Are Kids Too Expensive?

My wife and I took our kids to Bob Evans not too long ago. It was either that or a burger joint, and the burger joint lost, not that I’m bitter. As we were waiting for a table, an elderly gentleman came up to us and commented on how well-behaved our children were. We made pleasant small talk for a minute or two until the hostess came to take us to our table. As we left I heard him say, “You used to see families like that all the time. Now you never see them. No wonder, with how expensive everything is.”

I’ve heard this trope a lot: “It’s just too expensive.” Is it? Is that really the reason that the American family seems to be a dying breed? Many people seem to think so. Well, let’s dig into the numbers a little.

How Much Does It Really Cost?

It’s hard to know, because depending on what numbers you use you can find different outcomes. When I googled the question, Lending Tree came up first with a helpful tally for how much it costs to raise a kid. Their number? 300k a child for their first 18 years. So by that logic, if you have 5 kids, as we are about to, then I should be expecting to pay 1.5 million dollars for the privilege of raising my family. Now, if you had gone to newly-wed Ben and asked him if he wanted to have 5 kids, he would have eagerly said yes. If you told him it would cost 1.5 million dollars, he would have been quite dejected, at least at first. Then he would ask the all-important question, “Does it really cost that?”

How legit is that number? Well, the first thing to do is to ask how much that is per year. $300,000 divided by 18 years works out to be just under $17,000. The highest cost, according to this study, is the early years. Why is that? Because of daycare. They estimate that the normal family will pay over $17,000 a year in daycare costs for the first few years. So as a society we have moved to a two-income household as the expectation, and then people decided that childcare was too expensive to have children. Once you remove childcare, the study finds that average cost drops for the next 13 years of a child’s life to $12,061. That still seems awfully high, but not impossibly high. Yet there are a few other factors that we should consider.

First, these numbers are based on the 2024 family median income of $99,999. So if you make less than that, obviously you will spend less on your children. The amount of money you spend tends to grow and shrink with the amount of money you make. This is why very wealthy people live paycheck to paycheck. What this report really finds is that if you look at the spending habits of people, they spend on average 17% of their income on a child. Once you remove daycare from that equation, they spend more like 12%.

But the other thing this chart doesn’t do is explain what happens when you have multiple kids. If the mom stays home, as with our family, then you can knock off a pretty big number from that estimate. So if you have a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and a baby, as we did for a brief stint, then you can knock $51,000 off their estimate. There’s a full time salary right there. Another one of the costs is transportation. Again, your transportation isn’t going to magically jump by their estimate of $4,422 for each kid. Dentist and doctor appointments will likely be combined. Driving to school for one kid will often mean driving to school for 2 or 3 kids. So adding a child doesn’t mean adding another $300,000. Newly-wed Ben would be so relieved.

Finally, this is the national average. The study itself later acknowledges that different states have different costs of living. My state, Indiana, costs about $10,000 once you remove daycare, which again is about 10% of your income (assuming, as the study does, a household income of $99,999). And again, that’s for the first child. That number will go down with each child. On their list Indiana is #23, so almost perfectly in the middle of the pack.

That was a lot of numbers. If you are still with me, thank you. The point is that when you look at it, adding a child will probably be about 10-15% of your income, not counting daycare costs. That number will probably be higher or lower depending on your area of the country, and will also likely go down with each future kid you have.

You Spend Money on What Matters

At one point I met someone in ministry who had a hobby. He told me about one of the purchases he had made and the price tag for what it had cost him. I was initially floored by the amount. My first thought was that it was a waste of money. Maybe it was, but the more I thought about it the more I came to realize that people in general spend money on the things that matter to them. I’m sure someone could look at my budget and be surprised that I would spend that much money on [fill in the blank]. The problem is not that people don’t have enough money for children. The problem is that they want to spend money on other things.

Going through the money above was designed to show that having children is possible financially. It did not and could not show that it is no sacrifice to have children. Having children will be a tremendous sacrifice, of time, of money, of autonomy. Singles and newlyweds can hang out until 11 or midnight. Couples with kids are normally trying to get home by 8. Those who don’t have kids will have more money for going out to eat, going on nice vacations, or buying fun toys. Couples with kids will wait for Black Friday deals or scour the internet for where kids eat free (as we did when we went to Bob Evans). Having children will be costly, and honestly they always have been. But while they are costly and do require sacrifice, they are worth it. The best things in life will require sacrifice, and often the better something is the more sacrifice it will take.

This has been a pretty blunt post; I realize that. I’m watching my civilization turn away from God’s great plan for the family and when I hear excuses like “It’s too expensive” it comes across to me as hollow. But I realize that there are likely sincere couples wrestling through these questions. Someone who is looking carefully at the balance at the end of the month and isn’t sure if they can afford children. To them, I give the advice that Charlie Kirk was known for: “Have more children than you think you can afford.”

To some that might look like foolishness. I think it looks like faith. Often the two can be hard to tell apart, but here’s a good rule of thumb: When God tells you to do something and you don’t see how it could work, obeying God is faith and not foolishness. God has told us to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28) and told us that children are a heritage from the Lord (Psalm 127:3).

Are kids too expensive? No, they’re expensive, but they’re not too expensive. Not when you realize how much they’re worth.