On Day Care, Google Makes a Rare Fumble

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/business/05nocera.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=login&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1215254818-59OmZCQO0HIy0VGdQlO4Ug

by terpua • 18 years ago

68 131 18 years ago

nytimes.com

ojbyrne• 18 years ago

I note that it was a website banned here that first broke that story.

alaskamiller• 18 years ago

Why yes, indeedy:

6/13 http://valleywag.com/5016355/google-daycare-now-a-luxury-for...

6/16 http://valleywag.com/5016952/googles-daycare-debacle-the-kin...

A broken clock's at least right twice a day, eh?

gruseom5• 18 years ago

Let's give them twice a year. And by reading here instead of there, I get it all filtered for free.

Edit: I went and looked at them. They're very similar to the NYT piece, only shorter. Perhaps HN should ban the NYT? :)

robg2• 18 years ago

I'm saddened, but not shocked, that very smart people think you need to spend $40k/year in daycare for children. Misplaced parental guilt?

diego• 18 years ago

If you are a young couple with an infant in the Bay Area you don't have much of a choice. A friend of mine and his wife decided that they would be better off if she quit her job and took care of their two kids for a few years, as her take-home salary wasn't enough to pay for day care.

robg2• 18 years ago

Is the limiting factor good quality observers/teachers? Why don't they open their own daycare? It's a lot of work, but if a parent has quit their job any ways, what's a few more kids?

bmj• 18 years ago

This is the case, I think, in most cities, even where the cost of living is not as high as the Bay area. At best, one salary is enough for day care costs, but very little is left over.

pmorici2• 18 years ago

40k seems excessive. say you paid the teacher very well they would get what like 100k a year? So you are saying that 1 teacher can only watch 3 kids? There are entire families with more kids than that.

comatose_kid2• 18 years ago

I spend about 2500/month for two children. I call it the macbook pro a month program :) So, about 30k/year, and about 5k of that is tax deductible (iirc). Misplaced parental guilt? Not really - it's just tough to find good care in the bay area for a low price without enduring a huge waiting list.

froo• 18 years ago

Hangon, so let me get this right...

Not only have Google basically doubled the cost of their childcare, but they're also charging people for the priveledge to be on the waiting list for that childcare?

They dont think this is a strange move at all?

gaius7• 18 years ago

The problem with flat organizations like Google is that they aren't really flat at all; all that happens is the org chart is hidden rather than out in the open. This story is nothing to do with daycare per se; it's to do with the crackpot ideological ideas of one individual who is very powerful on the hidden org chart, and is abusing her position to further her own social engineering experiments.

shimonrura• 18 years ago

I think it also gives a clear example of out how brittle "don't be evil" truly is, when administered by a "management committee" consisting of people who are mostly multimillionaires.

Perhaps a more equitable and user-responsive way to provide day care would be to let local offices or workgroups organize their own childcare groups, with some degree of corporate subsidy and other support.

gaius7• 18 years ago

You know, Marie Antoinette is famous for saying "then let them eat cake" when told that the poor of Paris had no bread. That wasn't her being cruel; she had been raised in such luxury that she simply couldn't comprehend that there was no food at all to be had outside of her cloistered world. The pre-IPO Googlers have all the characteristics of an aristocracy now...

railsjedi• 18 years ago

There's really not much here. Reads like a political hit piece, with "anonymous sources" relaying embarrassing quotes from Sergey Bin. I usually expect a lot better from NYTimes.

fairramone• 18 years ago

Further evidence that Google is NOT all that it is cracked up to be. The days of Google subsidizing child care would seem to be gone. Not that any other organization is much better at this particular problem, unfortunately.

noonespecial• 18 years ago

Don't Be Evil seems a bit like a levee system. Its easy when your town is small to keep it surrounded by levees and the flood waters at bay, but there comes a point when the town is just too big, a weak spot inevitably occurs and the flood waters come roaring in.

fiaz• 18 years ago

From the article:

"Meanwhile, someone at Google woke up one day and realized that the company was subsidizing each child to the tune of $37,000 a year — which nobody had noticed up until then — compared with the $12,000-a-year average subsidy of other big Silicon Valley companies like Cisco Systems and Oracle."

It seems that Google was quite generous over the years and finally realized that given the difficult economic times that they as a company must do something to bring their internal spending in line to a more realistic range. I don't see why Google should be penalized for such a move.

