by Chris Black
Disposable diapers cost thousands of dollars per year. Same goes for baby formula and store bought baby food.
All of this can be avoided with washable diapers, breastfeeding or home-made formula, and baby-led feeding. Once they start getting teeth, you literally just take whatever you made for dinner and cut it into nice little pieces for them.
Second-hand clothes are also very cheap. You can get a used baby onesie for less than $2.
I have been meaning to write a proper post about this, because there is an awful USDA report claiming that it costs upwards of $250k to raise a child to the age of 17.
It’s so full of faulty assumptions that you could almost write a book on everything that’s wrong with it.
The most expensive aspect will be the hospital bill (that’s what insurance is for) and initial equipment costs for your first child; stroller, crib, car seat, things like that. Once that initial cost is out of the way,the monthly food budget is barely affected.
Mom will need to eat a few hundred extra calories per day to produce milk, but that’s really not a lot of extra food.
If you can afford to live on your own with a decent standard of living, and you have health insurance, you can afford to have a child.
Just don’t be stupid or lazy and you won’t end up buying a bunch of bullshit you don’t need.
Even if babies were “expensive” that ignores the other side of the equation, which is that you get to share in the most joyful earthly experience possible, the joy of parenthood.
Implicit in saying babies are “expensive” is the implication that they are “not worth it”, which is to devalue what are the highest blessings and treasures of God.
If having a kid were really that expensive, Shaniqua and Carlita wouldn’t be having two, three, four of them.
When people are unhappy, they lose the desire to do things that are good for them.