Scripps News: Stay-at-home parenting is becoming more common as cost of child care is increasing

April 25, 2024

Stay-at-home parents of two children do roughly 200 combined hours of unpaid labor a month, according to a new study by Beike Biotechnology. That labor would cost between $4,000 and $5,200 per month if they paid for child care.

Some say having a stay-at-home parent is starting to become a more viable option in today’s economy, and parents really must sit down and crunch the numbers on what works best for them.

The Beike Biotechnology study could help in making that decision, by putting a value number on how much a family could save, and how much being a stay-at-home parent might really cost.

“We wear a lot of hats like we're not only the taxi driver and the Uber Eats driver,” said Corrine Christian, a stay-at-home parent of 18 years with seven kids in Castle Rock, Colorado. “Whether your kids are in school or whether they're not in school and they're at home with you, you're having to outsource and you're having to pay somebody else for what you can be doing.”

Christian says with inflation and the cost of child care going up, stay-at-home parenting could be a more viable option for households to save.

As of 2021 the Pew Research Center reported 18% of parents did not work for pay, and dads even represent 18% of stay-at-home parents, up from 11% in 1989. A 2023 State of Motherhood Survey by the advice site Motherly found more respondents clocking in as stay-at-home moms, up 9% from 2022.

Christian hopes that all this research can help other parents with making that decision but says you can’t put a price on motherhood.

“The person who loves them the most gets to be an active participant in their life.” Christian said. “That's invaluable.”