Unfortunately for Google, the fact that this is a move that affects children and families such a story becomes even more sensitive. Google is a business like any other business out there. Why are they being treated as though they are something other than a business?

sjh2• 18 years ago

Because the impression is about that they are different, an impression which they have fostered themselves. The opening words of the Letter from the Founders in the IPO prospectus reads: "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125040...)

condor• 18 years ago

It seems that google was generous in the way a company is generous by having a policy to pay for traveling employees' hotel stays at the Ritz, and when it learns that they are paying 4x more than competitors who have employees stay at the Marriot, changes its policy by having employees stay at the Ritz but charging them to cover some of the subsidy, instead of changing their policy and paying for employees to stay at a lower priced hotel. Apologies for the looong sentence.

pmorici2• 18 years ago

Exactly! The "evil" part about this isn't that Google wants to reduce their subsidy from 37k to 12k it's that Google wants to reduce the subsidy w/o lowering costs.

That said no one is forcing the parents to use Google child care and they could presumably band together and go to the company that ran the original lower cost care service and have them open a cost effective center near by, or something to that effect.

gojomo2• 18 years ago

If they were simply reducing the subsidy equally for everyone, the reaction wouldn't be quite the same.

Instead, they seem to be making the subsidy -- which includes the unique benefit of having children nearby onsite -- conditional on a high level of copayment. Only if you can already afford gold-plated child-care, then you get the additional Google subsidy and proximity. If the copayment is too dear, you wind up getting no subsidy, and your children wind up farther away.

It's like welfare for the already-well-off, which excludes the most needy.

cpr2• 18 years ago

I know one shouldn't question orthodoxy, but it seems insane to me to have children and then dump them all day, from a young age, with strangers. What's the point of having them if you're not raising them?

davidw10• 18 years ago

As the parent of a 2 month old, it's a difficult question we're facing right now. Who? How? When? Should my wife, with a doctorate in biochemistry, abandon her career completely and stay home? Should I? I'm not enthusiastic about those options. Should we hire someone? Not wild about that either. I think the best would be to kind of try and switch off, but it's going to require a lot of flexibility, and perhaps earning less money. The second is probably ok, depending on wherever it is we settle, the second may not be forthcoming from many employers. Sigh...

lisper• 18 years ago

With all due respect, did it never occur to you to get this all figured out BEFORE you had kids?

Create3• 18 years ago

Who? How? When?

You. The way you made her. The Famous 20% time?

parenthesis• 18 years ago

In my utopia it would be very much usual to be able to pursue a career part time/job-sharing while your children are young (or if you just prefer to be able to do other things outside your job). So each parent could work half- or three-quarters- time and thus share child care (with a moderate amount of external help), whilst still both pursuing their careers.

greyman• 18 years ago

Hi davidw,

Here in Slovakia, the most common way to solve it is that mother will stay at home for two or three years (it is also called "mother's vacation"), and then resume her career. I think that in most cases, this is the most sane option. Some mothers would stay at home for 6 years - but even in this scenario, it doesn't mean the abandonment of the career, does it? Can't she return to work after a few years and resume where she left?

I believe the first years of a child are most magical for the parents to watch...and those moments will not return: if your wife will miss them by being in the workplace, they just will be missed forever. So take care and enjoy being with your kid as often as you can afford!

jedberg2• 18 years ago

One of my old bosses had a similar problem. When she has her twins, both her and her husband had excellent carrers. What they decided was that she would stay home with the kids for two years, while the other worked. The idea was that should would be "out of touch" for a short enough time that she could get back in without much loss.

Then when it was her turn to work, her husband arranged to work part time from home. The kids were self sufficient enough that he could focus on his programming for short stints during the day and for longer periods at night when his wife got home. He was able to do enough work to "stay in the game." In fact, he liked it so much he decided to do it for another 2 years.

At that point the girls were in pre-school, so had about 3 hours each day to get work done while they were gone, could then play with them the rest of the day, and finish his work at night when his wife was there.

The girls are now 6 and in school for most of the day. He's looking at going back to work full time, but given how much he enjoys working from home, he may just keep doing that for a while.

