Exactly this. My wife was a teacher, but hasn’t been in a classroom in over 15 years. When she was pregnant with our second son, we did some budgeting. Take her salary and subtract after school care for our oldest son and daycare for our youngest son and we had $3,000 left over. Not $3,000 a month - $3,000 a year.

And that was before clothing appropriate for school, supplies for school, gas to get to school, and the mydrid of other expenses that come with being a teacher. If she remained a teacher, we wouldn’t be earning money. We would be paying for her to remain tracking

So she stopped teaching and became a stay at home mother.

(By the way, we used her salary because hers was the smaller one. Had mine been the smaller salary, I would have quit and become a stay at home dad.)

We once calculated how much she earned per hour. Given that she was getting in before school to set up, working late after school to help kids out or grade papers, and working holidays to get lesson plans in place, she was making less than minimum wage. She would literally have made more per hour at McDonald’s.

Teachers are very important and deserve more than “maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll end up with minimum wage.”