From a childfree perspective, this rather interesting stat makes me once again glad decided to be childfree. Even with a good job I am not sure I could have afforded even one. I kind of wonder if I’d think scoring a first hockey goal was worth $500,000. But then I suppose a parent would tell me that as I am childfree I would not understand. And they’d probably be right. I wouldn’t.
The interesting stat according to Yahoo News is the average cost of raising kids in Canada (til age of 18) – is
- $305k if a single child,
- $244k each if two kids and
- $190k each if 3 or more.
That actually seems rather a conservative cost to me. And the cost must go down with 3 or more because the other kids get the hand-me-downs – right?
So you have to wonder, with things seemingly so tight, how come people have multiple kids these days (as a brother for or a sister for…?) Is cost a consideration?
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/good-news/cost-raising-children-canada-203821419.html
Children are expensive . When we were considering if being childfree was for us we did factor in costs (actual as well as opportunity costs, such as what we would have to give up in terms of lifestyle).
If you read some of the comments on the article some people think the cost is due to all the expensive stuff parents buy their kids… I mean I’ve overheard some parents talking about their kids wanting an iPad.. the latest iPad for that matter. Or an iPhone. But I think those costs are extra. And I am not sure it counts the ballet classes, sports games, and other extra curricular activities it seems all kids have to go to (I know this because some of my colleagues kids have a calendar that dwarfs mine).
What do you think? Do you think people really consider how much it costs to raise a child? Or do they just do it – and find out afterwards? After all someone has to have the kids, don’t they? (I believe the article isn’t talking about adopted kids, but if it is please highlight).
Thoughts?
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/good-news/cost-raising-children-canada-203821419.html
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Interesting subject. Indeed, kids need clothes and food, and toys, etc, which for adults these translate into money, money and even more money. However, these reasons haven’t stopped someone who really wants kids from having kids, or at least i don’t know anyone.
I think that the costs are exaggerated, because if this was true, how do people from poorer country raise their kids? and does this mean that those kids are less cared for?
I really don’t think so. Someone who wants kids will definitely have them, no matter the finances. If you decide not to have kids because you fear you’ll go broke, then this is just wrong.
I haven’t watched the video, but a book I read about the subject in the US said that most of the cost came from the increased housing costs. I’m not sure how Canadian schools work, but most parents I know go out and buy a big house in a good school district the moment they even think about having children. Competition between families drive up the costs of those houses. It would also factor in to why the cost per child goes down with each child. You’ve already bought the big house, that particular cost gets divided per each child you create to fill it.
Kids these days are so spoiled. Imagine a 10-year-old with an iphone?!
The operative word here is, AVERAGE. It can cost much much less to raise children and much much more. And you will not know what you are going to get when you have children. Are you going to give birth to a child with serious mental problems? physical disability? etc? The average includes all kinds of kids and how much is spent on them from the poorest families to the richest from the easiest to raise children to the hardest.
As I have mentioned before, lots of my friends and family are at an age now where they are starting to have kids and some of the costs seem quite staggering.
I have cousins who are now at secondary school, and the costs of that are suprisingly high (bearing in mind I am in England where education to the age of 18 is “free”). But, for example, take my cousin who has just started secondary school this time: School uniform MUST be bought from school supplier and all items must bear school logo. So that is shirt, jumper, blazer and tie, plus of course trousers and appropriate footwear. Plus PE uniforms, two seperate ones for indoor and outdoor games, and my auntie says you are looking at over £100/year, per child, assuming they dont grow much taller or fill out too fast and need a second set.
Then there is the bus to school – half fare, two ways each day is 80p/journey, 10 journeys a week, another £8/week per child.
Dinner money, on the schools prepay system – parents have to provide credit for 5 meals/week at £3/meal, per child.
School trips, which the kid would be at a disadvantage to miss, several a year, ranging from £10-£30 each.
The two trips abroad connected with their language studies, at nearly £500 a time.
Plus of course any costs associated with extracurricualr activities such as sport of music lessons.
And thats before you factor in all the other stuff, like clothes, food, leaisure etc/
I can see how it adds up.
A friend who is due to return to work full time after her maternity was shocked at the cost of full time childcare and realised that after tax, NI, pensions, student loan repayments, union subs and childcare her take home wage was only about £200/month.
I can well believe that it would cost the amount stated in the article, and thats assuming the child doesn’t have other costs such as serious health issues or anything.
But I do find its a good statistic to have on hand when the childed people try the appalling bingo of “who will look after you when you are old?”, because you can point out that the money you save will pay for better care anyway!
