Lack of Daycare Hits European Families Hard

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These are the kinds of stories that break our hearts.

In the past few days, a number of articles have popped up in newspapers worldwide analyzing the rising cost and dwindling availability of childcare. Reports from the United Kingdom lament the fact that the cost of nannies and daycare centers have forced a growing number of families to have one parent leave the workforce to stay at home with the children. Sadly, in Germany, in addition to facing the same rising costs as the UK, parents are facing a childcare and early education crisis that is affecting more than just incomes.

An article published earlier this year explains how the fall of the Berlin Wall led to an influx in the number of children vying for spots in state-assisted childcare centers. As a result, soaring costs and limited availability (about 23% of children under 3 yo are in daycare, despite a much greater demand for it) are making it so difficult for parents to balance work and home that the birthrate has actually declined in the last 10 years and the trend is expected to continue.

The whole driving force behind SittingAround.com is our desire to help improve the situation of parents everywhere, so of course we find it sad to think that a lack of balance may be causing people to delay or forgo having children. One proposed solution to the problem is an advance akin to a student loan (as if parents need to pay a college tuition twice!) and there have also been rumblings in the UK about changing the laws to give parents more discretion concerning childcare, which will hopefully increase options. In any case, it will certainly be interesting to see how these countries will look to solve the childcare cost/availability issue in the future and we’ll be keeping our fingers cross for affected parents during this stressful time.

7 Innovative Ways to Make Parenting Better!

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Here at SittingAround, our goal is “to make parents’ lives better.” This goal influences everything we do, from the way we’ve designed our site to how we engage with you, our customers. In addition to making SittingAround everything you want it to be, we’re also always on the lookout for other products and services that will make your life easier, simpler, more rewarding – better.

We’re excited to present six other innovative family products that we think you will love!

  • Company: Swellr
  • Site: http://swellr.com
  • Problem it Solves: School funding
  • Overview: Swellr is an online marketplace to fund education needs by shopping local. A PTA group can raise money for their school by creating a project on Swellr. A project could include school supplies, field trip costs, guest speakers or miscellaneous costs for an end of the year party for students. Each project organizer then asks their friends and family to buy gift certificates from participating businesses on swellr.com, and a percentage of each purchase goes to the project of the consumer’s choice. It’s a great way harness local spending power to boost investment in local business and education.
  • Company: Speedbump
  • Site: http://speedbumpgps.com
  • Problem it Solves: Teen driver safety
  • Overview: an Android app that keeps your teens safe on the road. Unlike other driving safety solutions, the Speedbump application – easily downloaded onto a teen’s Android phone –provides parents with instant alerts about both driving speed and driving patterns. Their unique SpeedSmart™ technology lets users set and detect realistic speed limits on any type of road – residential, secondary and highway. Created by a teen for teens, Speedbump encourages a dialogue between teens and parents about driving safety and protects teen privacy while providing the parents with peace of mind.
  • Company: Casa Couture
  • Site: http://casacoutureinc.com
  • Problem it Solves: Children’s ever-changing shoe size
  • Overview: Casa Couture has developed a patented “Growth Indicator” technology that can be used in the construction of children’s shoes to alert a parent when the child has outgrown his or her shoes. Outgrown shoes are uncomfortable, unhealthy and bad for a child’s feet. This innovative technology is designed with a child’s comfort and healthy foot growth in mind. These shoes will accommodate up to three whole sizes, saving parents from having to replace their kid’s shoes every 2 to 3 months.
  • Company: Lynx
  • Site: http://lynxsportswear.com
  • Problem it Solves: Post-baby breast support
  • Overview:: Lynx Sportswear makes sports bras for larger-breasted women that actually work! The Lynx Sports Bra was created by a large breasted woman, Cynthia Smith, who started running after her son was born as a way to get back into shape. After more than a decade of trying every sports bra on the market without success, she took matters into her own hands and made a sports bra that eliminates bounce without causing any pain or discomfort. Cynthia is passionate about helping other women feel strong and capable, no matter what their breast size!
  • Company: GoGaga
  • Site: http://gogagalife.com
  • Problem it Solves: Toting heavy, uncomfortable diaper bags
  • Overview: At Go GaGa, we create diaper bags and straps that are comfortable no matter what you’re carrying. Our patent pending strap is the secret to our bags’ style and comfort – it’s a wide swath of stretch fabric spreads the weight across your back and shoulders, so there’s nothing cutting into your neck or pulling you to one side. Plus, our diaper bags feature stroller straps, insulated bottle packets, a changing pad and 10 pockets to make it easier and more enjoyable to travel with your little one, whether across town or across the country. To learn more about our products, visit www.gogagalife.com
  • Company: thredUP
  • Site: http://thredup.com
  • Problem it Solves: Children outgrowing clothing
  • Overview: Kids grow fast. By age 17 your child has outgrown 1,360 pieces of clothing. Worse yet, you’ve spent upwards of $20,000 replacing clothes that are practically new. What if you could easily trade all that outgrown clothing for sizes you actually need? thredUP is where moms swap children’s clothing, toys and books online. thredUP connects thousands of moms across America and facilitates simple trades. For the first time, parents can exchange boxes of kids’ outgrown clothing, for boxes of clothes that fit – without ever leaving the house.

