Typical income is 50k a year and it takes ~250k to raise a kid you are looking at 13,888k a year for the kid, after taxes

Children are extremely expensive. I have raised 4. You are broke the entire time and can always spend more on them.

In the US you are 1 medical incident from not affording anything and relying on welfare

https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/cost-to-raise-chi...

You can always spend more on anything. That doesn't mean there's a good reason to do it.

You will notice the children who grow up to be the most productive tend to get the most support from their parents. I guess it depends on how much you want your kids to succeed vs how much you want to keep for yourself.

Extra mouth to feed, extra room (bigger house), constantly changing wardrobe, yearly expenses on school materials and books, extra phone and computer, childcare, etc...

You must have a very weird definition of "cheap".

My health insurance costs alone would almost quadruple if I had a wife+kid

Mine (through work) quadrupled when I got the wife even though we're childfree. The work benefit I was offered provided for either me alone or for my family with unlimited dependents.

Most of it would be on your spouse. Unlike you they are completely subsidized by your employer.

My current plan:

$100/mo - me

$125/mo - me + child(ren)

$350/mo - me + spouse + child(ren)

As a self-employed software developer, the CHEAPEST healthcare plan for my family is $1030/month ($10k deductible).

You are referring to a benefit you get from your salaried position. Nice but many developers do not have this luxury.

Children are more expensive now because of societal pressure to raise kids to a higher standard because people have less of them.

Imagine all the hand wringing that would ensue if at lunch with my colleagues (which is a rough approximation of the HN demographic) I mentioned that I got a 5yo hand-me-down car seat instead of buying the latest and greatest. Generalize that pressure to pretty much every child raising related expense.

It looks like a lot of car seat brands are considered expired starting at 6-ish years, so yeah, I wouldn't suggest using a 5yo car seat.

Good intentions or not that's exactly the kind of hand wringing I mean.

I know plastics become more brittle with age but a modern car seat that's expired is going to be tons safer than a car seat from 2000 (mostly because engineers now have better access to good simulation tools at lower cost). So what if little Jimmy isn't maximally safe. He's still a heck of a lot safer (from an unlikely edge case no less) than he would have been if he were born 15yr ago.

"I know plastics become more brittle with age but a modern car seat that's expired is going to be tons safer than a car seat from 2000"

How do you know this? Maybe there's technology (crumple areas) that only works when the plastic is relatively new or cushion areas that only are most effective before they degrade, thus making them less safe than good old fashion plastic. We see this with modern cars in their bumper technology - they take the first impact better, but they aren't as rugged as older models. Do you actually know the trade-off, or are you just assuming?

There's a little bit of assumption about material design in there but it's obvious from the seat designs that they've come a long way. They're actually designed to fit the form of the body now (which is a big deal for safety). Old seats were little more than booster seats with integrated seat belts. It's like the difference between a 60s bucket seat and a modern racing bucket seat.

Only if your kids don't go to childcare, sleep on the kitchen floor and run around in rags.