❌ three kids and no money
❌ no kids and three money
✅ no kids and no money
PSA: Money is fucking disgusting. Don’t touch your eyes with it.
Right?! I had a visceral reaction seeing that.
I think people grossly overestimate the cost of having children. Speaking for Europe though.
Will from what I understand the cost of birth alone starts at 80k in medical debt for Americans? This is not counting 9 months of prebirth care, child caring items like bed and clothes, and also Im a man with no intention of having a child so 80k might be slightly off
Nah its like 18k USD or so if you’re uninsured. 3k or so if you are. Daycare and supplies are brutal though, probably 20k on average annually - higher if you live in an expensive state. Childcare specific costs get cheaper as they grow and eventually they hit public school. Past that you still have to cloth, feed, transport and lodge them - so just imagine what you spend on yourself and thats about what you spend on each child.
And then suddenly your kid has special needs that require constant supervision - it’ll never be safe to leave them alone. For the rest of your life, you’re now a caregiver, and you’ll have to find someone to take over when you die. And find some way to afford all that.
And what if you birthed alone, or your fellow parent bails out or dies? Who’ll take care of that child and who’ll earn money? The US is deliberately built to make this devastating for anyone who’s not already wealthy.
I have a special-needs pet who can’t be left alone for more than a few hours. I have no desire to amplify that into a full-lifetime task.
Yeah I mean, if you are destitute in your own life don’t have kids, terrible financial decision. But if you are actually making/saving money, it’s not as horrible as people claim. Daycare in early life is the biggest expense until college. Also you do get some tax breaks in the US with kids so that offsets it a bit.
The biggest risk beyond daycare is if your kids have major issues, cause that can cost a lot of extra time, money, and your sanity. But that’s a roll of the dice.
Yeah I’m not the guy that advocates for kids or anything and definitely have my share of regret in that area, but we have pretty basic insurance in the US and the entire cost of the pregnancy was $200 out of pocket, not including parking. Every doctor visit, the delivery, and our own recovery room.
A coworker who is insured through his wife just had a little girl last week and actually only had to do copays for prenatal prescriptions. Oh and parking. They always fuck you there.
E. I asked another buddy just for shits and he paid ~$1200 flat rate for each of his three kids delivery with a few hundred each prenatal. Expensive but manageable at least.
If you have halfway decent insurance (which not everyone does of course) it is not particularly expensive out of pocket. The bill from the hospital is huge though, yes, but it gets picked up with insurance.
A “funny” feature of US healthcare is that it may be cheaper to get pregnant in November-February or so, because then the bulk of the healthcare will take place in one year and you’ll meet any out of pocket max in one year only. Giving birth in January, on the other hand, means you probably meet your out of pocket twice — once for pregnancy, once for birth.
Assuming you have health insurance, which we all should have, it’s nowhere close to that expensive. A C-section cost me about $1500 in silicon valley with a high deductible crappy insurance plan. A regular delivery would have been even cheaper.
Kids are not very expensive except in two areas… Child care, or the opportunity cost of a parent staying home to take care of them, and college. And maybe feeding them when they become teenagers… Because holy crap they eat a lot!
Now I’m lucky enough that I made enough money that my wife was able to not work when we started having kids, but if I ignore that opportunity cost (which is fucking massive), in me experience kids are actually quite cheap.
Food was cheap, clothing was hand-me-down, even most infant care stuff was cheap if you get it used and people are always giving away used stuff that their kids outgrow. Child care was the only thing I would consider expensive when they’re young. (This is looking at things from a middle class perspective)
Assuming you have health insurance, which we all should have
I agree! Let’s get on that.
I’m childfree and broke as a joke. Kids just make you more poor. Being kidless doesn’t automatically mean you’re rich.
To be fair wiping your tears with $300 for a meme also doesn’t make you rich
Btw will you watch my kids just for a few seconds? 6 hours later Ah the joy of children 😤
You should say no. Easier said than done, I know.
Cost is absolutely a valid reason to abstain from having children, but it’s just one of many; and is a blip on the radar compared to things like refusing to subjugate them to the dystopian hellscape of a planet we’re building for them.
Choosing to have a child is an act of cruelty, usually made as a result of completely selfish thinking like giving yourself / your partner that ‘little bundle of joy’ or continuing a family legacy or even to build a footsoldier to stand as fodder against the hordes of people pouring fuel into the dumpsterfire we live in.
…but yeah, they are also expensive.
What you described is an absolutely valid reason to abstain from having children, but just a blip on the radar compared to not wanting to have one.
Not sure what you mean. Weighing factors leads to a decision… the factors compare to each other, not to the decision.
