The high cost of having kids is changing the family landscape in America.
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My kids will be at least four years apart in age, and even though I’ve had fertility problems, that age gap is still entirely by design. My husband and I simply can’t afford to have two kids back to back.
It turns out we’re not alone. More than half of parents say the expense of taking care of a baby made them decide to stop or delay having kids, according to a report by student lending website LendEDU.
The company surveyed 1,000 parents with a child that is at least 1-year-old but no older than 3, to find out how much an infant costs the average parent in the first year. The number won’t surprise most moms and dads but is nonetheless still jaw-dropping: Babies cost an average of $13,186 in their first 12 months.
That big price tag on a family’s first bundle of joy is meaningful for a number of reasons. First, it significantly eats into household income for most families. A quarter of respondents said the first-year costs made up "21 to 30%" of their annual household income, while another 13 percent said it comprised "31 to 40%" of their household income. Here’s how much families said the expense ate into their family budget:
Just as importantly, the cost is also driving families to make different decisions about their family size and when to have more kids. According to the report, 53 percent of parents indicated the expense of taking care of their baby deterred them from having more children to some degree. Specifically, 27 percent said they need to wait a few years, while another 26 percent simply stated they are not having any more children.
That finding dovetails with other recent surveys on family size. In a poll conducted last year by The New York Times of parents who reported they had or expected to have fewer children than they considered ideal, 64 percent said it’s because childcare is too expensive. (It was the No. 1 reason why respondents said they aren’t having more kids.) Nearly half (44 percent) said it’s because they can’t afford more children.
It’s a development that worries economists. As the fertility rate in the U.S. continues to decline—likely due in part to the cost of raising kids—we will have fewer workers to support retirees, and fewer loved ones to take care of older family members.
And there are other crucial ways the expense of baby’s first year impacts families. Nearly a quarter of respondents (24 percent) said they took on debt to afford it. Meanwhile, 25 percent said they or their partner had to switch jobs to increase their take-home pay. Others needed a more-flexible work schedule (31 percent), switched to part-time work (9 percent) or quit working entirely (29 percent).
“I did change careers from being a police officer to working at home for myself,” said Ashley Patrick, a mom quoted in the report. “We decided that childcare was so expensive that it wasn’t worth my time to work. The cost between childcare, gas and taxes made it so I barely brought home any income.”
Interestingly, childcare was just a small fraction of the costs associated with a baby’s first year. Here’s what parents forked over their hard-earned cash for:
Mike Brown, the report’s author, speculates the cost of childcare is low because so many respondents “had to change their work life to be more available to their child, which presumably would lower the need for professional childcare.”
So it stands to reason babies cost much more than $13,186 a year for working moms, especially for those who live in areas such as San Francisco or New York, where the average monthly cost of care for one child is $1,955 and $1,630, respectively. As a New Yorker who pays for childcare, I can attest that’s on the low end.
My husband and I quickly realized there was no way we’d be able to afford childcare for two, so we decided to wait until our son started public pre-K before having another. Many of my working mom friends simply decided not to have another child at all.
To those fretting about low birth rates, we have a suggestion: Show us the money.