Wait a minute! 

 How about these families with children also paying taxes to support  families getting FREE child care and FREE groceries, FREE school lunches, free cell phones - and the list goes on!  Then when the little people grow up and many families will get FREE college educations while these families who are counting their pennies will also get stuck with taxes for other families college education bill! 

 

 Where is the Justice and so-called Fare Share?

Quite interesting how each President is always blamed for everything......... Yeap blame bush's and Clinton and Reagan, and Obama, and every other past President and why not blame all the incoming President for the next 50 years........ Who do you blame in your household????? Cause thats where it starts.   

I raised my son as a single father in Kansas and I can surely say. Ive never been able to save. On the contrary, Ive nothing to my name really. No money in saving, nothing to fall back on and it has always been a struggle. It doesn't surprise me in the least Kansas is on the list. Now if a single father could ever get the same help a  single female mother in Kansas is allowed, it wouldn't be so bad but the system has been broken here for many years now.

Most amazing was the income difference between 1 and 2 parent households. I guess it pays to marry the baby momma.

This report is not taking into account that alot of families have the "Benifit" of having Grandparents or another relative watch the kids during work hours which saves a HUGE Amount of money for the parents, I only wish i had that benifit, for us in Ca, the cost of day care was about the same as what my wife made so she quit working to raise our child, it has been very difficuly to manage on one income, we dont get to go out at all and have to make do with what we have in most cases...But the joy of raising a child is something you have to experience, especially when they are very young ! :-)

Okay, so I read the comments first - it's like reading the comic strips in the Sunday paper before getting to the serious stuff - and this is what I found.  I found people trying to politicize the report - "there all red/blue state, except..." - and miss the obvious point entirely:  The prices listed for daycare are not only inaccurate, but utterly unrealistic.  $14K/yr for childcare in New York?  Really?  Apparently Ms. Colleen Kane fell of her bed and hit her head before writing this report.  That breaks down to about $270/wk - exactly what my wife and I were paying for childcare in Texas in the 1980s.  You'll be hard-pressed to find secure parking for much less than than within 50 miles of Manhattan; much less childcare (from 1998 to 202, I paid $1500/mo for parking in Woodside and still had to take the train into downtown; so the actual cost was closer to $1800/mo).  Our total childcare bill for that very same period was $480/wk - a full $11.5k/yr over the quoted numbers.

A few months after 9/11 the wife and I decided to move to the Pennsylvania countryside and give the kids room to be kids and moved 40 minutes south west of Valley Forge, PA to the cute hamlet of Honey Brook and even there, our childcare bill ran us $320/wk.  My sister pays over $1600/mo for 3 kids in the Hershey area - of course she gets the group discount.  And my brother pays close to $350/wk in Philadelphia (both my brother and I have only one child each).

I am now a single parent in Seattle where this summer's childcare bill was $380/wk and where we were just given notice that fees are going up another $20/wk per child.  So, as I said; costs  listed for daycare across the nation are not only inaccurate, but utterly unrealistic.  Apparently MSN will post anything in their page that will fill some space regardless of how preposterous the claims - I just wish they did their research and due diligence before posting trash such as this.  But at least all is not lost, the percentage cost per single parent for childcare is pretty close - my cost is 55.7% because I have a decent job and a masters degree; but I bet you the balance of my paycheck that single mothers with a high school diploma are not as fortunate.

While I was somewhat interested in finding out which states make this list, I'm not interested enough to wade through four pages' worth of downloads just so MSN can show their advertisers how many hits they're getting.  Life's too short already.

Gotcha. So much for an intelligent conversation. Have a good day Jester.

"$234,900 to provide a child with 17 years of food, shelter and other necessities"

- I would disagree, if that is true than I would have to ask the gvmt for a lots of help, with a staying home wife and more than 2 kids (ok a lot more) and an income above natl average, I have not ask the gvmt for help al this years and I hope I’ll never have to, we live in the age of”HAVE to HAVE it " mentality, that is why a lots of people are broke (Financially)