Well, the only really expensive thing is daycare.
I'm afraid there's no ready solution to that - unless we're willing to get back to the idea of extended family and village to raise a kid.
PS. I have three kids, I know what I'm talking about.
I'm afraid there's no ready solution to that - unless we're willing to get back to the idea of extended family and village to raise a kid.
PS. I have three kids, I know what I'm talking about.
During the pandemic, having no friends or family around to help and needing to work full time jobs is a lot harder to manage than money.
I’m not complaining at all. I just spent a great day with my kids at the ocean and I love having them around. It’s still a daily task to juggle them, work, and my well being without much in the way of outside help. I’m fairly sure my life is shortening considerably as a result of the stress, so like I said, daycare seems pretty cheap in comparison.
Just my take on it - I know some people seem to manage it expertly, and maybe more people do than I realize.
In any case, that cost is still very high these days since both parents typically need to work. Money becomes easier to find than time.
I think that's the key. I'm still trying to figure out for myself if it has something to do with "we need more women in workforce"
> Warren’s central argument in the book is that this rise in household income was almost entirely driven by the increase in the number of two-earner families. And adding income by adding a second worker, she argues, has very different economic implications than rising pay for a single worker. In practice, the book says, the increasing ubiquity of two-earner households leaves families in more precarious financial circumstances with more brittle budgets that were more prone to tip over into insolvency if a problem cropped up.
> The “two-income trap,” as described by Warren, really consists of three partially separate phenomena that have arisen as families have come to rely on two working adults to make ends meet:
> The addition of a second earner means, in practice, a big increase in household fixed expenses for things like child care and commuting.
> Much of the money that American second earners bring in has been gobbled up, in practice, by zero-sum competition for educational opportunities expressed as either skyrocketed prices for houses in good school districts or escalating tuition at public universities.
> Last, while the addition of the second earner has not brought in much gain, it has created an increase in downside risk by eliminating an implicit insurance policy that families used to rely on.
I wonder if a future advanced society will support women who want to have large families during their college/educational years.
Our family had 2 children in the dorms while I was getting my doctorate, and they were a joy for the floor (e.g. we didn’t require the emotional support animals they were sending to every floor). Also, having the communal environment was ideal for finding child care here and there.
A situation like this would help such women reach their (per Pew research) goal of ~3.
Imagine if you had free tuition if you had a child while in college? Raising children while young is also super helpful activity wise…
If it was just feminism we should have seen a 20 hour work week to compensate.
But yes, next to those three things most other expenses aren't that bad, or are avoidable with little down-side. Only other notable one's probably consumables (diapers, food, that sort of thing) which doesn't come close to any of the other three. Toys and clothes are practically free, if you're not picky. People get all kinds of expensive crap at baby showers, but very little of it's actually of much use, and most of the rest could have been had used for next to nothing.
Housing - we lived with the kids in a 2-bedroom for three years. One room for kids, one for us. Not super pleasant, but overall acceptable.
One with the means to avoid it could send one's kids to bad schools and save money, but not many people who can avoid bad schools take that option, for obvious reasons. And I assume in a few small, fortunate areas, or if one gets very lucky when house/apartment shopping, it's possible for this to end up not being that large an expense, but it's atypical.