... and Worth Every Penny

Parenting is one of those things--not unlike, say, whitewater rafting--that people enter without really knowing what’s ahead. It’s hard, going in, to imagine a lifetime job that has no weekends off and no formal training beyond what we recall from our own parents. One result is that few comprehend the dollar costs of child-rearing.

Enter the U.S. Department of Agriculture, providing figures to determine state foster care and child support payments. The USDA’s latest study makes for sober reading, even if you’ve never shopped for used shin guards or soccer cleats. In the tradition of government publications, the study’s title will keep most volumes unread: “The Annual Report on Expenditures on Children by Families 2000 No. 1528-2000.” It shows, however, that parents who received a little bundle of gurgling baby last year can expect to pay an estimated $165,630 for a middle-class upbringing by the time that creature smells less good and reaches 18. That’s in today’s dollars, so the total will rise considerably with inflation. It’s also not counting what seems like $100,000 for the unsold candy these little tykes were supposed to peddle for team fund-raisers but didn’t.

For 40 years the annual study of more than 16,000 one-and two-parent families has recorded revealing trends, not least that half of all children now spend time in single-parent households, which are typically less affluent than two-parent homes.

In 1960, middle-class parents in the urban West had the highest costs to raise children. That hasn’t changed, which helps explain record lottery sales. The cheapest child-rearing regions are the Midwest and rural America. Housing remains the largest single cost (33%) while clothing (excluding useless bits of clothing from distant relatives) dropped from 11% to 6%. Health care went from 4% to 7% of total child costs while child-care expenses mushroomed from 1% to 10% as more mothers went to work. All transportation costs (including mileage costs for driving to practice) come to 15%. Parents of teenage boys will not believe that food expenses actually declined as a share of child-rearing, from 24% to 18%.

If teenagers comprehended such numbers, out-of-wedlock births might decline more. On the other hand, if anyone actually pondered the financial costs, who would deliberately have children at all? A little ignorance--and a few shy smiles and innocent hugs--have their powerful place.

Oh, we didn’t mention that the $165,630, which is likely to exceed $233,000 in 18 years of inflation, includes not one penny of college costs.