Children are not in daycare for their parents' entire lives. Once children reach kindergarten, many public school systems provide after-school care for working

Children are not in daycare for their parents' entire lives. Once children reach kindergarten, many public school systems provide after-school care for working parents that is significantly cheaper than private daycare. Some provide before-school care as well, but usually schools time their starts to community work schedules. If you make just enough to pay for childcare now and decide to, instead, leave your job to spend time with your children, you are giving up some number of years of professional job growth. When you return to the market, you will likely not have grown your skills and will most likely enter around the same pay level as when you left. If you stay in the market, you will have spent that money on childcare, but you will now most likely have grown your salary through wage increases and job transitions. In addition, while you may be giving up some time with your children during their early years, they also gain substantial growth with their peers and outside influences which may help them as they grow older. My wife and I made this choice with our children, and that was what the heck we were doing. Childcare was expensive, but we knew it had a time limit, and when our children finally entered public school, we were substantially better off than if one of us had left our jobs. We feel the experience for our children was great as well, considering they still speak fondly of their pre-K experiences.