How is it possible for people to not be able to afford children?

[Anonymous]

I haven’t read the whole thread, just the OP.

What people can’t afford is the same life with children.
The children’s stuff, whether needs or wants… if needs, it will fit in no problem.

If wants, maybe not.

And then, their own pre-kid wants may have to be sacrificed.

Everyone, almost everyone can afford children. If you can afford your rent or mortgage, your utilities, your car, your groceries (and most adults can before kids), then you can add a kid in. Add daycare to it, and even then, I’m sure your salary is not SO barely thinly over your needs.. you salary can pay, or you’ll get a raise at some point.

I don’t say this to mean everyone SHOULD. That is up to you. But you can.

Otoh, if you are having trouble with rent, mortgage, the things I listed, don’t have kids yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know anyone who didn't have kids because of money. They just say that to say something.
I have two and both have been very cheap to raise. The biggest expense is food right now.
The older one can pick up and watch the younger one because of the age difference. We never upgraded our home or a car because of the kids.
I worked around my DP work hours, so no need for daycare. Public school started at 4 for both. I was not going to have a career anyway as I moved here later in life.
My current job allows kids to be there, feeds them, and lets parents go home early if they wish to do so.
The kids are almost never sick and don't have expensive hobbies or wants.
Travel is usually paid for relatives because they invite the kids. EU travel is also cheap because of relatives.
Three different sets of local relatives take the kids weekly.
Kids are cheap or we are lucky. We are lucky- we have a village.

-If you live in a one bedroom apartment, in a studio or renting a room then you'll have to get a two bedroom apartment, which might be expensive for some people.
-Many people don't have flexible jobs that allow the to work around their partner's schedules.
-Travel is non-essential, but most people don't have relatives who pay for that ort of thing.
-Most people have relatives who either work, are far away or do not take care of their kids because that's not their job.

[Anonymous]

If people want kids, they have kids. So who really knows what that means.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t read the whole thread, just the OP.

What people can’t afford is the same life with children.
The children’s stuff, whether needs or wants… if needs, it will fit in no problem.

If wants, maybe not.

And then, their own pre-kid wants may have to be sacrificed.

Everyone, almost everyone can afford children. If you can afford your rent or mortgage, your utilities, your car, your groceries (and most adults can before kids), then you can add a kid in. Add daycare to it, and even then, I’m sure your salary is not SO barely thinly over your needs.. you salary can pay, or you’ll get a raise at some point.

I don’t say this to mean everyone SHOULD. That is up to you. But you can.

Otoh, if you are having trouble with rent, mortgage, the things I listed, don’t have kids yet.

In many places, daycare is around 1K a month. If anyone could pay that much we wouldn't be having a housing crisis due to increased rent cost.

[Anonymous]

OP, are you asking people why they don't have kids or are they volunteering that info?
If the later, they either have debt or a low income and can't afford kids without cutting on necessities, or they want to keep their current lifestyle.
If the former, they might be giving you random reasons because they have no desire to discuss with you their reproductive affairs as they're none of your business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've heard the "I can't afford children" from many couples without children. These couples are in their 30s which is an age at which you've worked enough to have a decently paying career, so it's weird. I was making around 50K before I had my children and stayed home and my husband didn't hit 150k until a couples of years later, so we're pretty average in our area. We're planning to send our kids to public school when they're older and enroll them in cheaper activities, but it looks like everyone around us is holding out for private schools which can be incredibly expensive. Have these lifestyle expectations made children "unaffordable" or there's something else I'm missing?

A couple making a combined $100k in this area can easily afford one child. The FT daycare years will be uncomfortable, but public K12 will ease some of the crunch. Gently used cars. Whole family dresses in clothes from JCP, Kohl’s, even Target and does low budget driving vacations. The kid does CC, then transfers to state flagship.

You do appreciate that sounds like a crappy life to many people.

This isn’t how much do you need to make to keep a kid alive, it’s how much do you have to make to raise a kid in the way you want to raise them.

