Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

I live in Seattle now, am married, and have an infant. I find Seattle not friendly towards families at all. The going rate for a daycare here is 3.5k per month for an infant. My wife and I are both ~7%ers? individually and we can barely afford our home (a tall skinny townhouse with no yard) and the cost of 1 baby. Having a family is hard here... Also, I don't find Seattle safe for infants and toddlers, or anybody really..

What big tech wants are people who are willing to give up everything for the dream of making money, and that's what they got.

Edit: Our life is pretty good in any case. I would never let my kid go outside and play unsupervised in Seattle even tho I myself did this as a kid in my home town (the safety I was mentioning).

There's hardly any place which is really "friendly" towards professional families with infants. For safety reasons, daycare centers have to maintain staffing ratios so it's always going to be extremely expensive (unless you're poor enough to qualify for subsidies).

As for safety, for some reason those big tech employees keep voting for progressive politicians whose failed policies have ruined their cities. I guess voters are getting what they want?

1. Seattle is quite safe. Friendliness is different than safety

2. It all comes back to housing density/supply. As you say, daycare costs are dominated by staffing ratios/wages - which are a function of cost of living. The surge of high income earners + housing supply deficit = pricing out daycare workers (and daycares).

As a comparison, full time daycare in Sweden is $100/month for everyone.

I think this is one important reason that marriage is not as common, since the society is aligned towards that is should be possible to manage on your own if you absolutely need to.

I can't find a proper number but anecdotally I think maybe 50% of first time parents are married in Sweden.

And yes obviously this is paid by higher taxes, but seen an an investment to keep the demography (reasonably) sane.

People are such predictably complainers. When Google provided lots of benefits including daycare it was because “they want you to live there and have no life outside” and “the next step is company scrip”.

Now, it’s because they want you to give up everything.

Man, you can make millions working for big tech. At some point you have to take responsibility for your own self.

Seattle has a higher homicide rate than New York or LA and it is running well above its own historical rate; in 2014, the entirety of King County had fewer homicides than the city of Seattle did in 2024. It is safer than many other US cities, but US cities are quite dangerous by first world standards which is why many people opt to raise kids in suburbia.

The required staffing at daycare isn't driven by "crime safety" but an overprotective sense of protecting kids from themselves and each other. These are the required ratios. As low as 1:4 for < 1.

https://www.childcare.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/Washingto...

The ~$21/hr minimum wage, 1:2 staffing ratio, etc required by law in Seattle puts a very high floor on the cheapest possible daycare. Just being a bare minimum legal daycare business has a cost floor of at least $2k/month per infant.

I would define Seattle as much more friendly than it is safe — same of other similar cities like San Francisco and Portland.

The birth rate in Sweden is low and falling. Whatever they're doing to keep demography sane doesn't seem to be working. Like most developed Western countries, their current approach relies more on high levels of immigration. Essentially they have outsourced the hassle and expense of having children.

https://population-europe.eu/research/policy-insights/why-ar...

It is true. But that also means that the cost will not be there.

I'd claim it did work for some time (from the 1970s to the 2000s) because it allowed the transition to a society where women did not have to choose between children and a career.

I am not sure what is the reason for lower birth rate now. Maybe that young people have gotten used to that you always have a choice.

Relatively to the rest of Europe is still on the upper echelons so some of the policies do work.

The issue is: without hope for the future there's not much the State can do to push people into having kids. We live in an age of hopelessness, I don't have my parents optimism from the 80s, I'm starting to approach 40 and every 5 years something happen to chip away on the little hope I still have.

1:2 adults:kids ? That's crazy.

I mean, of all things for people to unfairly complain about, Google is one that I’m fine with.

Seattle is crazy expensive. It's why I moved to Tacoma half a decade ago. I was already working remotely anyways. Less money to own a 3k sqft home in a nice neighborhood (under $600k), and I can do a 45min or so reverse commute to Seattle for entertainment on weekdays.

And Tacoma has a lot of great restaurants, bars, and entertainment itself too.

