The lifetime value of a daycare family is everything one family pays your center from the day a child starts to the day the last child leaves, and it is the number that should set your marketing budget.
It is the other half of the math in cost per enrollment: cost per enrollment measures what you pay to fill a spot, and lifetime value measures what filling it is worth.
A center that knows its number can judge any spend against years of tuition instead of one month of it, the path the daycare enrollment hub covers end to end.
The lifetime value formula
For a child care center the formula is short: what a family pays per year, times the years the family stays.
Lifetime value of a daycare family
Three adjustments keep the formula honest:
- Count each child separately. A family with two children over five years is two runs of tuition, not one.
- Use net tuition. Subtract sibling discounts and any scholarship you grant.
- Include the fees. Registration, supply and summer program fees belong in the yearly number.
The result is revenue, not profit: wages, rent and food come out first, so treat it as a ceiling on what one family can be worth, not money in the bank.
The value of an enrolled child per year
The yearly number starts with tuition, and the published figures set the scale.
Child Care Aware of America's 2025 Price and Supply report put the national average price of child care at $13,184 a year in 2025, up from $13,128 in 2024.
That figure blends every age and both centers and family child care homes across 47 states, and CCAoA itself says the national average does not fully capture state and local nuances, so run your math on your state's figure or your own rates.
By age, using CCAoA's average-of-state-averages method for 2025, center infant care averaged $15,636 a year and center care for a 4-year-old averaged $12,555, while family child care homes averaged $11,673 and $10,572.
Average annual price of child care, 2025
Weighting prices by licensed spaces instead of averaging the states gives slightly lower center figures, $15,015 for infants and $12,165 for 4-year-olds, which shows how much the method moves the number.
At the premium end, Bright Horizons reported average monthly tuition of $2,765 for infants, $2,565 for toddlers and $2,175 for preschoolers across a sample of about 350 US centers in its fiscal 2025 filing (Bright Horizons 10-K).
Those centers are often employer-sponsored and concentrated in high-cost markets, so treat them as a ceiling, not a benchmark.
A child who starts in your infant room and stays through pre-K carries the whole age ladder, so infant spots are worth the most to fill (how to fill infant spots).
The average length of daycare enrollment
Here the honest answer is that no national average length of enrollment is published.
What federal data measures is time in care so far: in NCES's 2023 survey, children in center-based care had been in their primary arrangement for 14 months on average when their parent answered.
That is a snapshot, not a length of stay, so never read it as "families stay about 14 months."
The same survey gives a feel for what families pay: families paying out of pocket averaged $21.32 per child per hour for center-based care, a mean across families with any expenses.
Parents also search for care often: in an OPRE analysis of the 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education, 46% of parents of a child under 6 not in kindergarten had searched for care in the previous two years, and 60% of those who searched enrolled their child with a new provider.
That counts first searches as well as switches, so it is neither a withdrawal rate nor any one center's conversion rate.
The tenure number that matters is yours, and it takes an afternoon to compute:
- Pull each family's start month and last paid month for the past five years.
- Count months from start to exit for families that left, and months so far for families still enrolled.
- Average the leavers and the stayers separately, because blending them hides churn.
- Segment by starting room, because an infant-room start and a pre-K start produce very different totals.
Daycare family lifetime tuition: a worked example
Take an illustrative family at an illustrative $1,200 a month, $14,400 a year: not a market rate, just a round number for arithmetic.
Illustrative: one family's tuition at $1,200 a month
The years compound: three years is $43,200 and five years is $72,000, all from one enrollment decision.
Prices also climb while a family stays: CCAoA found child care prices rose 23% from 2021 to 2025, and the BLS consumer price index for day care and preschool paid by urban consumers rose about 4.0% from August 2025 to August 2026, so later years usually pay more than first ones.
Siblings stretch the total further: if a second child follows the first for another three years at the same illustrative rate, the family's lifetime tuition reaches $86,400.
Value is not only length, either: in fiscal 2025, KinderCare's revenue rose 0.3% on a comparable 52-week basis, with higher tuition adding 2.2% and lower enrollment subtracting 1.9%, price and enrollment pulling in opposite directions at one company.
Why lifetime value sets the marketing budget
Cost per enrollment stops being scary when you put it next to years of tuition, and child care marketing ROI is judged against what enrolled families pay over their whole stay.
A channel that looks expensive per enrollment can be cheap per year of tuition, and a cheap one that enrolls families who leave within months can be the expensive choice.
The math is hardest when a center is newest: Bright Horizons says in its filing that a new center typically reaches break-even in 12 to 24 months and steady-state enrollment in about three years, enrolling younger children first and filling preschool rooms as children age up.
That is one large operator's experience, and its own filing notes the timeline can run longer or shorter.
Almost every dollar a center takes in arrives through enrolled families: the Center for American Progress estimated in 2018 that private tuition makes up about 60% of child care industry revenue, with government funding at 39% and philanthropy at 1%, an industry-wide estimate.
And lifetime value is a retention number as much as a marketing number, because every withdrawal takes years of tuition off your books: reducing daycare withdrawals covers why families leave and what keeps them.
Frequently asked questions
What is the lifetime value of a daycare family?
Everything one family pays your center from enrollment to exit: yearly tuition and fees times the years the family stays, plus any sibling who follows.
Does a second child double a family's lifetime value?
It can come close: a sibling adds another multi-year run of tuition at whatever sibling discount you offer, so how near a two-child family gets to twice a one-child family depends on that discount and how long the second child stays.
Is lifetime value the same as profit?
No, it is revenue. Wages, rent and food come out first, so use it to compare marketing choices rather than to plan cash.
What share of a family's lifetime value should marketing cost?
Small enough that the ratio stays obvious. Compute cost per enrollment against multi-year tuition with your own numbers, and let the ratio, not any benchmark, tell you whether a channel is worth it.
Which tuition number should I use in the formula?
Your own rates, or your state's figure from Child Care Aware of America's 2025 report. The $13,184 national average blends ages and settings across 47 states, so it is the weakest number you could pick.