What about that scenario makes you think it s a crappy life?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've heard the "I can't afford children" from many couples without children. These couples are in their 30s which is an age at which you've worked enough to have a decently paying career, so it's weird. I was making around 50K before I had my children and stayed home and my husband didn't hit 150k until a couples of years later, so we're pretty average in our area. We're planning to send our kids to public school when they're older and enroll them in cheaper activities, but it looks like everyone around us is holding out for private schools which can be incredibly expensive. Have these lifestyle expectations made children "unaffordable" or there's something else I'm missing?

A couple making a combined $100k in this area can easily afford one child. The FT daycare years will be uncomfortable, but public K12 will ease some of the crunch. Gently used cars. Whole family dresses in clothes from JCP, Kohl’s, even Target and does low budget driving vacations. The kid does CC, then transfers to state flagship.

You do appreciate that sounds like a crappy life to many people.

This isn’t how much do you need to make to keep a kid alive, it’s how much do you have to make to raise a kid in the way you want to raise them.

What about that scenario makes you think it s a crappy life?

Hmm…buy all your clothes from Target, go on only low budget driving vacations to where? I am not even sure Rehoboth is a low budget driving vacation, so honestly not sure where you are going…go to CC not because it makes sense for the kid but purely for financial reasons.

Now that I write it out, sounds incredible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've heard the "I can't afford children" from many couples without children. These couples are in their 30s which is an age at which you've worked enough to have a decently paying career, so it's weird. I was making around 50K before I had my children and stayed home and my husband didn't hit 150k until a couples of years later, so we're pretty average in our area. We're planning to send our kids to public school when they're older and enroll them in cheaper activities, but it looks like everyone around us is holding out for private schools which can be incredibly expensive. Have these lifestyle expectations made children "unaffordable" or there's something else I'm missing?

A couple making a combined $100k in this area can easily afford one child. The FT daycare years will be uncomfortable, but public K12 will ease some of the crunch. Gently used cars. Whole family dresses in clothes from JCP, Kohl’s, even Target and does low budget driving vacations. The kid does CC, then transfers to state flagship.

You do appreciate that sounds like a crappy life to many people.

This isn’t how much do you need to make to keep a kid alive, it’s how much do you have to make to raise a kid in the way you want to raise them.

What about that scenario makes you think it s a crappy life?

Hmm…buy all your clothes from Target, go on only low budget driving vacations to where? I am not even sure Rehoboth is a low budget driving vacation, so honestly not sure where you are going…go to CC not because it makes sense for the kid but purely for financial reasons.

Now that I write it out, sounds incredible.

For someone who actually wants to have children this is infinitely better than the alternative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've heard the "I can't afford children" from many couples without children. These couples are in their 30s which is an age at which you've worked enough to have a decently paying career, so it's weird. I was making around 50K before I had my children and stayed home and my husband didn't hit 150k until a couples of years later, so we're pretty average in our area. We're planning to send our kids to public school when they're older and enroll them in cheaper activities, but it looks like everyone around us is holding out for private schools which can be incredibly expensive. Have these lifestyle expectations made children "unaffordable" or there's something else I'm missing?

A couple making a combined $100k in this area can easily afford one child. The FT daycare years will be uncomfortable, but public K12 will ease some of the crunch. Gently used cars. Whole family dresses in clothes from JCP, Kohl’s, even Target and does low budget driving vacations. The kid does CC, then transfers to state flagship.

Many people would not have one child. I would not: I have seen too many only children have to deal with parents in old age. It was 0 or 2 for me. I would never have one.

That’s a weird reason not to want one child. Even if you have two kids, there’s no guarantee that they will both live near you their whole lives. My brother-in-law has traveled all over the country for jobs while his sister has remained near their parents.

I don’t expect either of them to live near me. I expect they will have each other when their parents are dead so they don’t have to deal with that loss alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, before inflation happened I was paying $4k/month for two kids in a very unimpressive daycare. Since that's about the median wage for a lot of 4 person families it's pretty apparent why it's unaffordable for even 30 year olds.

No one is forcing you to live in the DC area and no one is forcing you to pay Bright Horizon prices. No one forced you to have children two years apart. We had ours three years apart so we were only paying double daycare for two years.

Uh, if you Google in home daycares in this area you get lots of articles about child deaths, unlicensed facilities, and lots of other problems that would make it hard to work while your child is there. The people getting cheap care are desperate and hoping for the best.