I'm guessing there are lots of similar choices around Seattle. Or were - it feels like people got wise in the pandemic and started to take advantage.

I also suspect these are reasons people give because they feel more concrete and defensible.

I suspect a more significant but harder to concretize cause is that certain social changes have lead to the majority of young people being unable to form healthy attachments and pair bond.

The causes ranging from a high percentage of kids growing up in single parent households and forming avoidant personality styles, social media leading to higher rates of narcissism, dating apps setting unrealistic standards and a perception that there’s always a better option etc

> As a comparison, full time daycare in Sweden is $100/month for everyone.

Obviously $100/month covers a tiny fraction of the total cost of running a childcare service in Sweden. I am curious how much does state pays to cover the rest.

I met my now-wife after smartphones existed but before dating apps were really a thing. I am sympathetic to how hard it is to date nowadays - it seems very weird.

> 1:2 adults:kids ? That's crazy.

It sounds crazy, but it only applies in one case: a home-based childcare where the license holder has less two-years of experience and all the children are under 2 years of age and none of them are walking independently. For more experienced primary licensees, and older children, the ratios are higher. [0]

For childcare centers, the ratios are also higher: [1]

For infants (under 1 year) the required ratio is 1:4 with a group size of up to 8, or 1:3 with a group size of 9

For toddlers (under 30 months) the required ratio is 1:7 with a group size of up to 14, or 1:5 with a group size of 15

For preschoolers (under 5 years) the arequired ratio is 1:10 with a group size of up to 20

For school age children the required ratio is 1:15 with a group size of up to 30.

[0] https://app.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=110-300&full=tr...

[1] https://app.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=110-300-0356

The structure of the Swedish society is somewhat different in the sense that most families leave their children at daycare starting around 2 years old.

Unless you have more children, where you are allowed to leave the older child in daycare for a few days per week at that cost.

The economy behind this is rather obvious. It is better for the economy as a whole to leave children with professionals taking care of 4-6 children per teacher and let the (supposedly educated) mom work with what she is or will become specialized in.

Mentioning moms here, but the ambition is to have fathers stay as much home with the children as their mom, but this is comparing to e.g. USA.

And not mentioning the other reasons to want to raise your children full time, there are obvious and understandable reasons for that, and you are obviously free to do that and many do. But there are also good reasons for letting them meet other children in a well run daycare too.

> I would never let my kid go outside and play unsupervised in Seattle even tho I myself did this as a kid in my home town (the safety I was mentioning)

What makes you feel uncomfortable with this? Is Seattle particularly dangerous, moreso than a few decades ago?

A 4:1 ratio for infants seems quite reasonable and not overprotective. Children that age require a lot of attention. By the time you've fed and changed diapers for 4 babies it's about time to start the cycle again.

Somehow most countries in the world can manage it to keep low cost or even free.

I know, it’s peak HN-core to be that way.

Having had kids and cared for them as infants myself, and previously worked in a (very much unlicensed) home-based daycare, the 1:4 ratio for childcare centers and 1:2-1:4 (depending on primary licensee's experience) ratio for home-based daycares for infants are not at all unreasonable.

Yes, most of time that's going to seem excessive -- but it is not a cloud system with on-demand autoscaling, you have to set your capacity by peak demand, not average demand.

Why do you think im here?

Haha, more important to question why I am here if I hate it so much.

Really? Most countries? Do you have a list of those?

Some countries do manage to keep daycare somewhat affordable through huge subsidies (as well as lower wages for the daycare workers). I'm not opposed to increasing subsidies but that has to be balanced against other priorities. Elder care facilities face the same basic economic issue.

Also not accurate. I have a 2 year old in daycare in Seattle and the ratio is 8:1. I believe it’s 6:1 or maybe 4:1 for infants. I’ve never heard of 2:1 that would be absurd

Tacoma has gotten much much nicer over the past 20ish years and the aroma jokes are mostly vestigial at this point.

My best friend moved down there a few years ago (a family member sold them their house under-market and the price was too good to pass up). We all made our jokes but I’ve been down a lot and I actually really like it. It’s not that much harder to get to than west Seattle