Tichy3• 18 years ago

I imagine it is tough, but on the other hand, is it not only a couple of years (3 to 4 - then kids go to kindergarden and school)? Abandoning one's career might not be what is called for, merely taking a little break?

gruseom5• 18 years ago

it seems insane to me to have children and then dump them all day, from a young age, with strangers

It surprises me how rarely this gets said. It seems kind of obvious to me. In Canada a few years ago one party announced billions of funding for government-run daycare centers, while the other party (who won in the end) wanted to give the money as tax credits to parents. Seemed like a no-brainer to me, but I recall quite a controversy about how the latter proposal was "anti child care".

Perhaps the discourse is this way partly because of economics. Postwar economic growth was closely linked to women entering the workforce. A mass exodus of parents back into the home could have negative macroeconomic effects (that's the perception at any rate). From a conventional point of view, the "answer" is to prevent that from happening and commercialize child care itself.

soundsop2• 18 years ago

Seemed like a no-brainer to me, but I recall quite a controversy about how the latter proposal was "anti child care".

The controversy was that the latter proposal was anti public child care. The rival proposals were pushing in different directions the economics of the decision of staying home with children vs. working and putting them in daycare.

e40• 18 years ago

I'm guessing you don't have children.

Children being alone at home vs. being with lots of other children in daycare has many benefits.

First, over the years I've seen a lot of kids that stayed at home with mom that were not socialized well at all. Being in a group is how we evolved. It's natural and normal. Being at home with one parent all day is not normal at all.

Aside from socialization, being in the "home bubble" doesn't do a child's immune system any good. They need to be exposed to lots of stuff early in childhood to develop a strong immune system.

rdj• 18 years ago

I have three children. While I don't condone the "home bubble", I do strongly believe children need to be raised by their parents and not some daycare center. I have seen parents dropping kids off for 8-12 hours a day just to chase more money. Hell, we tried it ourselves. But guess what? You spend the money you have. If you can't make do with little, a little more isn't going to make a big difference.

Also, the kids being raised by strangers have behavior problems, not because they aren't socialized, but because there is a fundamental breakdown in the family structure.

We could debate this all day, but it probably isn't relevant for most here and no one way works for everyone.

ryanmahoski• 18 years ago

Would you agree it is a tragedy when a newborn enters daycare? Infants crave attention and they loathe situations when their basic needs go unmet. Can an overworked daycare temp better ensure your baby's interests than you? I am assuming we're not having kids unless we can financially plan for a nimble future.

cpr2• 18 years ago

Actually, we have eight, ranging from 7 to 25. (I'm an old guy, 53.)

Our kids are among the best "socialized" (as if that were the ultimate goal of life!) I've run across.

Yes, having a single child would be tough on that child in terms of learning to deal with others and their needs.

We educate them at home, or, rather, give them the tools & guidance to educate themselves, which is the only way it's ever going to happen.

It's been good that I've been working from home for 18+ years, running a "lifestyle" small software business (5 people distributed around the country).

pg3• 18 years ago

In preindustrial societies, children don't spend every moment with their parents. They roam around the village, and the adults and older children collectively keep an eye on them.

The problem now is, there's no village. The older children are segregated in separate schools, and most of the adults are at work. Daycare is, in effect, the closest substitute we've been able to invent for a village on this axis. It may not be the final answer. Which is why lisper's comment is so funny; it's not a problem society has even solved, let alone individuals.

lg• 18 years ago

When I was a kid, this is exactly how our (northeast Philly) neighborhood was. I never thought about it but I guess a lot of the older kids just didn't go to school.

greendestiny• 18 years ago

If you want your kids to experience freedom, daycare centres are not a good choice. Its a really restrictive environment, your kids will get to play a lot of games but they won't have much depth in their lives. I don't mean that play is superficial, but they'll be shunted through different activities to keep them occupied and not be trouble for the staff.

My wife ran a daycare centre, and she's staying home to raise our kids. The best solution is to find the social activities in other places. Daycare is far from the end of the world, but I dont see it as the preferable option, just an easy and not the worst option.

dangoldin2• 18 years ago

Have you ever read Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Thunderbolt-Kid-Memoir/dp/0...)?

