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Comment by fastbeef | Hacker News Reader

I have to say, the first day at work after 9 months of parental leave is... sublime. To be able to go to the bathroom and close the door is a pleasure you don’t know until you have to go without.

As an aside, what happens to children in the US between 1 month until they start kindergarten (and at what age)?

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A lot of daycare has a start age for kids. Our daycare it's 3 months old. So our 2nd son was in the same daycare as our older son after a few months. A lot of daycare providers also provide a discount for 2 kids. 10% isn't unheard of.

That said the cost of this care is astronomical. We've seen places that are 20K per child and others that are 10K per child. The range can be even larger within the same town, not just metro area.

That cost is in part because a teacher can only watch 4 kids from ages 3(mo) - 18 mo, 6 kids from 18 mo-3 year, and 8 from 3-5. Or something like that (state dependent) Costs also go down as the kids get older. Presumably because it's an hourly rate per child being watched and as you can take on more kids you can charge more per teacher.

https://www.daycare.com/california/state51.html

I feel tremendously for any single parent who has to send their children to preschool. Some places do have free daycare, I think Washington DC is on that list from 2-5 which is awesome.

Private daycare or nannies fill the gap.

There is also stay at home parents. Somewhere around 20%.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-home...

Or family member provides daycare, or Mom quits her job (not to be gender biased, but it breaks that way because of breastfeeding). Private daycare for very young children can be tough and expensive, and nannies/au pairs can be more than the take home of a single parent in a household with two working parents.

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