CAR, I’ve been swamped but I haven’t forgotten about Joe and Jane Sixpack who have 3 kids under the age of 6 years old. I’ve wanted to run Turbo Tax on their “theoretical situation” to demonstrate the value of the “secondary wage-earner’s” take-home pay (after expenses). I’ll get to this task hopefully tomorrow.

In any case, mortgage lenders will loan more money to couples who have a higher income, regardless of who earns it. Conventional lenders don’t use “child-care expense” in calculating their front-end or back-end ratios for mortgage qualification. Having a second income enables dual-income parents to qualify for a mortgage on a better home and/or in a better area than similarly-situated single-income families.

Also, you are skirting the issue of the (very heavy) “opportunity cost” of a parent staying home for 5+ years when they had the qualifications to participate in the FT workforce. And you also need to take into account the negative effect to the family’s credit any deferments on a student loan that a new mom takes and then decides they’re not going back to work (and possibly lets it/them go into default).

This happens all the time and the new moms “do it to themselves.”