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118 points blondie9x | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.952s | source
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TriangleEdge ◴[] No.43673589[source]
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).

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1. jandrewrogers ◴[] No.43673928[source]
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.
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2. euroderf ◴[] No.43674592[source]
1:2 adults:kids ? That's crazy.
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3. dragonwriter ◴[] No.43675005[source]
> 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

4. longdustytrail ◴[] No.43675755[source]
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