The TRUE cost of American childcare: Mom-of-Four spent $60K in daycare fees last year - more than DOUBLE her mortgage payments - as she admits she is paying to stay in work – The Daily Mail
By Tilly Armstrong
A mother-of-four has revealed how she was forced to spend $5,000 a month on childcare fees last year because she wants to stay in the workforce.
Paige Turner, 33, who lives in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, said the payments - which amounted to $60,000 for the year - were worth double what she pays on her mortgage.
And she is far from alone. Accordings to figures from the charity The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the average annual cost of center-based childcare for toddlers in Massachusetts is $19,961…
Paige said she often faces questions about whether she will quit work in order to cut down on some of these fees.
Millions of Americans - mostly women - struggle with the financial breaking point of childcare.
According to Census data, around 4.5 million people remained unemployed in January this year because they were caring for children not in school or daycare.
In the first month of this year, there were 217,000 fewer women in the labor force than in February 2020.