Julia Smith, a public defender in a major city in the northeast, has made every major life decision over the last few years based on the cost of childcare.
When she and her husband, who works as a carpenter, decided to have a baby, they realized that their salaries would not cover the cost of daycare, which came to more than a thousand dollars a month. So Smith quit her job in state government to work at a corporate law firm, where she would earn more money even though the work was less fulfilling to her. (She’s asked to use a pseudonym to speak openly without any fear of career repercussions.) “Getting a higher-paying job was absolutely part of my family planning process,” she tells me. “I had to quit a job that I loved to have enough money to pay for my daughter’s daycare.”
