I often say raising a child in the United States is like taking all your money, setting it on fire and flushing it down the toilet. A middle-income American family will spend an average of $12,980 annually per child, according to the most recently collected data. Among parents paying for child care for the under-6 crowd, expenses may be significantly higher. The average cost of full-time, center-based care for an infant varies by state, but it can be more than $15,000 a year. These tremendous costs show no signs of abating, so we’re doing a deep dive on finances over the next week in a collection of articles called “The Price of Modern Parenting.”Two articles focus on individuals in the “sandwich generation” — parents of young children who are also caring for older relatives.

Source: International New York Times February 12, 2020 13:52 UTC