And, in case you’re new to SittingAround, a little about us, too:

  • Company: SittingAround
  • Site: http://sittingaround.com
  • Problem it Solves: Childcare
  • Overview: SittingAround is childcare, made better. SittingAround revives the notion that “it takes a village” in a modern way, through babysitting coops. By trading sitting with each other, families who participate in a coop provide each other with not just care but the social support parents today so often lack (yet so desperately need). SittingAround makes it easy for families to start and run their own babysitting coops and transforms the way parents think about childcare.

Babysitting Coops Already Saving Families Over $100,000 Per Year

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We opened SittingAround.com to the public less than a month ago, and already families using our site are saving over $100,000 a year.

There are over 500 families participating in over 100 coops on SittingAround.com today. Based on the use we’ve seen so far, families who are participating in coops will save between $100 and $500 per year, with an average savings of around $250 per year. Multiply $250 by 500 families and we get an annual savings of $125,000 per year!

While we’re very happy with the growth of coops so far, we’re just getting started. We want to bring coops to as many families across the globe as possible and change the way families think about childcare. Our goal is to have 100,000 families and 10,000 cooperatives by the end of 2012.

Coops save families money by eliminating the need for paid babysitters. Instead, families receive free babysitting from other parents in exchange for returning the favor. While coops have existed for many years, until recently they have been difficult to coordinate and manage. SittingAround makes coops easy and, in doing so, helps families across the world save on the cost of childcare.

Paid Parental Leave: Is Having a Baby a Luxury?

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How much time did you take off when your kids were born?

For me, it was four weeks. Two weeks paid by my employer and another two weeks that was comprised of every possible vacation/sick day I had. By American standards, that’s not too bad. By most other standards, though, it is.

First, those paid weeks that I took are not guaranteed to me under any federal law. According to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), new moms may take up to 12 weeks off, but that time is unpaid. Employers are not mandated to pay for any maternity leave, they simply have to allow new moms to take it. While I appreciate the FMLA, I don’t think it goes far enough. For most families, a 12-week unpaid leave is a luxury they can’t easily afford.

Compare this with our neighbors to the north and the south. Canadians enjoy a notoriously generous parental leave policy, receiving an entire year at 55% of their salary. Mexicans are guaranteed a lesser 12 weeks off but at a full 100% pay. And, should you venture to Europe, you’d find that many countries there offer a year — or more! — for new parents to care for their children.

As both a mother and a professional, the American parental leave laws are near and dear to my heart. By having such stringent policies, we are, in effect, forcing women to choose between spending critical months with their babies and furthering their careers. For many, financial considerations don’t even allow women to choose — it’s work or you can’t pay the bills.

I think the FMLA could use an overhaul. Thankfully, so do a lot of other people as well. If you’re interested in getting involved in this and other issues affecting families, check out Mom’s Rising, an advocacy group working to build a more family-friendly America.

SittingAround is Open (and Free Before 6/30!)

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I’m happy to announce that SittingAround is now open to everyone! We opened the site up earlier this month (we had been invitation-only for a while) and are so excited to have so many new coops using our service! To celebrate our launch, all accounts created before June 30, 2011 will be free for life!

Here’s our recent press release:

For Immediate Release
June 2, 2011

SittingAround.com Launches Innovative Babysitting Site

SEATTLE, WA — June 2, 2011 —SittingAround.com, an innovative new option for childcare, launched to the public on Wednesday, June 1st. By making a well-run babysitting cooperative accessible to anyone with an internet connection, SittingAround will dramatically improve the way Americans consume childcare and save the average family $500 per year.

To celebrate its launch, SittingAround is waiving its $15 annual subscription fee for everyone who signs up prior to June 30th and giving those users free site access for the life of their account.

What’s A Coop?
Babysitting coops (pronounced co-ops) are small groups of parents in a neighborhood who trade babysitting, taking turns watching each other’s children. Often, coops are comprised of parents whose children go to the same daycare or school. Because each coop chooses who may join, parents only trade sitting with other parents they know and trust.

“For most parents, this is a brand-new concept,” says Erica Zidel, Founder and CEO. “Less than a quarter of parents are familiar with coops, 1 but when you tell them that there is a way to get free, easy to coordinate, high quality babysitting, their eyes light up. We want to tell as many parents as possible that coops are a great option for childcare.”

A Website that Make Coops Easy
While the basic concept of coops is simple, there is a lot of administrative work required to run a coop successfully: tracking points, scheduling sits and meetings, vetting new members,
maintaining current member contact info, etc. “When you manage a coop on SittingAround.com, our software automates the administrative tasks for you,” says Zidel. “Our site lets parents enjoy the benefits of a well-run cooperative without the hassle.”

SittingAround.com makes it easy to start, manage, and grow babysitting cooperatives.

Biggest Threat to Family Finances? It’s Childcare.

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Everyone knows childcare is expensive. But some may be shocked to learn just how expensive it is and the enormous threat it poses to the family finances.

