Childcare costs: Parents now pay £67,000 per child in total

[KateMumsnet]

According to a report released today, the cost of raising a child and supporting them through university has risen to £227,226, with childcare costs showing the biggest annual rise at 3.7% - almost twice the rate of inflation.

In total, parents now pay an average of £67,586 per child for childcare - and, according to the report, mothers believe that they need to earn an average of £26,000 a year to make returning to work worthwhile.

Does this chime with your experience - and if so, how has it affected your family? Have you had to make difficult decisions because of the cost of childcare? We'd love to know what you think.

Just a little idea, but how about having a parent actually stay home with their children and raise them by themselves? Just because childcare is being normalised, does not mean it's a healthy option. The sums discussed are utterly ridiculous. You are paying a stranger on minimum wage to look after your child when your child would be happier with you. No job is worth it. Downsize, make do and mend for a few years and enjoy your children.

Makeclay it's about giving families the choice. You have your beliefs about what is best and I have mine. Neither is better, right or wrong and I believe it's best that parents can choose.

People who have more money always have more choices.
Having more money means you might be able to afford to be a SAHM or to be able to work and afford childcare.
Having very little might mean you need to work to live, but the costs of childcare outweigh what you would take home. Even with government help, the sums can seem impossible for the low or even middle earners - in fact often the middle earners.
I said before that I think that where possible people should do more financial planning ahead for children. I appreciate that in times of high house prices etc not everyone can save, but making choices about where to live in the country, jobs to do, lifestyle to live, savings to accrue can put you in a better financial position and give you more choices. I think many people could have more choices actually. I know its not popular to say and certainly doesn't apply to everyone, but for many it is possible to live in smaller and cheaperaccommodation either before and/or with children. It might be possible to live in a cheaper area of the country for some, where childcare is also cheaper, it might be possible to make savings on holidays, cars etc before having children, which gives more flexibility later. I think most people have some options, particularly before having children, which could make a difference to choices later. It is dull to plan ahead, but can mark all the difference. Even if the cost savings are small - perhaps a £150 a month differnce in mortgage because of a smaller house, or £3k saved by keeping the car for another 3 years in your 20s, can mean there is just a bit more slack when children come along.
I am not saying everyone has all of these options. I am not saying that people are to blame for the situations they find themselves in. I am saying that many could be in a bit of a better situation. And often the return to work/childcare cost etc decisions are based on marginal amounts of £100/£200 a month. Those earlier savings from accommodation/cars/holidays could be that £100 that is needed to give more choice and just make the most preferred option viable for the 2.5 or 3 years when childcare is at its most expensive.

But who tells you this stuff when you are in your 20s? 20s are increasingly told to make provision for a pension, but what about the closer costs of children? The information isn't out there and people live for the moment, or spend and buy based on 2 full incomes.

Many parents certainly try to ensure their teenagers, male or female, know about these issues - do you want to date a woman who expects to stay home, will you want to keep a woman, will you only want a wife you will work full time, what sort of profession will you choose and ensure your spouse is in which will give you choices in life etc etc. I don't think current teenagers and university students are unaware of these points, far from it. The cost of childcare and of giving up a career is well know to most.

Also be careful when picking careers. Some you will earn at 16 what you will earn when you retire at 70 and perhaps more fool you for picking such work or marrying someone in it. Other careers have progression and pay rises.

If you will have 3 children under 5 as we did and both worked full time then one nanny is cheaper than 3 nursery places and it also is cost effective because the closer the children are in age the cheaper in that sense it is. Ours looked after the twins and got the older 3 from school/did their dinner etc. Plan it out. Be sensible and live within your means. Don't live where prices are highest even in London. remember that for many children do best when women and men work full time and have a good income. Don't believe myths that children do better with a parent at home. No teenager thanks a mother for having changed 10 nappies a day rather than 2 but they may well be glad you fund their school or university fees and help them with their first house deposit.

makingclayblog are you really so stupid? What about parents where only one is able to work, or lone parents?

What a ridiculous, ignorant and insensitive post.

Flower, (or Xenia?)I'm not so sure everyone knows the stuff you mention.
The things you say are important information, but many are still advised to just pick GCSEs, A levels, degrees they enjoy and not consider the consequences. Many teenagers don't really know much about the cost of living, never mind the cost of children. They don't really know about the amount of career progression available in different jobs or whether it is easy to take time out of different careers. They simply don't know about life. And they aren't even that interested, because most of it seems so far off they cannot contemplate it.
You mention teenagers knowing these things. I suspect the teenagers you mention are in a minority. They are probably from more affluent backgrounds in the first place, receiving good educational and careers advice.....in fact the ones most likely to end up with higher incomes and more choices. It is the others in schools which push subjects because they are yay to get grades in which will make the schools look good in the 5 a*to c GCSE tables, rather than those which will serve them best into the future. So I think some people know, but most teenagers and 20s too and quite oblivious and living in the moment.

