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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: why are you having children in such a financially precarious situation when it’s only going to increase your living costs?

EDIT: by “financially precarious” I mean that above you said you were a new grad having difficulty finding work. I assume it is your intent to work after the baby is born (rather than being the primary caregiver) or it wouldn’t matter so much about finding work.

If your wife returns to work and you work you’ll need to pay for care and/or rely on family support. If she doesn’t return to work and she’s the one with steady employment then that’s a problem (financially).

Hence my question.

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Assuming I'm in a "financially precarious situation" is a bit presumptuous. My wife is an employed college grad, and we have much more saved than the average American. We have health insurance, and have already completely paid off the medical bills for her birth. We are fine.

It's still too risky and difficult for us to relocate, though. Our family all lives nearby, so we have a support structure here. My wife has an established career in a low cost of living area. Housing is incredibly cheap. We mesh with the culture here. When I get a job, we'll be able to buy a house pretty easily. It's just tough for me to get an IT job, because most low level positions have been outsourced in my area.

The circumstances of your area are so individual that without specifying a specific city or town you're pretty much not going to get any useful advice.

And generalizing the Bay Area to all other higher salary + higher CoL places is also going to yield no useful insight. Or in other words - your parent comment about how articles like this are why you don't consider relocating neglects the fact that there are likely middle ground locations where you could be paid a higher wage while still paying a lower rent.

One simply can't extrapolate that much when looking at CoL or salary.

I wish you the best, but you're just making a bunch of excuses.

You say it's risky and difficult to chase jobs elsewhere. Yet you claim to be better off than the average American while chasing entry level jobs.

If anything this makes you more mobile than the average American.

Use this to your advantage instead of holding out for one of a dwindling number of jobs in some rural town. Because even if you get one, what's your exit strategy if you lose it? By your own account your position seems to be ripe for elimination.

Holding out seems more risky than moving on. Don't move to the Bay area or manhattan. The rest of the country is not representative of this article.

But that's just my take on it. Best of luck to you.

Speaking as a recent parent and having known recent parents I can tell you that having family (your parents and in-laws) close by is worth tens of thousands of dollars a year in child care costs, and you should count your blessings if you can rely on it.

You don’t have to justify to anyone why you are having a child. (As a parent, I can see by you’re set up better than most)

If for no other reason having children is our biological raison d’être. Go tell a squirell it’s not rich enough to procreate!

Children are brought up with very little means everyday; they don’t need rich parents.

Children are seen by our rich society as a luxury good that only the well off are worthy of buying.

Instead what children need are strong loving parents. (I’m so anoyed at the parents of my kid’s spoiled friends, and she not even three)

I lived for three months in Cali (Santa Barbara) and it is one of the last places in N. America I would raise my daughter. Only the despair from the poorest, heroin addicted, countries in WV would rank lower.

A well employed parent, a well educated spouse and grandparents to help. We should all be so lucky!

Not everyone "decides" to have kids. Sometimes it just happens.

Everyone who has kids decided to do so, the only thing that varies is the amount of options considered.

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