Silicon Valley Families Try to Combat Outrageous Cost of Child Care
BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: Ask parents about the cost of child care and many will tell you it's gotten out of sight. So, some families are coming up with some creative ways of how to deal with it.</s>ANDRIA HALL, CNN ANCHOR: CNN's Don Knapp talked to a couple of couples in California's Silicon Valley, and he shows us how in some cases they reverse their traditional roles.</s>ART MARGOLIS, STAY-AT-HOME FATHER: And what else do we need here? This will be good, we'll look at that.</s>DON KNAPP, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mom's workday is well under way by the time dad and the kids get up and out. Mom's a children's doctor, well paid and often on the road. He's a stay at home dad.</s>MARGOLIS: OK, everybody thumbs up, time to go.</s>KNAPP: Instead of hiring a nanny to raise the kids, Art Margolis hired himself -- sort of.</s>MARGOLIS: I would rather do this than go to work myself for 60 or 70 hours a week and pay somebody else probably 50 percent or more of my salary to stay at home and raise my children.</s>KNAPP: Good nannies are in short supply here in California's Silicon Valley and expensive. Salaries average around $35,000 a year, but run as high as 60. Nanny Liddy Van Wagonon (ph) also gets tuition for a college course in child development, one of a number of extras parents are offering.</s>MONICA FREI JENKINS, TOWN AND COUNTRY RESOURCES: They will offer the nanny, you know, free plane tickets to go see her family during holiday time. Sometimes if a family happens to belong to a health club and they can add their nanny for not a lot of money, sometimes they will offer that.</s>KNAPP: The mom who hired Van Wagonon only needed part-time help, but paid full-time wages to be sure to get her.</s>NICKI NELSON, MOTHER: I think we got very lucky. We didn't get into bidding wars or anything like that.</s>MARGOLIS: You can have the next turn, OK?</s>KNAPP: Stay-at-home dad Art Margolis and his kids get together regularly with other stay-at-home dads and their kids at a park in Campbell. Jubal Prevatte says economics dictates his role.</s>JUBAL PREVATTE, STAY-AT-HOME FATHER: First of all, she can make more money than I can, because she's a network engineer and I'm a carpenter. Second of all, I am more, personality-wise, suited for hanging out at a park with a kid all day long than she is.</s>KNAPP: Prevatte says there's a downside to staying at home with the kids -- it's housework -- but says his wife does help when she gets home. Don Knapp, CNN, reporting.