He talks a good amount of growing up in Des Moines, Iowa where all the kids used to just go out Saturday morning to a nearby field, meet new kids, and spend the entire day there before coming back home to dinner. Right now it seems the kids are too focused on their tvs and computers to go out and actually partake in the backyard baseball games.

soundsop2• 18 years ago

it seems insane to me to have children and then dump them all day, from a young age, with strangers

I agree with you when it is an entire family of mother/father, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. raising children. But I can see how a mother (or father) alone at home all day with children may not be able to provide the same environment as a day care with several adults and many other children.

blurry2• 18 years ago

I grew up in daycare, and I am not sure why anyone would call taking a kid to play with other kids all day "dumping children with strangers". It's plain fun, and obviously after day one, the strangers are longer strangers.

Implying that only insane (read: ignorant and uncaring) parents would choose to work and leave their kids to play with other kids during the day is just typical conservative scaremongering. I am sure there are bad daycare centers out there, but then there are bad stay-at-home mothers out there also. One is not good and the other is not evil, both are choices made by equally intelligent and caring people.

steveplace• 18 years ago

Everyone is a good parent until they become one.

gruseom5• 18 years ago

Great line. It is, however, orthogonal to the subject of institutionalized child care.

Smart people I know who don't have children are often a source of great observations about child rearing in general and even specific parenting situations. That's the positive side of your point, and I've used it many times to get a read on what I might be missing.

The mistake they make is not in their observations, which as I said are often very rational, but in assuming that they themselves would do better. What makes parenting hard is that your emotions are involved in a way that is far deeper and more complicated than anything you've experienced before. It's easy to be a "good" parent when that condition is absent, for the same reason it's easy not to get hypothermia in Florida.

ivankirigin3• 18 years ago

I've always paid for our day care. But this is a bad idea because googlers would be more comfortable and spend more time working if day care were right there at work. Near work or near home are the two most convenient places. I'm told Mountain View is a cluster fuck for day care.

Of course they are missing a bigger opportunity in improving education here. Like universities, google should be experimenting with different kinds of education. They could make a big difference.

gaius7• 18 years ago

google should be experimenting with different kinds of education

Not quite true; Google is legally obligated to act in the best interests of its shareholders, and only that. That's true for any public company, and the board can go to jail if they aren't seen to be doing that. With great riches comes great responsibility...

ivankirigin3• 18 years ago

It's a huge business opportunity.

nickb• 18 years ago

The big issue that Google has (incidentally the same issue that MS went through) is the two classes of employees that they now have and the resentment and disconnect between the two groups. The two groups, of course, are those who are millionaires and are 'fully vested' and those new googlers who are not millionaires (and probably never will become millionaires). The latter group relies on a salary to live in a very expensive area and they count on every perk as a way to reduce their bills so they can make the ends meet each month. One site recently showed that average salary at Google is around $110K. In the valley, that's not a lot when you factor in the cost of living. So this increase in daycare is not a big deal to all those millionaires and yet it is a huge increase to those that can't afford it.

As Google matures and they start cutting even more of these perks, the two groups will start growing even further apart. It's a serious organizational issue and Google will need to tackle it quickly.

zach• 18 years ago

I agree. And really, this is supposed to be how Google tackles that issue: to maintain a high-perk atmosphere.

Google's atmosphere is similar to America's regulated airline era, where fares were set by a government body. Being unable to compete on price, they competed in other dimensions -- who had the newest planes, the best food, the friendliest flying atmosphere, the most trusted brand and the best service to their customers.

The best engineers are not more motivated by a somewhat higher salary, since they are passionate about their work, right? Indeed, all the perks in the world can't keep some of their employees from heading for the exits in the, er, face of more exciting opportunities. So why offer lavish perks at all?

The always-implied reasons are for its signaling effect and ability to increase the all-important worker productivity. But I would contend that the best reason for them to do so at this point is to reduce effects of the company's relative wealth disparity, which, should they rear their heads, clearly have the potential to be very corrosive. Highly democratic perks are a tonic for a de-facto aristocracy.

But the two risks of establishing a millionaire atmosphere are clear from this example. Firstly, of course, they're way expensive to the company, and that's hard to sustain. Secondly, workers, who may not have even cared about these things before arriving, have been conditioned to expect them.

So that sets up a bind, since the company needs to maintain the illusion that these benefits create. If you try to shunt some of the expense onto your workers, say to the 20% of employees that use 80% of some benefit, you run the risk of breaking the spell. Because the antediluvian class will take it in stride while the post-IPO gleaners will scream. So, Google: buck up and pay up.

esja2• 18 years ago

Absolutely. If they are not very careful with precisely this type of issue, it will become "the nomenklatura vs. the proles", and result in the leadership being insulated from what happens at the edges of the organisation - which would ensure the end of profitable innovation at Google.