I would take it a step further and ask people to imagine the result of investing that money instead of spending it on children. Put it in a low-yield investment and you’d wind up with a pretty penny after 20 years. Don’t just think of it as a monetary, but also in terms of opportunity cost — what other things could you do with that money? To those who have kids so the kids can take care of them when they’re old — is this the BEST way to get old age care? Seems horribly inefficient to me, if the nursing home is going to get paid either way….
My worry is that the childed will now use this stat as more leverage against childfree people. This just adds more to the stereotype of childfree people as rolling in money. “Why not tax the childfree people more? They’ve got LOTS to throw around!”
Very few of the parents I know thought accurately about the costs of raising children before having them. Whether it is food or expensive phones, the fact is that parents are spending the money. For all the preaching that parents indulge in about how much they love their children and put their needs first, one would think that providing financial stability and security for them would have been more of a priority. Most constantly complain about how expensive children are, and in the next breath talk about how society should subsidize their choices. Unless they are stay at home mothers who have husbands who earn high salaries, then they will look down their noses at lower income families and say, “MY child would never live in an apartment, MY child would never eat at a cheap restaurant…” when in reality if their income were supporting the family, as if they even had one, their family of four would be living in a studio apartment in a bad part of town.
And I completely agree with Scott above, that the cost will be used as leverage against childfree people to force them to pay more than their fair share. Even on an individual level, I’ve heard many divorced women looking for a “man who can support me and my children” as if it is the next unlucky guy’s responsibility to pick up the slack for whatever she doesn’t get from the father. For women, getting into a serious relationship with a man who has children means that you will pay indirectly for those kids when they come to your home. Note, I’m not saying parents shouldn’t pay child support or take care of their kids, but any romantic partner who dares raise the issue of having to pay for another person’s children is painted as a jerk or evil step parent. One more reason I stopped dating men with kids.
While the number listed is a lot of money, it is a gross underestimate. If a woman takes time off beyond maternity leave, she loses earning power even if she eventually returns to the work force, if she doesn’t, she may likely choose a lower level position or work less to spend time with the kids. It also does not take into account the costs of kids who live at home after 18, which in this economy are quite common, or children with special needs. It also ignores costs involved if the parents divorce. Then each parent has to have car seats, a large enough home, beds, etc. If the parents pay for any weddings, add that to the total. If their kids have kids, then add expenses for grand kids, especially if they spoiled their kids and those kids grow up to expect ongoing handouts from mom and dad. Another category that would be difficult to measure, is the expenses that go with stress. It is widely acknowledged that stress has a negative impact on health, and that people often spend as a form of stress relief. So if mom and dad are paying for blood pressure, heartburn and pain medications, part of it could be from the stress of raising their children. And how many time pressed parents opt for more expensive convenience purchases?
People can spend their money however they like, but what frustrates me is the way some parents talk about the high price of child rearing as if they were forced into it and as if by adding their very likely mediocre kids to the population (statistically it is impossible for every kid to be the best on the planet as their parents believe) they are doing the world a favor despite the evidence that overpopulation is a serious problem. They don’t have sympathy for “rich doctors” who pay hundreds of thousands to learn how to save people who are not related to them. They might say, “Oh but they get paid a lot after” and that is selfish, yet it is OK for them to have kids to take care of them when they are old. Nor do they have compassion for homeless people who must have made stupid choices, as if having a chronic illness or PTSD from having gone to war to defend their country, as is the case with the many homeless individuals, was a selfish choice.
Those numbers are just an additional bonus. But of course lesser cost in that area opens up other opportunities and less financial stress.
I think that for people who want kids, how much it costs doesn’t really matter unless it means someone in the family will (literally) starve. And $305,000 over 18 years isn’t really that much ($16,944/year). At least, it’s not enough to think “It’ll break us! We can’t do it!”
For those who want children, cost is a small price to pay. It’s probably a lot less of a consideration than how their lives will change overall.
Not much?!?! Thats like buying a new Toyota Yaris every year!!! I bought mine in 2008 and I’m STILL paying it off every month!!!
From SS: “And how many time pressed parents opt for more expensive convenience purchases?”
