Can't afford Google Daycare?

Recently, there has been chatter about the day care fumble at the Googleplex in California. Google has been nurturing state-of-the-art daycare, following its philosophy of doing things better than anyone else in the world. But it’s not cheap. The search engine company just raised their prices by 75%. If you work for Google and want to put your infant in daycare, it’s now going to cost $2,500 per month. OUCH. But considering that some Google workers aren’t hurting for cash (those lucky I.P.O millionaires), maybe this isn’t such a big deal.

Personally, $30,000 a year for daycare is bit steep for me. But then again, I live in Hong Kong where I’ve come to expect affordable help. Full-time nanny service, professional house cleaner, cook, car washer, and gardener costs less than $475 USD per month. Full time means 6 days per week! And if you want to send your child to one of the best half-day school facilities (before they are 6 years old) in order to fit in that precious social time, it will run around $800 USD per month. But that’s just if you want to send your little Einstein to the creme de la creme of Hong Kong Kindergartens. Alternatively you could ship your child to the local Chinese kindergarten for less than $200 per month. So you do the math. (Well, actually it comes out of no more than $1275 a month or $15,300 a year).

In the start of September, we will send Maeli to the local Waldorf school on Lamma. It’s an English medium school with one teacher and a class of 8 children between 3 and 6 years old. Considering that we pay our domestic helper above market rate (whom we’ll be keeping around), our costs for Maeli will be $1,200 USD per month. Full-time daycare in the US averages around $1,100 USD per month. And yet the average American mother and father still miss out on the home services of cooking, cleaning, babysitting, gardening, etc.