This is an issue faced by all "unequal" social structures, including countries, tribes, corporations, governments, and others, and every human structure throughout history has required mechanisms for managing it. Google is not exempt.

menloparkbum5• 18 years ago

Mountain View is indeed expensive but $110K is $50K more than the average household income in the Bay Area. Aside from packing 3 people to a cube, Google pampers its employees above and beyond almost any other company in the area. There is free food, health insurance, free gym, free laundry, free haircuts and so forth. Taking this into account, a Google employee doesn't have to spend much money on anything other than rent, transportation and food for the kid. Even if renting a $3000/m apartment and leasing a Lexus a Google employee making $110K a year would still have $50K a year left over. "Making ends meet" perhaps isn't the most accurate way to describe the situation these people face.

arn• 18 years ago

But Google day care is said to now cost $57,000 for two kids in post-tax money (which means closer to $80,000 of pre-tax money). right?

snprbob86• 18 years ago

I'm almost positive I paid for my haircut while there...

The haircut, dentist, car-wash, etc perks aren't so much about being free as they are about being convenient due to being located on-site.

tectonic• 18 years ago

I worked there, the haircuts aren't free.

comatose_kid2• 18 years ago

Interesting observation, and I agree with much of what you say, except that there are few places where someone smart enough to get through the Google Gauntlet has to settle with renting an apartment for their growing family. And indeed, making ends meet is exactly what happens if they ever try to buy a house (forget about owning > 1400 sq. ft. in a good school district with even double that income).

jawngee• 18 years ago

Didn't anyone learn anything from Bubble 1?

Tichy3• 18 years ago

Why is daycare so expensive? Seems to me you need a room and two to three people to watch over the children. If you have 10 children in the room, and everyone costs 40000$, that would mean it costs 400000$ per year to rent a room and pay the salary for three people?

It seems child nurses earn a LOT more than the average IT person?

gaius7• 18 years ago

Consider any school. They have teachers, sure. And they have caterers, and cleaners, and contractors to maintain the infrastructure... There are a lot more people involved than just the direct service providers.

hugh2• 18 years ago

Caterers: preparing food for ten children isn't a big job, all they need is sandwiches and drink boxes which can be prepared in advance and taken out of the fridge.

Cleaners: It's only a room, it only needs to be cleaned once a day. Shouldn't be that expensive either.

Contractors to maintain the infrastructure: again, it's only a room, maintenance really shouldn't be that difficult.

It's obvious that there's a lot of money flowing into childcare, and it's not obvious where it's all going. It's certainly not going to the people who are doing the caring -- they make almost no money at all. Is it all going to into insurance and compliance with various regulations?

Tichy3• 18 years ago

Caterers are not a must I think - we didn't have any at school. Maintaining the infrastructure: isn't that usually included in the rent for a building? Maybe somebody should check where all the money for the schools goes ;-) But I think most teachers earn more than childcare nurses.

mynameishere• 18 years ago

Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500

"$1,425" was the subsidized price? If someone told me day care cost that much, I'd fall on the floor, but that's the good price. A woman where I work pays 30 dollars a day, and that's far, far too much. Unbelievable waste. Absolutely unbelievable. $1,425 is more than my total monthly expenses. I could theoretically make my living by watching one child. Clearly, this is an industry just waiting for its Sam Walton.

ph0rque3• 18 years ago

Unfortunately, this industry isn't very scaleable: how many children should one overseer watch, and still provide quality childcare? 2-7, IMHO, depending on the age of the children...

andreyf• 18 years ago

> Unfortunately, this industry isn't very scaleable

Clearly, you haven't seen my latest web-app...

utnick• 18 years ago

sounds like a good job for robot nannys

rw• 18 years ago

"employer-provided day care, at affordable prices, ought to be like health insurance, a benefit that every company provides as a matter of course."

If only this were true in more companies nowadays.

wumi• 18 years ago

as a side note why do I have to click through two pages of ads to see the 2nd page of the article? (I didn't hit 'print article' because I figured it was another click to see the whole page anyways)

These msm companies online (forbes, NYT, et. al) really have not figured it out yet.

schoudha• 18 years ago

I work at Google and this article has a few statements that make it clear the author's sources aren't credible (At least on this issue).

