• Six moms say they spend $500 to $2,600 monthly to create their paid villages.
• Childcare is the most substantial cost, while many also hire cleaners.
• They say paying for help is a necessity when both parents work.

Amy Johnson, a mom of two in Cleveland, can count on her mother and mother-in-law to help with the kids and domestic chores every month. Despite that unpaid support, Johnson and her husband pay $2,600 a month for childcare and cleaning — the sort of paid village Johnson says is essential when both parents are working.

“Life is currently a juggle between time and money,” said Johnson, whose kids are 2 and 3. Johnson and her husband work full-time, and Johnson also runs a website, Amy Baby.

“I feel if we don’t use the time wisely to create more revenue streams, we’re just going to sink,” she told BI.

Parents around the country are struggling to pay for childcare costs — which are often higher than a mortgage or rent. In 2018 (the most recent year for which data is available), median childcare costs ranged from $4,800 in small counties for a school-age kid at home to $15,400 for an infant at a center, according to the Department of Labor. Adjusted for inflation, that was $5,000 to $17,000 in 2022 money. In a BabyCenter poll of 2,000 mothers, 76% of respondents said that paying for childcare strains their budget.

In addition to childcare, many families find they need to pay for other domestic services, like transportation for their kids, grocery pickup, or cleaning — essentials that parents say they simply don’t have time for while juggling their careers.

That leaves families like Johnson’s “trying our best to keep our heads above water,” she said.

It’s a familiar refrain for many parents around the country. Here’s what five other parents pay to create the village they need to survive.

A mom of 3 in rural North Dakota: $1,300+ a month

Katie Nostrum relies on unpaid childcare from her three kids, 9, 2, and 6 months old. When the kids aren’t in school or at day care, Nostrum’s grandparents watch them as Nostrum works as a postmaster and her partner works in a welding shop.

Day care for the two younger kids costs $650 every two weeks, or over $1,300 monthly. Nostrum’s town is very rural — about 45 minutes from the nearest store. Like many rural Americans, she has limited childcare and other support.

“There are not a lot of options to create a village, no after or before school programs, etcetera,” she said.

A Texas mom of 3: $1,090 a month

Jessica Lemmons lives in Bryan, Texas, with her husband and three kids, ages 10, 5, and 2. She pays about $1,090 monthly for childcare, including day care tuition for her youngest and occasional babysitting for all three.

The costs would be much higher if Lemmons couldn’t count on unpaid help from friends and bartering the skills of her husband, a chef.

“I am very fortunate in that I have close friends here who are childless by choice, who genuinely love spending time with my kids,” she said. “I do make sure I have the capacity to feed them tasty meals whenever they’re doing so.”

Mom of 1, outside Chicago: $2,000+ a month

L’Oreal Thompson Payton, a freelance writer living outside Chicago, pays $497 weekly to send her 3-year-old to preschool. On rare occasions, she uses a babysitter. She and her husband also pay $25 an hour for a cleaner and hire one occasionally if they have guests coming to stay.

While she pays for some of her village, Thompson Payton also cultivates unpaid support by connecting with day care parents and neighbors with young children. While the costs are high, Thompson Payton said the benefits are well worth the money.

“I think there’s a lot of unnecessary guilt and shame that can come up with having a ‘paid’ village,'” she said. “As much as I love being a mom, it’s important for me, my sanity, and our marriage that I have an identity outside that, which would simply not be possible if we didn’t have paid support.”

Mom of 2 in Tennessee: $520 a month

Miriam Udy paid $1,600 a month for childcare in the San Francisco Bay Area when she got pregnant with her second child. She and her husband relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee, partly because they couldn’t afford to pay more than $3,000 monthly for childcare — what it would cost to get care for both kids.

After moving, she paid $520 monthly for her daughter’s care. Her son qualified for free preschool because he has special needs. Now that both kids are in school, Udy is looking for a helper to get them off the bus, do homework, and drive them to activities. She also budgets for summer camp costs, which exceeded $4,000 last year.

A mom of 2 in New York: $500 a month

Aghogho Oluese quit her job when she got pregnant with her second child.

“The cost of childcare was so high that I would’ve only netted $500 a month if I had stayed in my former job,” she said.

Since then, she’s launched Baby-Led Weaning For Busy Moms, a guide and recipe blog to help moms introduce solids in babies’ diets. She provides the bulk of childcare for her two children but still pays to build her village. Her older child goes to aftercare for $15 an hour, and the family has a weekly cleaner at $30 an hour. Occasionally, Oluese pays a babysitter $30 an hour to watch both kids. Overall, she spends about $500 a month on paid help.

“I wouldn’t be able to do all that I do during the day without it,” she said.

Correction: October 2, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated which year the Department of Labor’s childcare-cost figures came from. They’re from 2018, not 2022. They also were the median costs, not the average costs.