care costs so much and the teachers are paid so little. where does the money go? does it get swallowed up in administration, overhead? not at all. it really is about the amount of staff you need in child care centers and the length of the day. the an infant and toddler room, at nursery, early education in boston, we have a ten-hour day of child care for working families, which means you need three teachers over the course of a day in every single classroom, so it s about the high labor costs, much more so than anything else, and the low rates that are paid, either by the state for the most low-income families or by families themselves at almost every other level, and it becomes very, very costly depending on where you live. right now, in boston, you can earn more as a state funded life guard or working as an ice cream