According to a recent Washington University in St. Louis study, the cost of quality childcare is the greatest threat to families’ financial security. Childcare makes up the single greatest portion of the average family’s monthly expenses — families spend more each month on childcare than they do on housing!

“Childcare is so expensive that income needs for a one-parent family with two preschoolers are equivalent to those of a one-parent family with five teenagers,” states the report.

It’s no surprise that families are looking for ways to save on childcare costs without comprising the quality of care their kids receive. Savvy parents are seeking alternative arrangements, such as nanny shares during the week and babysitting coops at night and on the weekends.

What are your thoughts on the dramatic costs of childcare? Have these costs put your own finances at risk?

How much does the average family spend on babysitting?

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Simple Question.

It seems like a simple question, doesn’t it?

But it’s Not.

If you want the results without a long story on why we did the research ourselves, scroll down to the fourth heading.

In 2010, when we wanted to figure out how much families could save by joining a coop, we went to trusty Google to try to get an answer to this question, fully expecting that it would be a 5 minute exercise and we could move on.

After about an hour of searching, the best answer we could find was a USDA report that lumped all childcare and education together – daycare + babysitting + private schools + college + SAT tutors. I didn’t think that we could justifiably say that joining a coop would reduce the cost of college, so we were at an impasse. We wanted to start a website to save families money on babysitting, but we couldn’t figure out how much families were actually spending.

After another three hours, I could confidently say that, on average, families were spending at least $1 and less than $5,000 per year on babysitters. I’m pretty good at working with bad data, triangulating, being creative to find a reasonable range, but there’s seriously nothing out there to work with. $1 to $5000 just isn’t specific enough to build a business case. I not so quietly gave up hope of finding out how many families are currently using coops, or even how many families were using babysitters.

The babysitter’s club is not doing their job as an industry association. Its like the entire industry is run by teenagers.

Ok, We’ll do the Research

Luckily, my co-founder has a bit of a background in statistical research. She pulled together a user friendly survey, a methodology that makes our results fairly valid given the limited budget ($0) we had to conduct the survey, and took to the mommy blogs to try to get an answer. (It helps that she has a mommy blog herself.)

The Results

What’s that? You wanted information on babysitting, not a long story about market research. You don’t find standard deviations and response biases fascinating? Really? Ok, ok, I’ll get to the results.

It turns out that the average American family spends about $500 per year on babysitters. The actual average in our survey was $462. Given sample size, methodology, sampling biases, etc we should really say that the average family spends about $462 on babysitting. To me that’s close enough to saying “about $500” that I go ahead and round it, but if that’s not your style feel free to mentally replace $462 everywhere I use $500.

The average family spends about $500 on babysitting. Alone, its a pretty interesting number: 5 hundred dollar bills, half of a thousand, more than my son gets in allowance each year. But, lets see if we can put that number into better perspective.

  1. The average family makes about $50,000 per year. That means they’re spending about 1% of their income on sitters. The average family saves 4% of their income each year – 1% isn’t a negligible amount.
  2. The average sitter costs around $10 an hour. So that means the average family consumes about 50 hours of babysitting a year. If the average night out is 4 hours, that means the average family has a night away from the kids about once a month.
  3. The more a family makes, the more they spend on sitters. The lowest income group in our survey reported an average spend of $350, the highest income group reported an average spend of $740.
  4. $500 per year in a college fund would be over $22,000 by the time your kid goes to college. (assumes you save $500 each year stopping when the child is 13, the child goes to college at 18, and an average annual rate of return of 10%)

Survey Release: Trends in Babysitting 2010

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We’re so excited to release the results of our first annual “Trends in Babysitting” survey! This survey explores how parents across the United States consume babysitting and what their attitudes are on the topic.

What we learned was fascinating! The average American family spends approximately $462 a year on paid babysitters alone (this doesn’t include preschool, daycare or nannies). Despite shelling out so much each year for paid sitters, the majority of parents we spoke to were much happier with the quality of care they get from free sitters than from paid ones.

Quality of Babysitters

Only a quarter of parents we surveyed knew about babysitting coops; yet over two-thirds said they would like to trade babysitting with other parents. This tells me we have an education problem — coops are great and families would eagerly join them… if only they knew about them. We need to spread the word.

Co-op Familiarity

Feel free to share the survey results with others and use them in your own blog (but please link back to us if you do!). If you do write about the survey findings, let us know! We’ll include a trackback at the bottom of this post.

We’ll be conducting the survey annually, so that we can measure how babysitting habits change over time.

The full Trends in Babysitting 2010 can be downloaded here.

Are you a journalist, researcher, or blogger and want to answer a particular question that isn’t covered in the released data? Contact Us and we’ll see if we can cut the data in a way that answers your question.

Sitting Around in the New York Times

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We were honored to be mentioned in a Fashion & Style piece in this Sunday’s New York Times!

Entrepreneurial culture requires a certain level of lackadaisical dress. As the article chides, “You can’t get VC funding if someone isn’t wearing sweat pants.”

Well, ladies and gents, I’ve got the sweat pants covered: Sitting Around in the NYT