for about 1 hour a day. It costs $320 a month.
I’m also on the board of the daycare. It’s run non-profit, and the people working there make very little money. Even the director of the daycare, who has a Masters in early childhood education, is only getting a little over $30,000. The other workers typically have either diplomas or bachelor’s degrees (they’re often young women working towards a B.Ed), and they get between $6.50 and $8.00 per hour.
The reason daycare is expensive is because you have to have a lot of workers. Unlike regular school, where you have 20-30 kids per teacher, provincial regulations require a ratio of more like 4-6 for the young-uns. Plus, the facilities have to be of a certain size. So when you have a daycare that has maybe 30 regular children, at $500/mo each, that’s total revenue of $15,000. But then you’ve got salaries for maybe 8 staff, plus a director, plus rent on the facility, plus all the games, craft materials, etc. that you need for the kids. And kids are hard on the facilities, so there is a lot of upkeep.
Around here, no one gets rich from running a day care.