Money, leave and childcare
Paid leave, what a baby costs, childcare, and the free things your insurance covers. Small person, large invoices.
Tools
- Parental leave plannerWhether your job is protected, what your state pays, when to tell work, and when leave ends.
- Breast pump through insuranceWhich suppliers take your insurance, which pumps are free, and when you can order.
- Pumping planA pumping schedule for your goal and your hours away, with a freezer-stash target.
Guides
- What having a baby costs in the US What a birth costs with and without insurance, the first-year costs that matter, and how to check a birth bill. Every figure is sourced and dated.
- Daycare, nanny or nanny share: costs and waitlists What childcare costs in the US, how daycare, a nanny and a nanny share compare, when to join waitlists, and the tax breaks and nanny taxes to know.
- Pumping at work: your rights Your federal right to pump at work: break time and a private space that isn't a bathroom, for a year after birth. Who's covered, how to complain, states that do more.
- Paid family leave by state, and FMLA in plain English Which states pay you to bond with a new baby, for how long and how much, plus what the federal FMLA does and doesn't promise. Checked against each state's program.
Coming next
We add new guides every week. Here's the plan. Each one is fact-checked before it goes up.
Week of Dec 28
- Going back to work: the emotional side