An interesting factoid is that Nanny share, split 3 ways, costs the same, or less, than daycare. The only disadvantage of nanny shares is the unreliability, when one family drops out the other families have to work hard to fill the vacancy, which involves doing what amounts to personality interviews.
New daycares, at least in Seattle, also have huge costs associated with property. Basically the majority of existing home based daycares have been around for awhile, since land prices prohibit opening any new locations. E.g. buying a "house" for daycare would cost $4000 a month in mortgage payments at minimum, which sort of ruins the finances. Lots of exceptions and such of course to quibble over, but after spending over a year looking at daycares, very few new locations are opening.
Figure 4k a month, at 15 kids, is $266 of the expenses.
Labor is of course the main problem, but labor costs are high because living in cities is so expensive, and that is expensive largely because housing is expensive.
When touring daycares I like to talk to the child care providers one on one w/o management there, and I always ask how well they are treated. Universally they have said that the large chain locations treat workers badly, and that you also get what you pay for with the higher priced providers, workers who are paid better (but not great), are also treated better, stay around longer, and burn out less.
> GONZALEZ: You need one teacher for every four infants, at least.
Infant care is obscene. This is where long childcare leave can help, if parents both have 6 months off at 100% salary, that gets the kid through the first year, after which childcare becomes a lot more reasonable.
There is another huge drop off in complexity at 18 months, but I don't see a good way of getting families to that mark. Lots of daycares do 18m+ because the logistics are just way simpler.