But the actual cost of having a child is food off your plate, second hand clothes, and a stay at home parent.
The problem is that is probably not the lifestyle upper middle class people want.
The guy is doing okay -- his income is somewhere over $200k/year -- but this expense is a _big_ fraction of his total income. For him, childcare costs are basically the difference between leasing a new Ferrari and living in a mansion, and buying clothes from Ross and begging his parents for money. (Which, I've learned, he does.)
There are two factors in play. First, he lives in a large and diverse American city, and wants to insulate his children from bad influences. Second, he's under a great deal of, essentially, peer pressure to "Keep up with the Joneses" -- in other words, to keep up appearances relative to other members of his social group.
It's insanity, of course.
But, in his position, it would be difficult to raise a child cheaply. The outcomes might be quite poor. So, either way, there's difficulty and worry.
There are also the opportunity costs of parenting, which are considerable, but that's a different matter.
"Keeping up with the joneses" doesn't come into play at all.
For elementary school we rented an apartment for 6 months to get an address in a decent school, it wasn't a guaranteed ticket but a risk we took because it was cheaper than private school. We were able to get in and worked closely with the school and our kids to make sure they were learning what they needed to get to the next school. They both got to a magnet middle school thankfully which was goal #2 but I mean even the magnet school is still like a zoo (sex in bathrooms, drugs, etc). Again, we work closely with the school and our boys, teaching them a lot of the skills they're not getting at school (it's very time consuming and basically a second job for me and my wife). My oldest is now in 8th grade and tested recently for the top magnet STEM HS in DFW. He feels pretty confident about it but we find out March 1 if he got it, that's goal number #3.
Looking back, my wife and I both strongly agree just moving 45 miles north to suburbs with actual functioning public schools would have been so much better. Yeah sure, we live in a hot neighborhood (north oak cliff), downtown, uptown, and deep ellum are < 3 miles away but we never go down there anymore anyway. Suburbs with good schools and other amenities geared toward families are where it's at.
What was your biggest concern about school? That they would become involved in bad behavior? Or that they wouldn’t be educated?
My experience from public school is that it’s basically worthless. Could you treat it as social time and make up for the school in your own?
school performance and education which correlates to behavior. Obviously, when you drop your kids off at school you want to be confident they're going to be ok so behavior is important. My wife and I have found that low teacher rollover is also a good indicator of a school's quality. The top magnet schools in the district have the lowest teach rollover which is another vote for that metric.
We do a lot of educating at home but it's a tough row to hoe. You're basically homeschooling and the last thing my kids want to do when they get home from school all day is more work.
That's the big issue. Middle class households today need both parents working to afford a decent home, 2 cars, and health insurance.
Of course many could downsize to a smaller home, 1 car, fewer vacations, etc. But those are the financial trade offs that increasingly fewer couples seem to want to make.
Something tells me not.
And why is this is a question we should answer. Inability to afford birth control? Sex as the one redeeming "happy" thing after slaving away for a guy who wears a suit 5 days per week? Religion also plays a part -- lots of mainstream religions eschew birth control such as condoms and lots of poor people are religious. Are they poor because they have so many kids?