It's funny how when my boss asked me straight up "when are you and your partner having children?" my response of "I cannot afford to have children" caused absolutely 0 introspection on his part. There is a part of me that would love to have children but I refuse to bring a child into the world under the current circumstances
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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gotta be more direct and say "you don't pay me enough to"
It’s funny because they haven’t just “risen” this is a direct result of capitalism siphoning the outputs of society and socializing the costs onto the rest of us, forcing us to pay for our own education and socialization that will make us a future worker. They’re eating the goddamned seed corn.
The fact very little people can understand the absurdity of an economy based on both consumption and “the richer you are, the more things you should just get for free!”
“The secret is you to get the money to work for you”
And “I built everything I own I am the self actualized yeoman ideal”
Two equally priceless artifacts of their belief system, held in tandem, and they never tell you how both can be true at the same time.
they never tell you how both can be true at the same time.
Not to mention both are actually false
I mean they obviously think that the "getting" part of "getting money to work for you" is work that they themselves are doing. They're not rent seeking exploiters, they're just getting their just reward for building the rent seeking exploitation machine
They also think "getting your money to work for you" means your dollars are packing a lunchbox and punching the clock at the work factory. They do not think of it in terms of siphoning profit away from the laborers who produce it.
You’re right, sometimes I forget how creative they can be.
I doubt it's that cheap
I've never even thought about having kids. I can't even afford a place to live without roommates, how the hell am I supposed to even think about starting a family when I'm still sharing an apartment with 2 other people?
My parents were able to raise 4 kids in a 4 bedroom house on 1 government salary.
This is a mean of $1500-2000 a month. I wonder what the 25% and 75% intervals are.
There's a Calvin and Hobbes strip where the dad cites the number as being $180k, and that would have been in the 80s or 90s.
The Simpsons intro had Maggie scan at $847.63, which was then the monthly estimate for raising a child.
Before my oldest was out of daycare we were paying almost $3000 a month for both of them, just for daycare alone. Add things like, dance classes, swim lessons, food, transportation, medical expenses, etc. I wouldn't doubt it was double that. Now that the oldest is out of daycare, It's dropped a lot, down to $1250 a month. However, it sure doesn't feel like it. It would seem that as soon as one kid exits daycare, capital has a crisis and now costs for shit have doubled negating the reduction in daycare costs.
Grew up in the aughts and including college I was hearing over a milly
including college
There's a class assumption here. Families that are in a position to cover their kids' college costs are going to be far wealthier than average, we're talking maybe richest 20%.
absolutely, there are a lot of assumptions for pricing a child tho. Some families have relatives to watch the kids, others gotta slap $1500 USD/month so that’s quite a few years of a minimum of 18k per year.
Don't worry, Elon Musk is going to father thousands more sickly, twisted homunculoids to make up for the poors
with all this cash i’m saving on kids i didn’t have, im going to have so much more money for drugs! sweet
Key findings
- The 18-year cost of raising a child grew to $303,418 after tax exemptions and credits, according to a LendingTree analysis, even though the cost of the first five years dipped slightly. That's an average of $16,857 annually over 18 years, up 1.9% from a year ago. However, annual costs in the first five years decreased slightly from $29,419 to $29,325 (or 0.3%), driven primarily by a dip in day care costs.
- Hawaii is the most expensive state to raise a small child, with annual costs for the first five years reaching $40,342. Maryland and Massachusetts follow at $36,419 and $34,247. Conversely, annual costs are lowest in Mississippi ($17,148), Alabama ($18,019) and South Dakota ($18,622). All three states have infant day care costs below $10,000 annually, helping them rank among the cheapest states to raise a small child.
- Fourteen states saw the annual cost of raising a small child rise at least 10.0%, including four with growth of 20.0% or more. Annual costs rose in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Nebraska (27.4%), Montana (24.5%), Maine (24.4%) and Wisconsin (23.3%) all saw significant year-over-year growth in the annual cost of raising a small kid. - Families in six states are projected to spend more than $300,000 raising a child over 18 years, with Hawaii leading at $412,661, followed by Alaska ($365,047) and Maryland ($326,360). By contrast, projected costs are lowest in New Hampshire ($201,963), the District of Columbia ($202,115) and South Carolina ($204,213). Kansas and Alaska saw the largest increases in projected 18-year child-rearing costs, each rising 23.5% from last year's report.
- Families spend an average of 21.9% of their income on the basic annual expenses to raise a small child, down from 22.6% in our 2025 analysis. The percentage is lowest in the District of Columbia (13.9%) and highest in Hawaii (27.4%).