The Cost of Raising a Child (a school assignment)

We were discussing raising children in my sociology class. Since I take online courses, they are split between 18-year olds and us older folks who are going back to school. Among the younger people, the most common preparation for kids is "I will wait until I earn enough money to support a child." Of course, I had to put my own two cents in, so I am sharing my post here:


Out of my four pregnancies, only one was specifically planned - the second one, because I wanted to have a playmate for the first! When my husband and I got married, we both agreed we would wait awhile to have children - wait til we were financially "ready". I was on the pill, but I became pregnant after a few years. I was afraid to tell him - he says I apologized a bunch of times. But the birth of Elijah was easily the best thing that ever happened in our life together. Parenthood forced us to grow up, to start taking responsibility for ourselves. More than that, our son's arrival made us both deeply happy.


Having children has cost us almost nothing financially, and yet at the same time it has cost us everything. With my first three pregnancies, family and friends threw us huge baby showers and anything we really needed was given to us - and a whole LOT that we did not need. With the fourth child, I decided not to have a baby shower at all, though there were many people that would have been willing to attend one! - I already have enough hand me down clothes to dress the new little one for years. I have cloth diapers that will last until he is potty trained. I don't use a crib, preferring to keep little ones in the bedroom with us, and I breastfeed until they are at least one, never using expensive formulas at all.

What about food costs? The fact is, we already cook enough food to feed two or three more people - food in our house, like many other American houses, is thrown out at the end of every meal. We spend food money smarter - more bulk meat, less hot pockets - so for a family of five I need to spend less than $100 a week on groceries, not much more than we spent before we had children. The older two children, who I don't have hand me downs for, get their clothing from a second hand shop. I buy nice t-shirts and pants for my kids for less than a dollar a piece. I buy my own clothes second-hand, too, and get a lot of hand me downs for myself, so I really don't spend any more on clothes than I ever have, either. The older boys clothes get passed down to his brothers, and my daughters clothes are donated back to the second hand shop when we are done with them.

The biggest financial cost we have incurred for our children was a "new" vehicle - a pretty 1998 Ford Windstar minivan. We spent less on that nice vehicle than most people spend on their compact cars.

That being said, if we had waited until we were financially ready to have children, we wouldn't have them today. As my husband is trying to find out what his passion is in life, and I have chosen to stay home with the kids rather than work, we are financially poorer than we were when our first son was conceived eight years ago. But we have three good children who bring us joy and excitement, and we are raising them to be good people, hard workers, pleasant neighbors, givers, people who will contribute to society in a positive way.

Most people won't choose to live on as little as we do, so a lot of the ways we choose to save money are for us, but not for others. I know that breastfeeding doesn't work out for everyone, and I respect that. Another example, rather than have a mortgage, we saved up cash and bought a mobile home. We pay a very small amount each month for "lot rent", which includes the land our house is on, trash, sewer costs, and water cost. Not everyone would be content to live in a trailer park and wear second hand clothes, but it enables us to have the kind of freedom we need to be happy.

Sorry this is so long, but I do have one final thought. While children may not have cost us much in the way of currency, they have cost us our entire lives. We can't travel like we want to - do you know how much it would cost to put five people on a plane? Or how stressful the flight would be? Our house is usually untidy and almost always messy. There are fingerprints everywhere and the baby is always walking off with my husband's shoes. Plus, the children all have emotional needs. They need to be listened to and talked to. Our daughter in particular never stops talking! It's not always easy for an introvert like myself to focus on the never ending words of a needy five year old. My kids have been sick for the last few weeks. They passed around a major cold, a minor stomach bug, and an eye infection. At the end of it, I was so weary from being thrown up on, wiping boogey-noses, dispensing medicine, comforting tired tears, cleaning and bathing sick eyes, waking up overnight - all while being eight months pregnant and the size of a house, lol. And yet I am "just" a stay at home mom (and at the moment, a struggling student). The "cost" of having children - it costs everything you have. It's worth every bit.