Interestingly, the daycare two years ago where an unsupervised child choked on a meatball was a Bright Horizons in a Federal office building. Happens ALL. THE. TIME.

Home daycares are licensed in Virginia, by the way. And inspected frequently.

[Anonymous]

I'm surprised people are surprised. Raising kids is treated akin to an extracurricular activity these days rather than a societal good. How many times on the board do you see phrases such as "don't have kids you can't afford," "your kids, your problem," "it's your responsibility to take care of you own kids." And then all these examples in this thread about the "sacrifices" people made to have kids. Is it any wonder that many decide it's just not for them? I also think if you actually start talking to people who use affordability as the reason, it's rarely just that. Lots of young folks have concerns about what kind of world their kids would grow up in. It all adds up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've heard the "I can't afford children" from many couples without children. These couples are in their 30s which is an age at which you've worked enough to have a decently paying career, so it's weird. I was making around 50K before I had my children and stayed home and my husband didn't hit 150k until a couples of years later, so we're pretty average in our area. We're planning to send our kids to public school when they're older and enroll them in cheaper activities, but it looks like everyone around us is holding out for private schools which can be incredibly expensive. Have these lifestyle expectations made children "unaffordable" or there's something else I'm missing?

A couple making a combined $100k in this area can easily afford one child. The FT daycare years will be uncomfortable, but public K12 will ease some of the crunch. Gently used cars. Whole family dresses in clothes from JCP, Kohl’s, even Target and does low budget driving vacations. The kid does CC, then transfers to state flagship.

Many people would not have one child. I would not: I have seen too many only children have to deal with parents in old age. It was 0 or 2 for me. I would never have one.

That’s a weird reason not to want one child. Even if you have two kids, there’s no guarantee that they will both live near you their whole lives. My brother-in-law has traveled all over the country for jobs while his sister has remained near their parents.

I don’t expect either of them to live near me. I expect they will have each other when their parents are dead so they don’t have to deal with that loss alone.

OK so there are more people on this planet than your immediate birth family. Hint: when your child was born, or involved someone not in your immediate birth family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, before inflation happened I was paying $4k/month for two kids in a very unimpressive daycare. Since that's about the median wage for a lot of 4 person families it's pretty apparent why it's unaffordable for even 30 year olds.

No one is forcing you to live in the DC area and no one is forcing you to pay Bright Horizon prices. No one forced you to have children two years apart. We had ours three years apart so we were only paying double daycare for two years.

Uh, if you Google in home daycares in this area you get lots of articles about child deaths, unlicensed facilities, and lots of other problems that would make it hard to work while your child is there. The people getting cheap care are desperate and hoping for the best.

If you Google parents, you'll find lots of article about child deaths. And my parents weren't licensed! I'm not licensed either!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get out of your bubble.

The median HHI in the US is only like $70k. Try raising a family on that while trying to own a home, pay for childcare, save for college, and save for your own retirement. That's not even factoring costs for daily living.

The median family income is around 100k, which would be low for any major metro much less the DMV.

Nope, the PP was right--the median US HHI is just under 70k as of Dec 2023. And that figure typically includes households with heads between 25-55 years old, so you would expect 30 year olds to be on the lower end. And the majority of people do live in major metropolitan areas in the US (and that percentage is steadily growing).

Median HHI includes SINGLE people without kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know anyone who didn't have kids because of money. They just say that to say something.
I have two and both have been very cheap to raise. The biggest expense is food right now.
The older one can pick up and watch the younger one because of the age difference. We never upgraded our home or a car because of the kids.
I worked around my DP work hours, so no need for daycare. Public school started at 4 for both. I was not going to have a career anyway as I moved here later in life.
My current job allows kids to be there, feeds them, and lets parents go home early if they wish to do so.
The kids are almost never sick and don't have expensive hobbies or wants.
Travel is usually paid for relatives because they invite the kids. EU travel is also cheap because of relatives.
Three different sets of local relatives take the kids weekly.
Kids are cheap or we are lucky. We are lucky- we have a village.

I agree. They just say "money" because it is easier than talking about things like how they hate kids, how they might have health problems that prevent them from having kids, etc. I don't know anyone who actually didn't have kids because of money. It's just a convenient lie.