I wouldn't take this too seriously and I'm surprised that the Times:

1. Thought Google's daycare policy was worthy of the front page

2. Couldn't find a credible source who actual understands how and why the decision was made.

erdos22• 18 years ago

The Times is usually scrupulous about fact checking--except when it comes to supporting Imperial adventures and warmongering.

dzorz• 18 years ago

Someone mentioned 2-7 kids per "overseer". Where I went to kindergarden, ratio was 20-30:1. Even later in elementary/high school, the ratio was 25-35 kids per teacher.

dgabriel• 18 years ago

There are guidelines and laws about child/caretaker ratios. Infants need a lot more one-on-one time than older children.

vlad2• 18 years ago

Today Google Preschool, tomorrow Google K through 12. :)

time_management• 18 years ago

I'm going to comment on a micropoint, since the main issues seem pretty well covered at this point.

<i>Having discovered that Google is not, in fact, the promised land, a number of Googlers have left recently to join start-ups, hotter companies like Facebook — and even Microsoft.</i>

Wait a second... Facebook is "hotter"? That seems unreal. It's not that Facebook is a bad company, per se, but I'd much rather work at Google. I can't imagine top-talent wanting to have Mark Zuckerberg, an arrogant 24-year-old, as a boss. I can't speak for tip-top talent, but even still I'd rather gargle a fistful of nuts and bolts.

erdos22• 18 years ago

It's expensive to raise a family in the United States. The economics and the culture are against it. Add to that the cost of raising a family with someone who turns out to be the wrong person: your expected income after marriage must be reduced by the probability of divorce times the cost of divorce. Children necessarily complicate matters.

The problem would be alleviated somewhat if more and more people owned their own businesses, instead of the situation we currently have, of numerous workers employed by a wealthy class. At some point, these workers should simply refuse to work for anyone substantially more wealthy than they are. The value to an employer of having a large pool of interchangeable labor is calculable. Who created that value? Not the employer: the people. And it is the people who should and who must demand that value they created for themselves.

far33d• 18 years ago

I have a 7-month-old, and I believe that my wife has found the ideal care situation. She works, from home, part time. Hours are flexible, she can stay home with our daughter, and get most of her work done during naps or after I get home.

I believe as time goes on, this is going to become more and more common as there are more women in the workforce who are uninterested in waiting until their late 30s to have children and telecommuting gets to be more common.

It's constant hard work for her, but she would never trade her time with our daughter for the extra money from being full-time, even if that extra pay covered the child-care (which it wouldn't).

josh• 18 years ago

There are two elephants in the room here:

1. The exorbitant cost of the Bay Area (and other places like NYC, Boston, D.C., etc.) - there's a reason the Bay Area has the lowest ratio of children to overall population in the country. It's just not an affordable place to raise a family. It's essentially a giant suburbs without the traditional cost advantage of a suburb. You can live in Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc. for the price of living in a world class city like Chicago. You make that choice. Good for you.

2. Where are the grandparents? As someone from a more traditional culture, I don't quite understand the desire for couples to go it alone. Why not live near your parents or have them move to live near you? Grandparent-grandchild interaction is extremely valuable. It helps transmit your family values to your children while allowing your parents to stay mentally active and it also keeps them happy. It also significantly reduces childcare costs.

I'm not married yet and probably won't have kids for a few years but I really think this is the correct AND affordable approach:

*Evaluate where you are in life. There's no point waiting for the perfect time. Adversity is good for kids - it prevents them from growing up to be spoiled brats. I grew up in a Third World country and the only things my parents weren't cheap on were my health/nutrition, safety, and education. That's all that really matters. Have kids before you're too old.

A) If you have a lot of capital or high salary, stay where you are, and have one spouse work part time (can alternate), and suck it up till the kids are in school. Mix in a few days of daycare per week to allow for part-time.

B) If you don't have a lot of capital or a high salary, move somewhere cheap. Your spouse and you can both work full-time and afford daycare a few days a week.

In both situations, have the grandparents around! If you're an only child, it's easy - your parents will be there in a heartbeat. If you and your spouse are one of 2 kids, then your parents can alternate. If you and your spouse are one of 3 or more kids, live near your siblings. Raise your kids around your family.

On Day Care, Google Makes a Rare Fumble

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