Not everyone of course can be a high flyer with a top paying job. Not everyone can take the academic GCSEs, A Levels and degrees and get into the highest paying jobs. Not everyone can and not everyone wants to. I don't think the advice should always be to do that - it is entirely inappropriate for many people, who simply won't have the skills or ability for the very highest paid careers, never mind the interest.
But I do think the information about where you live, the size of your accommodation, whether you save or spend all of your income on luxuries like new cars, lots of big nights out and holidays, is valuable for all, regardless of whether they are high flyers or not. The high flyers will always have more choices, but everyone can have a bit more choice if they make wise informed choices early on.

And I think that in an ideal world people would have more choice. They would be able to choose to stay at home or to work or to do a bit of both. I think they are different choices but neither is right or wrong.
I'm not sure any of us is entitled though to have exactly what we want just because children are involved. Being a SAHM is not a right. Families need to be able to support themselves, and if that means working, so be it. Working when you have children will often mean paying someone to look after the children - it is an additional cost of living that has to be acknowledged. The reality for increasing numbers, including those with decent jobs is that the figures currently don't stack up. With costs of accommodation, food, childcare or loss of earnings through being a SAHM, income is insufficient. In effect people cannot afford to have children, because they cannot cover all of the costs associated with life and having children.
This is problematic because we feel that having children shouldn't be only for the rich, but a basic human right. It's not just about childcare, but general costs of livi g in relation to earnings, and also to a lesser extent to do with how people choose to spend the income they have before and during the the time they have children, which affects this affordability. For people for whom having children is 'unaffordable' ie the costs of living including childcare are bigger than their income, no-one stops them having children, but the consequences are that people lose out on choice - the un affordability might push those who want to work into staying at home and receiving benefits (or not) because the cost of childcare is greater than the gain of 1 person working, or the unaffordabilty might mean those who would like to stay at home have to work.
Nothing is stopping us having children, but the consequence is on our choices about if we work and who looks after our children. Unless we can fully 'afford' our children, which means either income is sufficient to allow 1 parent not to work, or the work of 2 covers the full cost of childcare and all other costs of living, then choices will be limited. And more and more people are in the 'can't afford category'.

I return to my earlier point that early wise choices about money and spending in ones 20s can shift more people into the 'can afford children' category - they will have more choices when they have children. I fully appreciate that many people will be left in the 'can't afford children' category however careful they are - and they will remain without choice. It is very sad that our society doesn't pay hardworking people enough to cover the costs of children (ie 1 person to stay at home and care for them, or that wages exceed childcare) but that seems to be the growing reality.

Makingclayblog, well we could do but we'd be way poorer if we dropped and income rather than just sucking up 3-4 years of childcare. Plus there's no way my DS would have been as happy if I'd stayed at home with him - I am 100% not cut out for full time care of a toddler.

Some you will earn at 16 what you will earn when you retire at 70 and perhaps more fool you for picking such work or marrying someone in it. Other careers have progression and pay rises

Not everybody wants pay rises and progress very well without them. progression isn't only achieved through monetary gain.
Some people are very happy with their chosen career, gain great pleasure from the work they do, irrespective of income.

Others are governed by generating wealth from a large income.

"Some you will earn at 16 what you will earn when you retire at 70 and perhaps more fool you for picking such work or marrying someone in it. Other careers have progression and pay rises"

If it wasn't for those "foolish" people who would care for your children, clean your house, etc, etc.

CW, makes sensible points. I was not suggesting every teenagers knows that if they pick hair dressing or working in Tesco they may earn a bit less than if they become an actuary or surgeon but it is certainly worth as parents pointing those things out and ensuring children know that we are not just flotsam and jetsum floating on a sea without a rudder with no control over life and no responsibility for our choices but that we can steer that boat to an extent, make those choices, defer until tomorrow an indulgence so we get A grades today, live in that awful hovel whilst saving to buy our first flat or whatever.

And yes of course I accept that some people are more than happy to live a life on £20k a year with a husband on the same. (My son is a post man). However I want people particularly women to make informed choices knowing the full range of life options before them and how much many women make in some jobs sadly some teenagers never get to hear about when they pick low salary work.

Flower the difficulty is that in our society, you're pushed to succeed at 16 or 18 and marked to fail or flourish from there.

How many 16 year olds do you know that actively know what they want to do with their lives?

Not to mention the fact that to get the A grades to become a surgeon you need to be academically clever, which a lot of people are not. It's easy to imagine getting A grades if you're clever in a way that the education system acknowledges.

