Most of the people I know with kids would have had more if it wasn't so finances-wreckingly expensive. My wife and I would have had at least one more in that case, certainly.

The ones who have no kids and don't want any—I don't know any of those for whom it would have made a difference, though.

> What I see instead (in my professional friend circles) is people keep putting off having kids until their mid thirties because they end up so focused on their career.

Some of them are doing this because having kids is so expensive. It doesn't seem possible to provide adequately for them without mid-career income (often two mid-career incomes).

People with kids I know did not expressed that sentiment. I have heard some of them say that their actual number of kids is enough.

The thing here is that people tend to be more comfortable expressing deeply private thoughts about kids only to those who they suspect have similar outlook.

I can think of at least three people who've told me this is why they decided to stop at two children.

I do think you're right, though, that a lot of people gesture at the cost as a reason not to have kids when even if you removed that barrier they still wouldn't.

(In thinking about the effects of policies like this you need to think at the marginal parents: people who are close to the border on whether to have another kid and could be most easily swayed one way or the other.)

We could've afforded one or two more, but we stopped at two because it was a good balance for us between work, family, and personal interests. Neither one of us wanted to be a full time stay at home parent, and neither one of us wanted to subsume ourselves and our lives to the basic biological imperative just to have a bunch of kids.

Kids are a big commitment and a lot of work. I feel like having two gave us enough leeway to have the time and energy to devote to them as individuals when they needed it. In a larger family, that might not work out as well.

> How many? Nobody I know has done this with an actual spreadsheet of cost per child.

Everyone I know has done this with a spreadsheet of cost per child.

Around abouts where I live, the cost is 40k+ per year per child, not counting the obscene amount of $ you need to spend for a house that has room for more than 1 child, that is going to cost you well over a million, and if you want it in an area with good schools, you are looking at nearly 2 million.

So yeah, people here do the calculation, because not everyone can afford to dump 2 million on a house so they can have a second child.

The calculations seem pretty subjective on whats actually essential if a kid actually costs you 40k a year. I don’t even spend that much on myself .

Presumably you aren't constantly growing and in constant need of new clothes, nor do you need to pay someone to look after you on a day to day basis a la childcare.

These are on vastly different scales: we probably pay 50x more for childcare than clothes.

Right, but you probably don't need childcare.

Have a kid in California and you can look forward to paying $17000/year for infant care [1]. With California's median per-capita income of $41000/year [2] having two kids is an expensive business!

[1] https://tootris.com/edu/blog/parents/cost-of-child-care-in-c... [2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/CA/INC110221

Seattle is 24000-30k a year for infant care.

17,000 would be very, very, cheap.

These calculations are absurdly subjective and based on some sort of very unusually defined notion of costs per child. In the country I live in (and in many others i'm sure) millions of people manage to raise perfectly healthy kids wonderfully without earning or spending anywhere near those amounts per child or for a home. 2 million for a home fit for two kids? Ridiculous.

* * *

Congratulations on having exceptionally high personal living standards while residing in the 7th most expensive U.S city. You represent a miniscule fraction of the world's population. Now of course, this doesn't mean you should base your standards on how hundreds of millions of other families with one or more children manage to live okay in the rest of the world, but I note that even in Seattle itself, there are 110,672 children under the age of 18 and I guarantee you that the parents of only a small fraction of these kids own a 2 million-dollar home or pay 30 grand per year in childcare expenses.

Again, many, many people raise children quite well and responsibly without needing anywhere near $2 million to have a couple of them.

> but I note that even in Seattle itself, there are 110,672 children under the age of 18 and I guarantee you that the parents of only a small fraction of these kids own a 2 million-dollar home or pay 30 grand per year in childcare expenses.

Of course not, 5 years ago houses were much more affordable.

10 years ago they were massively more affordable.

Now they are not.

> Again, many, many people raise children quite well and responsibly without needing anywhere near $2 million to have a couple of them.

You can get a 4 bedroom house in a not so great part of town for under 1 million, but even an 800k house in a crap area is hardly "affordable". Houses around good schools, aka ones with drinking water not contaminated with lead (which is an actual fucking problem in Seattle schools), cost a lot more. Houses in cheaper areas also have schools where, pulling from state test scores, less than 30% of children in local schools learn how to read. So if that matters to parents, they may want to look elsewhere for housing.

Prior to starting school, child care in Seattle for 2 kids is still going to run 44-60k a year. When they do start public school, count on expensive summer programs, and during the school year, expensive after school sports.

> Congratulations on having exceptionally high personal living standards while residing in the 7th most expensive U.S city.

When I was born here, this was a very affordable city. When I went to public schools here, they were good. Funding was still piss poor, and presumably we were all drinking leaded water without knowing about it (and again, everyone responsible for that still being a problem should be thrown in a jail cell for awhile), but the education outcomes were good. Heck I got to play with recombinant DNA in high school! We were still using 8086s in the year 2000 (same school as the genetics program!) but at least they had those sweet IBM keyboards.

I've voted for every single proposal that is supposed to help improve schools and fix infrastructure issues, but thanks to decades of NIMBYs, high housing prices have contributed to, of caused, nearly all of Seattle's woes.

> You represent a miniscule fraction of the world's population.

And a non-trivial % of HN readers who the topic "who runs spreadsheets to figure if they should have children" applies to.

My original point is that plenty of people I know indeed do the math on having a second or third child. Friends who bought a large house at 1/2 to 1/3rd the price houses go for now, not an issue! Everyone else is boned.

Nobody needs to dump 2 million on a house in the Bay Area to have kids. Whoever is running that calculation is deluding themselves and just wants to make absolutely no lifestyle sacrifice for another kid.

Those numbers are the yuppie calculations that you get when neither adult wants to stop living in one of the most expensive parts of town and neither wants to be a stay at home parent even part time.

The cost is not 40k per year per child. Re-run the numbers using public schools and having a stay at home parent with no more than a few hours a week of childcare.

> The cost is not 40k per year per child. Re-run the numbers using public schools and having a stay at home parent with no more than a few hours a week of childcare.

Why stay at home parent, that is absurd now days.

> and neither wants to be a stay at home parent even part time.

People want a retirement plan, and that means working and contributing to a 401k. If my wife stopped working, well for one the childcare savings wouldn't be enough to make up for lost income, and two, our retirement plans would be shot to pieces.

Fwiw I'm in Seattle, if you want to go to good public schools, houses cost a lot more. House price here is highly correlated with the quality of the local schools. Want to go to the best schools in the area? Looking at moving outside Seattle to Bellevue, and an old house in the area with the best public schools will reach almost 2 million.

House prices around there have nearly doubled in the past 3 year.

I'm only in an area with slightly above average schools, so a 4 bedroom house here is 1.2-1.5 million. Although since Seattle schools just cancelled their gifted program, parents with smart kids now have to pay for private schools, so shove those costs on top of whatever is saved by moving to Seattle proper instead of one of the more expensive suburbs.

There are not fancy new houses, these are "whatever house is for sale that has the right number of bedrooms" and are often quite old.

Maybe not a spreadsheet, but everyone with 1 kid knows if they're struggling to pay their bills - and if they are they won't have another.

And everyone in a cramped home knows whether they can afford a home with an extra bedroom. And so on.

And every couple knows whether they can afford for one of them to take a 5-year-plus career break while starting a big family.