They have childcare at $32,773 and other “essentials” at $21,857. And the 140k figure is the pretax total to pay for everything with post tax net income.

I think savvy parents can get childcare for much less or if one of the parents is a low earner they can stay home with the kid(s). Especially makes sense if they have multiple children.

$32,773 x 1.2 =$39,327.60 in gross earnings to pay for childcare. That’s roughly a full time job making $20/hr. So for a lot of people it would be economically beneficial to have a parent raise their own child (at that $32k number). That or get a different arrangement like family or friends. I know in my neighborhood we had bootleg day cares and my grandma also helped out a lot.

Then once kids are off to school the calculus changes again.