Using myself as an example: I have never been ambitious in terms of a career. I work hard but I have never had any particular profession that I've wanted to aspire to. I did A Levels, I got a degree, I now earn £20k and my DH is the same. That doesn't mean that we weren't aware of the "full range of life options". We've just got on with life and done what we need to do.

We all differ. I have teenagers and one thinks he knows what he might do and the other is not sure. I think he attempted to see the school career officer last week and forgot the appointment but may be at least he's thinking about it.

There is no need to earn what I earn to have a life of happiness. You can be happy living in a mud hut in a jungle. I just want teenagers to know what choices are out there . What I don't want is people not knowing the impact of choices made and 10 years later regretting it because they had no idea of the income differential between job X and job Y or the impact of the ex poly on their CV compared to the top 10 university or whatever. By all means go to the ex poly but know what impact it might have (and indeed it may be better for some plans than others).

Flower I'm amazed that someone evidently educated can have such a one sided view, and find it so difficult to imagine that others may have different views on life than them!

I had the a levels, the top 10 uni, the professional qualification..... and hated it. Far happier now earning a third of what I could be on had I not walked away.

Money does not = success.

Money does not = happiness.

I find it tragic that you think the solution to everything is earn ££££s.

I think some of the things Flower (Xenia?) is saying are correct, but her useful points get lost on many, because of her daft comments which call people 'fools' for choosing low paid careers or those with no progression, or partners in those categories.

Yes, teenagers and people in their 20s need to know the consequences of their choices. They need to know which routes and careers are likely to lead to the highest paid careers (and many young people receive poor advice about GCSEs, post 16 education, universities and careers) but also about financial planning, regardless of the type of education and career path they follow. They all need to know childcare is expensive and that choices about where we live (cost of housing) and whether we spend our money on new cars, frequent big nights out and holidays, affects what can be put towards housing or childcare or pensions. It is true, that if we opt into lesser paying careers (if we had the choice of a higher paid one) we will have less choices later on regarding childcare. We might be happier and more fulfilled overall in our lives (and personally I think that is very important) but poorer - quite simply a fact, and the consequences of it for childcare options are a fact too. Likewise if we spend beyond our means in our 20s and party like mad, again there may well be financial consequences later on when we consider our childcare options. early choices do have consequences. Flower is right about that. But not everyone has many early choices and she misses that!

There needs to be acknowledgement that most people will not and cannot be high flyers. By definition, if everyone was, no-one would be - everyone cannot be top in earnings terms! Doesn't take a mathematician to see that. So even if people know about the top careers and best universities etc etc, the majority will achieve mediocre GCSEs and few will get really stellar A Levels or onto the most competitive courses - by nature, competitive means not available to most. So it is ridiculous to tell people who are Nurses or office workers, or teachers, or shop workers or earning minimum wage in a call centre, that they made poor choices. For the vast majority of these people, being a top lawyer or surgeon or city banker was NEVER AN OPTION even if they had the information about those careers. To think that all those in 'normal' and not highly paid jobs, or married to people in those jobs, have somehow failed and picked the wrong job, is ridiculous and shows an amazing lack of awareness about society. The only things most people can do to improve their options regarding childcare, are to get themselves into the best possible financial position - it might be saving early on, making big sacrifices,living in cheap areas, living nearer to family etc etc. not everyone can even do these things or make any savings, but many people could make some different financial decisions early on, which would make a small, but perhaps significant difference (in the context of those 2.5 years of most expensive childcare options, often swinging on the marginal £100/£200 that wise financial planning might provide)

I suspect Flower is not in genuine contact with many people who are doing 'normal' jobs and the teenagers/20s she knows are equally from a very narrow section of society. She knows adults who were clever, highly educated and motivated and who had many opportunities and got high paying careers. She knows teenagers/20s who have been to top schools and had the benefit of parents from professional backgrounds and a knowledge of routes to success, and whose schools have taught them to pick the 'right' GCSEs, A Levels and degree courses and make contacts leading to the top jobs. All well and good for them. They are the very lucky ones who have had privileged opportunities and it is important to recognise that and the lack of a level playing field, rather than to see people struggling to get the childcare option they desire, as the consequence of stupidity on their part.

I don't think childcare should be 'cheap'. As it is, the workers are generally not paid well. Over a couple of generations, this has limited the number of young people who would find it a desirable career because, for the most part, it's not. What you are paying for are the costs of leasing the land, of running the business and yes, the nursery or childminder making a profit hopefully (although the margins, even for large nurseries, are very slim).

The payoff is increased career prospects and security. Too many people think there is an army of people out there who would love to look after their children/run a childcare business for peanuts whilst they enjoy all the benefits of a double income. There aren't, probably never will be, get over it.

I cannot quite see how when I make a post like people can be happy in all kinds of jobs and even in huts in jungles, can be interpreted even by anyone suboptimal to meaning I am saying you need money to be happy! That is rather a complete about turn of what I actually said.