I didn’t realize the extent to which this is true until I stayed with a friend, her boyfriend and her son for several months. She had at least a 45-minute commute each way (includes dropping off/picking up her son at school) so by the time they made it back home it was nearly 6:00 pm. Her son had to do homework and go to bed around 9:00, and she often had to bring work home, which didn’t leave a lot of time for preparing a meal, eating it and cleaning up. So they ate a lot, and I mean a LOT of convenience food and fast food. That stuff is expensive! This same girl and the boyfriend just had a baby about two weeks ago. They also have a car payment and a mortgage. I just about get a headache just thinking about having that many expenses and responsibilities.
A divorced woman I know at work also has a long commute and two kids at home who are in activities that require a lot of driving so she doesn’t get home until nearly 9 some evenings. She mentioned something about how she’d like to bring her lunch to work more often, but she never has leftovers to bring because they eat fast food so much of the week. I’d never even thought about that. I couldn’t handle a life in which there’s hardly ever time to prepare even the simplest meal.
Yet another advantage of being CF: You can spend a lot of time preparing a meal without anyone asking “When is it gonna be readeeeeee?” or you can eat a bag of microwave popcorn and an orange for dinner.
And $16,944/year seems like a LOT of money to me.
I don’t think people think of the finances at all when they decide to have children, frankly. The amount they are spending is spread over such a long time that I doubt it even factors into the decision, unless it’s to delay children until the couple is more comfortable, which has been the trend in the last 20 years.
As for the childfree being taxed more, that’s already true, if you consider that dependents can be used as tax deductions. The same is true for married couples, provided one spouse makes below a certain level.
I have three different friends with teenage boys (ranging from 13 to 17) and I laugh with them as they describe in utter horror how their boys come home and literally HOOVER out the fridge. (not to leave out the girls…my friends kids just happen to be boys.)
It costs my husband and I on average 2 pounds per meal to eat at home, so about 80 quid or so just on straight groceries per week, not including bottles of wine, meals out or luxury splurges from M&S or something. I mentioned this to my friends, so we had fun figuring out a little maths on how much it cost to fuel the average adolecent. Now mind you, this is on straightforward home prepared meals…not takeaway or expensive “ready foods” for lunchboxes or whatever.
All three of my friends figured out it cost AT LEAST 100 pounds, per week, per older kid to keep them fed and happy, eating brekkie at home and packing a lunch. Not including the snacking… Growth spurts are expensive! So two kids, 200 quid a week, times four…blah blah… you are looking at almost 10k a year…JUST TO FEED YOUR GROWING TEENS.
So…my husband and I are potentially saving about 800.00 a month just by not having to feed two hungry teenage boys. (Or girls for that matter…I could really put it away when I was that age too…)
Remember, these are families that cook every meal at home and send in packed lunches. I can totally see how it adds up! That’s like half a modest salary…just on bread eggs and milk! (Well, you get me here…)
We laughed…but each one individually later confessed that they were horrified at how much just feeding a family costs…
Good lord!
People forget compound interest. So if you add the interest onto the savings you make each year you make more and more, so that 300k ends up being 500k if you factor it in.
Why do so many parents complain about the cost of raising children? Didn’t they do their homework before having children? If they had, they would have known that it costs, on average, $300,000 to raise one healthy child from birth to eighteen years of age. Didn’t they know that there would be numerous expenses involved, such as 5,000 to 8,000 diapers, toys, batteries for the toys, furniture, strollers, clothes, shoes, books, medicines, (dare I mention larger vehicle, larger home, different neighborhood?) etc.? And why do they expect — or demand — that you and I will foot all the bills?
Someone who chooses to have four children will likely spend four times what someone with one child would have to spend. This reminds me of the child in the candy store who has twenty-five cents, but fills a bag with candy and is shocked to learn that it’s going to cost more than four dollars to buy that amount of candy.
If they had done their research, they wouldn’t have been surprised by the expense.
Jerry Steinberg
Founding Non-Father Emeritus of NO KIDDING!
The international social club for childless and childfree couples and singles
http://www.nokidding.net; jerry@nokidding.net
This kind of data saddens me.i came from a family of 6 kids. I grew up in kenya, my
parents worked hard to take us to good private schools. Isaw the strain it caused,as tution fees increased each year.it was hard for me to see my family struggle just to keep us in good schools,they sacrifised so much. I decided early on not to ever have children. It has been the best decision i ever made. I travel alot,eat out in good restaurants,spend quality time reading,meditating,yoga, charity and volunteer work. I also run a business.
When i do all these thi gs, i think of my wonderful parents.
Amy
Nairobi.
great article,
$305k if a single child,in my country (saudi arabia),with that amount of money it cost 1,152,384 !,but i’m going to move to canada,but still a lot of money.
have a great day.
adel.