Well, right. Some of that spending is technically not necessary (we could choose to live in a worse school district, of course—clearly many people do, or there wouldn't be schools there) but you're also probably gonna feel like (and, maybe, be) a terrible person if you don't spend more to get your kids into better schools if you can. Like, obviously couples whose income doesn't amount to at least a million dollars over 18 years aren't spending half a million on raising their kids, but many of them nevertheless do have kids.

But, the result of all this psychology and zero-sum competition (as housing/schools are) is that kids tend to eat all available income up to a point—and, indeed, if you cross a certain income threshold and can afford top-tier private school, there's another entire tier of potential and hard-to-convince-yourself-not-to-do spending above that.

Maybe more middle class parents should be sending kids to community college?

A few years back, my state made CC free for all people with high school educations excluding those with degrees and perhaps other minor variables as well.

https://www.tbr.edu/initiatives/tn-promise

The higher the financial class, the more resources in general are poured in to molding each child. It certainly helps to give them a better chance on average than their peers

Benefits aren't as high as you think they are. If you have a low wage job, losing the ability to jump at every opportunity to pick up a shift can be a huge hit to your bottom line. I have a white collar job. I know I can play with my daughter tonight without losing money.