I doubt anyone on here would disagree with me either in saying teenagers need to know about all options so they can make informed choices. It would surely be only people saying everyone should know their place and not get above themselves who could possibly disagree with me.

No one is saying childcare should be cheap. We are saying childcare should be affordable. The two are often confused but mean two different things.

I think there needs to be a change in ratios for a start but the resistance was huge when it was proposed. Ironically most of the resistance seemed to come from sahm's who are evangelical about their choice.

What tangible influence could SAHM's have over ratio policies anyway? None I should imagine. If they change the ratios, it does mean less staff costs but it doesn't necessarily mean that childcare will be more affordable. More than the staff costs, it's the land costs in major urban areas which are really prohibitive to setting up this sort of business. Childcare business also have much higher overheads and outgoings than most businesses (again, even with staff costs taken out of the equation).

If ratios were decreased, there would almost certainly be moaning from parents (and others further on down the line such as teachers etc) about the quality of care. Personally, I don't think having lower ratios necessarily guarantees quality of care anyway (if all you can attract are those with no other options) but it does mean the carer is possibly less stressed out, especially if the charges are aged 2 years and under. It should be seen by the parents as coming equally from both their incomes to allow both of them to work fulltime.

The difficult thing is that many people need 2 incomes to live now. They needed 2 before they had children and before the additional cost of childcare. They basically still need 2 incomes after children too, plus the cost of childcare if the same standard of living is to be maintained. This is why having children is unaffordable for many in reality now. The consequence isn't they don't have children, but they don't have choices about childcare - they have to stay at home because they won't earn enough to cover childcare (means less income as only 1 income) or they work when wanting to stay at home, to get 2 incomes (which means less income due to child are costs). Basically having children costs one way or the other and if you were only just managing on 2 incomes pre-children, the numbers with children just don't stack up.

I agree about childcare costs reflecting high rents, insurance costs etc and not just a big fat profit for the nurseries or childminders.
The reality is children are very expensive and incomes have stagnated in real terms over the last 5 years, meaning most are now worse off. I can't really see the government making significant changes that will seriously alter childcare costs...perhaps a bit of tinkering, but nothing to really mean children are affordable. But people manage and still have them. They make sacrifices, get into debt etc. the very expensive phase is short lived for most,which is why they can struggle through a period when their income is effectively insufficient for their costs. Has knock on effects though later to housing costs, financial health etc.

I was listening to Dave Cameron being interviewed on R4 today. He was challenged on policies that would make the poorest families with 4 children worse off. His answer was to get a job. I thought of to this thread.

I heard him. He was really good and said what most people think who work very hard, the 10 hours a day he mentioned. Why shoudl women and men work so hard for those to whom a benefits cap as high as £26k is applied. Most of the nation is with him on that even Labour supporters. That is £34k of before tax income. If I chose not to do a stroke of work in future I would get £18k just for housing alone - that's ridiculous. So he has most of the country with him in wanting a much lower benefit cap and ensuring fairness - that those who work and limit their child numbers to those they can afford are not supporting those who don't work to have lots of children they expect hard working parents to afford. At least it makes it clear for whom to vote next time. Tories all the way - 100 days and counting down.

MrsCakes I totally agree. The reality is that with 4 DC we could never afford to live in the UK until the 3rd was at school full time. I have no idea how someone on minimum wage with 1DC let alone 4DC could afford to work FT. It makes zero sense which is why I do think childcare should come from gross income and be deducted from income when calculating benefits (childcare should not be part of the benefits cap). I think we would then see the poorest families with 4DC working.

I would love to have 4DC and can do it here in the US. The most I would pay for childcare is $2375 a month (a baby and 2.5-3 year old) unless I had twins which would be $2800 a month. I also did a bit more digging and found out the cost of wrap around care for school aged children in our town. The cheapest runs at $150 a month with the most expensive being $350. It is written into the teachers contracts so teachers stay back to do lesson plans etc in the classrooms with children doing homework in class or going to the music wing to practice if they take lessons. The teachers who start at 7am leave at 3pm and the parents starting at 10am leave at 6pm.

Parents are able to sign up their DC for activities such as music, sports, cooking, arts and crafts or theater. With the afterschool being so cheap I am told that a lot of parents sign up their kids for activities. I know the cooking classes cost $200 a semester and includes the ingredients needed each week. I think schemes like this are what is needed to close gaps in education and help those from poorer backgrounds do better academically.

4dc,you're having a laugh.

You're seriously moaning about and want sympathy for not being able to afford childcare for 4 dc.

I couldn't afford to raise 4 dc soooooo I haven't got 4 dc.Plenty of people would love 4 dc but can't afford it so settle for 2.

Have the family you can afford and stop expecting others to fund the family you can't afford.