When Child Care Costs Half a Paycheck, Bay Area Parents Must Choose: Kids or Career

This story is part of How We Get By, a KQED series exploring how people are coping with rising costs in the Bay Area and California. Find the full series here.

Annie Malekzadeh was shopping at a Joanne Fabrics store in Concord a couple of years ago when she had an encounter that stung her.

An older woman who saw her pregnant while pushing her toddler son in a shopping cart, told her: “I don’t know why you would want more than two [children]. It’s basically impossible in the Bay Area.”

“At the time I was like, how dare she?” she said. “But now I’m like, oh, [she] was right. It’s really hard.”

Malekzadeh wound up having another baby, and the decision to have three kids pushed her child care expenses to roughly $56,000 a year and ultimately changed the course of her career.

Rising child care costs in the Bay Area are forcing parents to make painful tradeoffs, either by passing up career opportunities, cutting back work hours, or quitting altogether. For families with multiple young children, these expenses can surpass a parent’s entire salary, disproportionately affecting mothers and shaping their long-term economic security.

Malekzadeh’s story is just one example of how the gap between what families can afford and the actual cost of care is pushing parents to find creative solutions — and prompting calls for systemic change.

Child care has long been expensive for parents, but recently it’s been even more so.

Prices shot up almost 30% between 2020 and 2024, outpacing inflation by 7 percentage points, according to a survey of child care resource and referral organizations around the country. In just the last year, 40% of child care programs in California reported raising tuition to offset rising operating costs like insurance and food.

Four years ago, Malekzadeh was a math teacher at a private middle school, earning roughly $32,000 annually and working 25 hours per week. At the time, her son was in kindergarten and her daughter in preschool. Her husband is a psychiatrist, she said, and because he earned more money and worked more hours, most of the parenting responsibilities went to her.

With their joint income, the cost of preschool and before- and afterschool care was manageable for the Pleasant Hill couple. But when their baby boy came along in July 2022, and needed full-time infant care, the amount for all three kids’ care — about $4,700 per month — was almost double her teacher’s salary.

“It didn’t make sense,” she said. “My job wasn’t really making enough of a contribution to justify that kind of expense.”

By the time the school year ended, Malekzadeh decided to quit, even though she didn’t want to leave a profession she loved.

“My grandparents were both educators,” she said. “They were beloved by their community, and they were really excited when I chose to become a teacher. So that was my plan, and I didn’t ever expect to deviate from that.”

The move is saving about $600 a week in child care. The older two are in public school, and the youngest is still in preschool. While he’s in care, Malekzadeh takes classes at Diablo Valley College as she pursues a master’s degree in math, which she hopes will ultimately lead to a higher-paying job to make up for time away from the labor market.

“When you quit to stay home with your kids, it creates gaps in your resume that a lot of places don’t necessarily look nicely at,” Melakzadeh said. “You have to have some kind of explanation for that, which might translate into less pay.”

Child care prices vary by region and depend on a child’s age and the type of provider. In California, full-time infant care in 2024 cost an average of $22,628, which is 16% of the average married couple’s income and 50% of a single parent’s. Bay Area families pay the highest child care prices compared to other parts of California.

The spike in prices came as companies began mandating employees return to work and child care providers lost federal funds meant to help them recover from the pandemic. Less flexibility and high costs led to a decline in labor force participation for moms of children under the age of 5, and college-educated moms in particular, according to an analysis by the financial firm KPMG.

Their labor force participation declined by 2.3 percentage points, while the number of college-educated dads of young children who were working or seeking a job continued to increase.

“Families are facing child care prices that are higher than the price of rent or mortgage. So this is a huge problem. It’s one of the biggest expenses in a family’s budgets,” said Julie Kashen, a researcher at The Century Foundation.

The progressive think tank conducted an October survey of 1,400 voters about their affordability concerns. Kashen said that while all families are facing rising costs, it’s women who experience a greater threat to their economic security.

“Women are faring worse in terms of taking on debt to cover their basics, borrowing from friends and families to pay the bills,” she said. “So when you add child care on top of that, I think it’s incredibly challenging.”

Those challenges led Amy Cruz to walk away from a six-figure nursing job to freelance as a dance teacher and care for her 3-year-old son, Nolan.

Until he was about two years old, Cruz paid $3,000 per month to share a nanny with another family for just four days a week of child care (on the fifth day, she leaned on family members to look after him). While child care wasn’t the only reason she left her job, it was a significant factor.

“Essentially, half of my monthly income was going to child care,” Cruz said. “Watching that much money leave our account every month was tough.”

Once Nolan was old enough to start preschool, she enrolled him in a three-day program near her Berkeley home, which cut her child care costs in half. When he’s there, she teaches dance — something she did professionally before going to nursing school — to afford his tuition. With a second baby on the way, she also figured that it was “worth it to make a little less money but be able to be with my kids more.”

Economists call child care a broken market because the actual cost of providing care is a lot more than what families can afford to pay. In California, the demand for licensed infant care exceeds supply because it’s the most expensive and labor-intensive. Babies need constant care, and California has strict rules limiting the number of children each adult can care for in a licensed child care home or center.

At the same time, low pay and benefits have made it tough for child care providers to attract or retain early educators. In January, nearly half of providers said they didn’t have enough staff to enroll children at capacity, according to a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

“For providers, energy costs, food, insurance have all gone up,” said Matthew Nestler, senior economist at KPMG. “They can’t necessarily raise their workers’ wages to the degree that they would like to.”

The shortage can cause parents to weave in and out of the workforce. Malezadeh first left her job when her eldest child was born eight years ago, and she couldn’t find an open infant care slot when her maternity leave ended. She didn’t know she had to reserve months in advance.

“We didn’t actually find any kind of daycare spot for him until he was two, and by then, I was already expecting my second child,” she said.

Malekzadeh stayed out of teaching for four years and went back to work when her first two kids were a little older.

But after a year, the costs of infant care for her youngest, combined with her older children’s care, were too great, and she left her job again.

Kashen, from The Century Foundation, said public investment can help close the gap between what parents like Malekzadeh and Cruz can afford and what it actually costs to provide child care. As an example, she pointed to New Mexico’s recent move to offer free child care for all residents.

“When governments invest in child care, that is the biggest thing that we can do because right now what we have is essentially a DIY, do-it-yourself, system for families where everyone’s on their own,” she said.

Last month, Cruz gave birth to a daughter. During her pregnancy, she considered becoming a nanny so she could take care of her baby alongside someone else’s, allowing her to make some money. She also thought about continuing to teach dance part-time, and while she’s at work, trading child care responsibilities with other parents.

“I’ve been thinking about it more and more, because I can make more money teaching dance than doing my own nanny share,” Cruz said.

Building a community with other parents has helped Malekzadeh get by when she’s in a child care pinch.

“If you’re gonna be five minutes late to pick up, you have to have someone else that you can text, and be like, ‘Can you grab my kid for me real quick?’” she said.

Malekzadeh tutors on the side to make some money and said she’s constantly revising the family budget as grocery and health insurance prices go up.

“I’m looking at where can we cut costs and what bundle can I use or coupon can I use to save money? I do most of our shopping at Costco now because buying in bulk is usually cheaper,” she said.

Her family is also taking fewer trips, but Malezadeh said, despite these compromises, she’s grateful she has been able to afford raising three kids.

“I feel very fortunate that I got through having our second kid and didn’t feel done,” she said. “Instead of living with the potential of regretting it for the rest of my life, I was able to say, ‘Hey, can we have another one? Can we work that into the budget?’”