Goodnight Mom

A recent study puts the average cost of raising a child at $20,813 annually. The Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley) was listed as the number one most expensive place to raise a child in the USA. Here they calculate the average annual cost of raising a child to be $35,647. That’s more than the starting salary at the first office job I had in the States (in 2012)! Plenty is written about the financial costs of raising children. Some articles are about the overall cost of raising children , others focus more specifically on the cost of childcare . The case of childcare costs is complex. Parents need childcare in order to work, but are they earning enough money to cover the cost of childcare? Can it be justified? I wanted to write more about the emotional rollercoaster of hiring childcare, specifically occasional babysitters. Friends of mine with young kids, and myself, have experienced so many difficulties finding adequate and reliable childcare. Especially for babysitting, when