<prompt> Human: This isnt a question, but just information. It may be especially relevant if youre considering having children in the future.People often talk about how much it costs to raise children. People without children often think that this means that food and clothes and diapers and whatever else are particularly expensive. Theyre not, really. Those are the cheap parts of raising a child. Sure, if you make a low income, they can still add up, but those arent the big things.The single biggest thing is the cost of childcare. There are two main ways to handle this. One is to have one parent in a two-parent household stop working and do childcare themselves. This is expensive because it eliminates the option to have a two-income family. The other is to just pay various services for childcare. This is just expensive.I am a full-time single father of a three year old daughter. A three year old is less expensive to care for than an infant very young children require much more personal attention and childcare centers charge for it, but more expensive than a kid old enough to enroll in public schools because the schools are free.I specifically changed jobs after finding myself in my current situation to make myself more available for my daughter. I have to commute 70 miles into San Francisco once a week Im there Monday and Tuesday, and just spend the night. But Im only responsible for 32 hours a week and after montues, I can do the rest from home on my own schedule, which makes it easy to go to doctors appointments or school events or take care of a sick kid or anything else I need to do. I took a pay cut over my last job to make this schedule work. Thats to say, being a single parent affects your career. Want to stay late to finish that project to impress the boss? Sorry, cant, have to pick up your kid, and your SO cant because you dont have one. Want to go to the weekend retreat with the other guys from work to help feel like youre an important part of the team? Sorry, cant unless you can arrange childcare first.One thing people dont think about is childcare is 247. Someone, not necessarily a parent, but someone has to be responsible for your child at all times. This includes when theyre asleep and when youre at work. You cant put them to bed and just go out. You cant just leave them at home while youre at work not until theyre much older, anyway.I made a spreadsheet showing the hours that different people are responsible for my daughter, and how much this costs me in Northern California. This covers me being able to go out on Wednesday nights, because I have a weekly social thing I like to do then, but other than that, doesnt allow me any social time to myself at all except Monday night when Im in San Francisco for work, but Ill admit I try and make that fun too. Anything I want to do on a Friday night or on the weekend that isnt family friendly requires me to spend even more money on childcare. And single people, being single, like to be able to go out and meet people and date and do social things, at least once in a while.Im not really complaining, Im just exposing what this is like. People dont really seem to understand it until theyre in this position. I wanted more people to realize what the cost of childcare is like, and especially so for single parents.  <response>: Several years ago the Wall Street Journal published an article on the high cost of infant and toddler daycare so new parents could one-up the complaints of parents who were paying college expenses.I overheard a co-worker talking to his girlfriend about me and he was telling her how listening to me and it sounds like kids are a huge time-suck.I laughed the laugh of the damned.And now I have two. 