Does it pay for one of us to stay home?
Quick answer
Compare take-home pay with the full cost of working.
Not salary against childcare. Then count what leaving costs later.
Compare take-home pay, not salary, against the full cost of working: childcare for every child, commuting, and the spending that only exists because you work. Many second incomes look marginal on that arithmetic during the under-five years. But the short-term comparison is the wrong one to decide on alone, because leaving work also costs future earnings, retirement contributions, and the difficulty of re-entering later.
What to consider
- Take-home, not gross
- The relevant figure is what actually lands in your account after tax and payroll deductions, which is often 25 to 35 percent below the salary number.
- Childcare is per child, and temporary
- Two under-fives can roughly double the cost. It also falls sharply at school age, so a couple of expensive years can be worth absorbing.
- Retirement contributions are the hidden cost
- Leaving work usually stops both your contributions and any employer match. Over a decade that compounds into a number far larger than the salary forgone.
- Career re-entry
- Returning after several years often means returning below the level you left. That gap persists, and it rarely appears in a break-even calculation.
- What you actually want
- This is not purely a financial question, and treating it as one produces bad decisions in both directions. The arithmetic tells you the price of the choice, not which choice is right.
The numbers
Childcare price variation
Varies by multiples between states and care types
Infant care is consistently the most expensive category, and centre-based care usually costs more than home-based. This is why we ask for your local number rather than assuming a national one.
Published source Child Care Aware of America
The costs people forget
Commuting, work clothes, bought lunches, convenience food
Commonly a few hundred dollars a month, and it disappears entirely if one parent stops working.
Our working range
The break-even question
What salary is needed to cover childcare plus work costs
The calculator solves for this directly, which is usually more useful than the net figure because it tells you what a different job would need to pay.
Arithmetic
Your options
Work out your number
Net per year from working
$23,250
Break even at $24,000 salary · $11.18 an hour
Working pays. This job adds $23,250 a year after childcare.
What this means
Any job paying more than $24,000 covers childcare and work costs in cash terms. That break-even figure is the one to carry into a job decision.
A short-term cash comparison only. It does not price lost retirement contributions, career progression, or the difficulty of returning to work, all of which are real and often larger than the yearly figure shown.
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Your action plan
Do firstThis week
- Get an actual quote from two local childcare providers rather than using an average.
- Find your real monthly take-home pay from a payslip.
- Add up commuting, work clothes, and bought lunches for one month.
- Run the calculator and note the break-even salary, not just the net figure.
ThenNext month
- Check whether your employer offers a dependent care FSA, which changes the arithmetic.
- If considering leaving, find out what happens to your retirement contributions and match.
- Ask someone in your field who returned after a break what re-entry actually looked like.
Keep an eye onWatch for
- Comparing childcare against gross salary, which overstates the case for working.
- Ignoring retirement contributions, which understates the cost of leaving.
- Forgetting the cost falls sharply at school age, so this is a few-year problem, not a permanent one.
- Treating a close financial result as though it settles the question. If the numbers are close, the decision is not really financial.
Dad did the math.papacalcs.com
Common questions
Should I compare childcare to one salary or to both?
To the take-home pay of whichever parent would actually stop working, plus that person's work-related costs. Comparing it to household income makes childcare look artificially small.
The numbers say staying home is better. Should I do it?
Not on that alone. The calculator covers the short-term cash position. It cannot price lost progression, retirement contributions, or how either choice will feel in three years.
What about the value of the work a stay-at-home parent does?
It is substantial, and our stay-at-home parent salary calculator prices it role by role at market wages. That figure is not income, but it is a fair answer to anyone who calls it not working.
Where these numbers come from
- Last reviewed
- October 1, 2026
- Geography
- United States
-
The Price of Care: annual child care affordability analysis
Child Care Aware of America · United States
Child care prices vary enormously by state and care type, which is why we ask for your number rather than assuming one.
Where to go next
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The figure most often quoted is about $233,600 from birth to age 17, from the USDA, for a middle-income married-couple family with a child born in…
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