We're moderately frugal (eat organic food, paid activities for the kids, live in CA), and our kids are on track to cost us each about 80k before university. That's less than a year salary for most HN readers.

Our friends that try to act rich have much higher costs. I assume that is where your cited number got so inflated.

Re. Parenting Industry: there's an excellent book called Hunt, Gather, Parent - which examines how traditional cultures raised children. Parenting isn't complicated, but modern marketing has completely muddied the waters.