The question I get asked most, from friends, other twin parents, and one very nosy lady at the park, is "How did you decide whether to go back to work?" The honest answer is: a spreadsheet, a lot of late-night arguments with myself, and one number that made me sit back in my chair and say a word I won't type here.
Theo and June are twenty months old now. I've been back at work three days a week since they were about eleven months. Here's how we got there, with real-ish numbers. Every family's situation is different, so take this as one example, not advice.
The number that scared me
When the twins were around six months old, I started calling daycares within a reasonable drive of our place in East Oakland. I made a tab in the spreadsheet called "daycare quotes" and filled it in over two weeks. For full-time infant care, five days a week, the quotes for one baby ran from about $1,900 a month at a small in-home daycare to about $2,800 at a center.
Now multiply by two.
A couple of places offered a sibling discount of 5 to 10 percent, which was kind, but it doesn't change much when you're starting from nearly $4,000 a month on the low end. For comparison, our rent on the duplex is $2,650.
What I actually earn
I'm a dental hygienist. In the Bay Area, hygienists are paid fairly well by hourly standards. My rate is around $62 an hour. Before the twins, I worked four days a week, usually eight-hour days. That sounds great until you run it through the daycare numbers.
If I went back full time, five days, I'd gross roughly $10,700 a month. After taxes, retirement contributions, and my share of health insurance, I'd take home somewhere around $7,200. Full-time daycare for two at a mid-range place would eat about $4,600 of that. Add gas, work clothes, and the mountain of takeout that happens when both parents work full time, and the "extra" we'd net was a lot smaller than my paycheck made it look.
The options I compared
I laid out four scenarios. Dan's income stays the same in all of them; this was only about my work and childcare.
| Scenario | My take-home / month | Childcare / month | Net after childcare |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stay home full time | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| 2 days/week, in-home daycare part time | $2,900 | $1,900 | $1,000 |
| 3 days/week, in-home daycare part time | $4,300 | $2,450 | $1,850 |
| 5 days/week, center full time | $7,200 | $4,600 | $2,600 |
These are rounded, and they don't include things like losing some tax credits or the value of keeping my license active and my skills current. But the shape of it was clear.
Why three days won
On paper, five days nets the most money. But look at the jump. Going from three days to five adds two full days away from the twins, a longer commute week, and a lot more stress, for about $750 more a month. That works out to roughly $11 an hour for those extra days once childcare is paid. That's not nothing, but it's not what my paycheck makes those two days look like, either.
Three days also landed in a sweet spot at the in-home daycare we loved. The provider, who has run her program out of her house for eleven years, offers a three-day part-time rate. Her place is eight minutes from us. She had two spots opening at the same time, which, for twins, is basically a miracle.
And then there were the things that don't fit neatly in a cell:
- My career. Stepping away for years would mean losing patients, losing speed, and walking back in rusty. Three days keeps me in it.
- My sanity. I love my kids. I also love talking to adults about something other than snack times. Three days at work genuinely makes me a more patient mom on the other four.
- Dan's schedule. HVAC is seasonal and unpredictable. Having me home four days means someone's always available for sick days and his emergency calls.
How we cover the rest
Three days of daycare plus me home the other two weekdays means we don't need backup care most weeks. When a twin gets sick, which is roughly every other week in the fall, I swap shifts with a coworker if I can. My office has been good about it, and I return the favor in the summer when other people want vacation days.
We also cut elsewhere to make it work. Meal prep on Sundays, one car payment instead of two, and I shop our PG&E rate plan every year to make sure we're on the cheapest one for how we actually use power.
If you're doing this math right now
My one piece of advice: write it down. When you're sleep-deprived and emotional, every option feels either impossible or perfect. Put the real quotes and your real take-home in rows, next to each other, and let the numbers show you where the big jumps are. Then leave room for the parts that don't have a dollar value.
For us, three days was the answer. Ask me again when they start kindergarten and the math changes all over again.
