baby money

Families are much smaller today than they use to be. Families with eight or ten children were much more common a few decades ago. Today, it is very rare to see a family that size. Well, unless it is on television of course. Why? I believe one of the main reasons is money. That isn’t the only answer. Otherwise we would see a lot of millionaires with huge families. Culture also has a lot to do with it too.

While at the midwife’s office waiting for our appointment to start, I grabbed one of those parenting magazines. Browsing through it I noticed a survey question that asked, “How many kids would you have if money wasn’t an issue?”  Two things were clear by the results. 1) People still didn’t want ten kids, but 2) they did want more.

Now faced with the reality of fatherhood I will also be facing the challenge of providing for a child. Like the majority of people these days we can’t afford to have one person at home to take care of the baby. Therefore, the challenge is to find not only someone you can afford to pay to take care of your baby, but also someone whom you trust.

I wasn’t worried at first when thinking about the idea of daycare. At least not until I actually started looking into pricing. First, we looked into the locations that are convenient to where my wife works. It went from disconcerting, to frightening, to down-right stressful. The prices were just way beyond what we could afford. It wasn’t looking good. Then I called a national daycare chain. My wife let me call this one. It was a hundred more dollars than the local places. Worriment started to set it. Not even half way through the pregnancy and I thought I may have to bring the baby into work with me. (Later Jess would point out to me that the national daycare chain is more because they pay their workers more and pay for their benefits, etc.)

I knew the search was getting desperate when Jess started to get worried. But, all was not lost. Not even a week later a co-worker of Jess’ gave her a daycare listing from a local paper. Jess gave a call immediately. Not only is the daycare affordable but it is close.