With the housing market crisis, class issues have weighed heavily on my mind.

Everyone I know from career supermarket cashiers in New Hampshire to people living in $700,000 homes in the Bay Area consider themselves “middle class.” Most recently, MSN Money is running a series on the “middle class crunch.” I was not sure whether to laugh or cry because the first person account on the rising cost of childcare was by a San Francisco freelance writer.  

Wendy Brauner's rent clocks in at $1,800 a month -- what some might consider a great deal in San Francisco. But don't think Brauner is living the high life. With a son, 3, and another almost 6, she was spending $2,750 a month on child care until her oldest started kindergarten last fall -- nearly 20% of her household income.

"I was writing a check for $17,000 to the preschool and wondered why it sounded so familiar," she says. "Then I realized it was a few hundred off what I paid for my first semester of college at Wellesley. It's just an enormous outlay…"

The cost of child care in this country is one of those little secrets -- like leaky diapers and colic -- that parents just don't share with friends who are expecting.

Forget about the angst and expense of finding shelter that is safe and warm for your new arrival. I'm talking about the sticker shock of handing over a significant chunk of your paycheck every month just so you are free to work. That $2,750 a month for Brauner? That was after taxes, of course.
 
Yes, the federal government grants a tax credit of up to $1,050 per child for up to two children in child care. But that's annual: Brauner ran through it in less than a month.

So many people live in the city -- and Brauner’s case is not atypical -- but I can’t help but think this would be considered not only outrageous, but unattainable, in any other part of the country. So do “rich people” live only in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York? Or, is social standing relative to where you live in the country?

The article begged that question and raised one other important issue. It mentioned that various Democratic presidential candidates have offered tax credits for childcare and other family expenses, which I wholeheartedly support. But like the writer of this piece, I also realize it will not go far where I live.