Like, say I decide to skip a meal: multiple factors might be at play i.e. feeling nauseous, not being hungry, not having time, etc. Some of those factors will be weighted more heavily than others, like if I’m feeling nauseous then all the other ones are moot: I’m not gonna eat. Saying that feeling nauseous is a blip compared to deciding not to eat doesn’t make sense.
These arguments are typically from younger people that value stuff over personal relationships. Older people without kids around my neighborhood spend all day grooming their lawns and washing their cars, looking forward to visits by nieces and nephews.
And bizarrely, they are full of parenting advice.
And so you just know they are unhappy? You know parents also have kids up and move away too. There is no guarantee that they will keep you company in old age or even be around.
As a childless person I’m very happy in my mid to later life to be able to travel frequently, to see my nieces and nephews, and to do what I like like my own hobbies. Don’t be so quick to assume that they must be unhappy.
Say you’re American without saying you’re American.
Yeah, kids being an additional source of financial expenses is an exclusively American thing. Nobody else on earth, when having a child, needs to pay for anything to support the child for the rest of its entire life.
You have the inalienable right not to have children, if you don’t want to, but if the reason is money, it’s sad. On more than one level.
Not wanting to have kids because of money is a perfectly fine reason and isn’t sad at all. Not sure what your problem is.
I think parent’s comment (no pun intended) is that if you want to, all things being equal, but you don’t solely because of money, then that’s a sad statement about the state of the world, not about you as a person.
It’s kind of inescapable to spend SOME extra money on kids even if the government is really generous. Paying for babysitters, nice clothes/toys for them they don’t need, etc. Some people may decide they don’t want to spend their extra money that way, that’s their prerogative.
I think they’re talking about people who don’t have that extra money to begin with.
It could also be interpreted as being a sad statement about them as a person. That they are chasing dollars over something fulfilling in life. “I really want to have kids, but then I won’t reach my F.I.R.E. financial goals as quickly!” would be sad, imho.
Saw an interview of one unmarried, childless dude who wants to have a loving family with 8 kids. I think he was nearing 60 years-old. His explanation was that he “never really felt financially ready”, yet he was an IT consultant for over 30 years and didn’t discuss any lengths of unemployment or other real financial struggles. And he grew up in a modest income family.
It’s a sad reality that he’s likely missed his chance, all because he prioritized his financial goals (or whatever the heck he was spending his excess money on) over aiming for what he actually wanted out of life.
For me, I don’t want a life with children. So prioritizing other goals is not sad for me. But if I wanted children, it’d be sad if I kept allocating my money and time to things that don’t help me achieve my goal.
It’s sad.
Thank you for your opinion in calling my choices sad. Money is not the only reason why I dont want kids, its just one of many. Them being ugly is another reason.
Them being ugly is another reason.
Did you mean to burn yourself or?
If you wrote that and reposted this image at face value, it’s even sadder.
But again, it’s your life, I wasn’t judging it but I was judging the meme.
Anyone can choose to not have children for any reason whatsoever, “because theyre expensive” is a valid and just reason. You dont get to sit atop a moral pedestal because you think the reason is dumb.
I never said that this reason was dumb. I said it was sad. Having children shouldn’t be expensive.
Idk if youre not American but in America “thats sad” can mean the exact same as “thats dumb” so im sorry if theres a culture barrier
Uh, no. I’m American too and I call bullshit. Since when does “that’s sad” mean the same as “that’s dumb”? Even contextually you can tell what they meant.
Ok so as an American you know that our language changes dramatically every 10 years or even region to region, right? You may not have interpreted what he said the same way that I interpreted it
I’m French so it’s not the first time my bad English led to misunderstandings. I apologize too.
“that’s sad” usually means literally, “that’s sad”.
How the other person interpreted it (“that’s dumb”) is more of a slang usage.
It’s like, “It’s sad that you would be the kind of person who’d do that”. It’s heard as a personal judgment, and not a judgment about the world or the situation.
One of those…backhanded statements that passive-aggressive people would use to make it sound like they’re judging a situation when they’re actually judging a person.
I don’t think you did anything wrong. If you want to avoid that misunderstanding in the future, you could clarify what about it is sad.
“It’s sad that raising children is seen as prohibitively expensive where you live”. Tons of words, I know. That’s why I’m not blaming you for what you said, lol
But your english is good! I couldnt tell that you didnt speak the language, learning a language just doesnt help people understand cultural nuances. Im trying to learn Japanese and I know im going to get minute details wrong
I feel like most people can’t love or nurture another human being they don’t feel ownership of.
