In America my friends pay $3,500 per child per month. The grass is always greener I suppose.

Gotta be San Francisco rates, or a very fancy place. Nicer daycares (usually Montessori schools that also take kids under a year) in our US city are around $900-$1200/m. Less-nice, $700-900.

No idea where you live. But the cost in sf, nyc, Boston, Seattle is all about 3k/month.

wtf on???

Out of curiosity, I did some spelunking. The US Department of Labor has stats[0] which summarize county-level "median yearly prices for one child at the market rate." Still TBD what the comprehensive data show at P99. That said, among the county-level medians, it appears the maximum estimated cost in 2023 is in Arlington County, VA, at $28,747 for a single infant, which is $2400/mo.

[0] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/topics/childcare/price-by-ag...

Hopefully that’s the infant:teacher ratio. 4 teachers per infant seems a little extreme, and means massive underpaid adults!

If I was the adult, I would need a 4 adult to 1 infant ratio.

But yes, thanks for the correction.

This depends on the age of the child, of course. If you want them looked after full time from 6 months it's a lot more; if you want them in after school club when they're 7 so you don't see them til 6pm then it's much less.