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Comment by December_Stars | Hacker News Reader

If our economy damns us if we do have a baby but damns us if we don't maybe the economy is the issue, not us.

It’s housing and education prices that are the real issue. That’s part of the economy, but it’s regulated enough and controlled outside the usual price mechanisms such that it might reasonable to regard the roots of the problem lying outside “the economy”.

We need to reform zoning and build more housing in productive cities near the jobs, and we need to shrink higher education budgets and refocus on what really matters in an education. As a start.

Because of rules against housing discrimination, a high price is perceived as the only possibility for keeping a neighborhood safe. If a neighborhood could pick and choose that only law abiding people can live there, it could be both safe and cheap. But it's not like that will happen. So here we are.

More to do with the media telling you you’re damned if you do and damned if you dont.

I see what you're saying, but our choices really do result in either negative outcomes for us as individuals by having to eat increasingly large costs of child rearing at the expense of agency/disposable income/enjoyment, or negative outcomes for us as a collective in which we put a greater societal burden on the individuals of the next generations. We could ignore the latter choice's consequence and go about living blissfully, but I think that's a choice to delay our awareness of that consequence until it's right upon us. For the most part, people weren't previously coerced into having babies - it was a great cultural pride for my parents and their parents.

Nowadays, I hear my friends say "I wish we could have kids sooner, but we can't afford the house in the nice neighborhood/the detriment to our careers/a quality education/healthcare..." in contrast to the stories from a couple generations ago about how a union job could support a whole household or that almost everyone could afford healthcare. It's quite bleak.

More hate towards the media and always saying the media is guilty of everything is not going to solve anything. FYI biggest media companies are now tech companies, So what are we doing to improve things?

I don't need the media to tell me either of those things. I can do arithmetic. Our economy relies on consumerism expanding infinitely. If people are having fewer babies that means fewer consumers. The easiest solution is to increase immigration but that's not such a popular topic in some political circles. It is easy to connect the dots here and see that there are problems on the horizon.

On having children, the math is even more clear and obvious. Where I live it is estimated to cost $350,000 to raise a child to age 18 and this number does not include any type of college investment. Let's assume I want two kids and on the second one I miraculously get a discount on everything of 50%. And let's also assume I invest in a 529 so I can give my kids $120,000 each to go to college. We're talking 2020 dollars.

I'll need to spend ~$3,000/month to raise the two kids. Not too bad when you put it that way. However... what is the opportunity cost of that? If I am conservative it's about $1.1 million. If the market works out well for me it's $2.2 million or more.

And that's the real cost to me to raise two children. Somewhere between $1 million and $2 million. And people wonder why American adults are having fewer and fewer children? Humans are great at adjusting to their environments and rationalizing their decisions so when people tell me about how much they love being a parent I take it with a huge grain of salt. You can learn to love just about anything, even captivity.

I'll need to spend ~$3,000/month to raise the two kids.

Sure, before they go to school (up to ~6 yrs old), but after that cost goes away. Sure, new costs pop up, but they aren't $3,000 per month.

I didn't make those numbers up. They came straight from the USDA and include actual estimated costs that actual Americans paid to raise their children. My numbers were adjusted for my city which is more expensive than average. The $3,000/month is averaging out the total cost over the lifetime of a child, not what a parent would expect to pay on a monthly basis.

Here is the report. If you feel strongly that their information is wrong, contact the USDA: https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/crc2015_M...

I can’t find your $3,000 per month. Your reference ranges from less than $1000 to maybe $1500 per month.

And 1/3 of that is housing, yet, I know plenty of couples without kids have 2 or 3 bedroom homes. Converting your old office to a kids bedroom isn’t increasing your monthly housing cost.

This report is more “costs we can attribute to children” rather than “additional costs as a result of children”.

Like I said... my city is more expensive than the average, my number is for two kids, and I included funding for college.

I am not here to defend the USDA report. Take it up with them if you disagree.

Ignore the media, make time for your own research and critical thinking.

Which, in this economy, usually points towards “don’t have children”.

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