My husband is military, I quit my job due to severe morning sickness with my first pregnancy. We could afford it and we both agreed to it, he had grown up with a SAHM and wanted the same for his kids. About a year into it I wanted to go back to work. We moved and he deployed a lot so me going back to work just didn’t work out. Cost was a big factor, but also I would have had to leave my child in daycare for 10hrs a day. We had another baby 3years later and moved again, we didn’t qualify for any sort of assistance or early prek. When our oldest started kindergarten I looked into going back to work and got hit with a higher cost (different state,different rates) for daycare, before and after school care, gas, food, etc. I would have barely made $300-400/month. I looked into in-home daycare’s and it was hard to find anyone willing to take 2kids. I dropped it since I really didn’t need to work, I just missed it and wanted to go back.
We moved again and we agreed to have another baby, our last one. I knew he would be deploying and where we moved to wasn’t exactly a great place for my career so I was okay with this. I did look at preschools in my area and I was shocked to see how long the waitlists were in this town. The cost of living is fairly high and still don’t qualify for anything. I tried enrolling my 4yo at a preschool through the public school system but we made too much money. Otherwise it was coming out to around $1800/month. I looked at other prek programs and they wanted $25-30/hr. I would be making $33/hr working but I can’t afford daycare for 2kids, plus before and after school care. Not knowing anyone really sucks too.
I wasn’t looking to go back to work but I have job searched out of curiosity. Seattle would pay great for my career, but daycare costs, after school care, my husbands deployments and the commute to and from Seattle would put me at 12-13hr workdays and I would barely see my kids for maybe $500/month. It wasn’t a good trade off, too much stress and time away from my kids. Plus I would have other after school activities to attend to, with no family or friends to help.
I will occasionally work doing grubhub or instacart, I can bring in some money there.