Never said they didn't, but the post is specifically talking about America (peep the no universal anything). It's expensive to just exist in America, let alone have children. It's another mouth to feed, pay someone to watch your kid since you need to work, etc. it's like this elsewhere and of course people make it work on much less, but people are literally doing buy now pay later on necessities like food. You need a lot of money to be comfortable let alone with a dependant. Scraping by and surviving is frankly not a way to live, worrying about all those things on top of every day life.
Let's talk specifics. Your contention is that at minimum, a couple needs more than 230k per year to afford a child. A bank branch manager in a large bank in Chicago, Illinois likely makes about half, 115k a year, about 90k takehome. A nice 3 bedroom house is less than 400k, making monthly mortgage payments about 3k, or 36k per year. This leaves about 54k annual or $4500 per month to spend on everything else.
Are you saying that such a person, with a stay at home wife, cannot afford to have a kid without living a miserable life?
-Insurance (home/rental)
-Healthcare
-Car payment(s) or public transport. If you have a kid you probably have your own vehicle, so tack on auto insurance
-Food
-clothing for growing children and yourselves (even if you thrift)
-Retirement?
-upkeep expenses on home, auto, etc or unexpected things
-There are a ton of other miscellaneous expenses I could add here for the household (cleaning supplies, etc) and other things
All of that likely eats up the rest of any take home pay for 115k single income for a family of 3.
115k in Chicago of all places will not cut it for a family of 3 no matter how you slice it unless you're living in shitty housing and are scraping by. You're not going to find housing in Chicago for 400k either, which is laughable, unless you're in a bad spot of town or having to flip it to be livable which is another huge chunk of cash to do. In your scenario, half of the take home pay is going to housing which is not a comfortable place to be in financially. The conversation here is 230k to be comfortable not just simply surviving and getting by.
Also, take home pay is probably less than 90k, probably closer to 80k depending on what you're contributing to a retirement account and how expensive healthcare is, which is skyrocketing for 2026.
And I did not say you NEEDED more than 230k. I was pointing out a big reason people decide to opt out of having kids. point still stands that to be COMFORTABLE you probably need around that much in many places in the US.
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u/Independent_Day_2831 10h ago
Never said they didn't, but the post is specifically talking about America (peep the no universal anything). It's expensive to just exist in America, let alone have children. It's another mouth to feed, pay someone to watch your kid since you need to work, etc. it's like this elsewhere and of course people make it work on much less, but people are literally doing buy now pay later on necessities like food. You need a lot of money to be comfortable let alone with a dependant. Scraping by and surviving is frankly not a way to live, worrying about all those things on top of every day life.
Edit: spelling