Honestly, I think that this sort of calculation is meaningless. People spend according to their means, needs, and desires. Some people spend far more, I'm sure, while others spend far less. It just doesn't matter. I'm not interested in putting a pricetag on my children - that's not how I roll.

The number is misleading. It takes into account all costs as if the child is living alone. Two children will not cost $2MIL.

Thanks for commenting, JohnT. I do mention that in the second-to-last paragraph of the article... the "bulk discount" part. -- LMA

I think articles like this are only harmful and alarmist. Members of my family are already nervous about starting families because of high costs of childcare and articles like yours only serve as fuel for their worries. I agree with akmom, you will spend what you can. And manage somehow to pay for college when the time comes through student loans, grants, and work-study jobs. Having a child is too important for many intangible reasons--how can you assign a dollar value to those?

Thanks for your comment, mp. Three things:

1.) There's a difference between assigning a dollar value to a child and adding up the actual expenses incurred. Those expenses don't go away just because they're scary.

2.) If articles like this fuels people's concerns about having children, perhaps they're looking for reasons not to have children.

3.) People all over the world make do without having tons of cash in the bank; as AKMom said, people will spend what they can. This article doesn't say that you *must* spend $1 million on your children; in fact, the point is that I'm questioning what goes in to calculating that figure in the first place. -- LMA

$1M. . . and worth every penny.

Then why are people breeding like rabbits!!! They know they can't afford it! ...oh right... the rest of us will pick up their slack...

That's about right. I am 25 and living at home while I get my Masters in Fine Arts at LaSalle. I have a great room, bath en suite, 50 inch display, credit cards and a new car every couple of years.

A mil or a mil and a half, who cares ?

I won't even earn 1 million dollars during the years that I am raising my family. So clearly, raising them will cost less than that. These numbers are meaningless.

Agreed with comment number one. If you read the article and are now scared to have kids, just remember this. You can always make ends meet. You don't need millions of dollars to have kids.

I agree akmom, considering my poor mom raised me on $6 - $7 an hour working at McDonald's for the first 15 years of my life. That $6 -$7 an hour had to cloth and feed BOTH of us AND pay rent. These numbers they pull out of thin air are completely ridiculous, never mind the whole price tag thing!

And just to let every one know, I grew up fine without having my mom spend 1 million dollars to bring me up. I worked hard, got an education and I now have a beautiful home and a beautiful wife and I earned everything I have, from scratch and I am very proud of that fact thank you very much!

Thank God I decided never to have children. My parents knew way back when that they could only afford one child. They worked hard all their lives in factories to give me a good education which can't even help get me a decent job now. College and grad school was just an expensive waste of time- I wish I had gone to trade school instead and learned more about how to fix things.

If you want to find out how much it takes to raise a child try asking a single parent with four children. I was one and had to make ends meet on $12,000 a year as my husband abandoned us. It all comes down to priorities and my children know what is important in life. I did all my cooking from scratch and they are healthier for it. They went to camp and took music lessons. I had to bury my pride and ask for assistance but I did what I needed to do. They are now young adults and are putting themselves through university and I'm proud of them. They are not whiners and do not expect mom to bail them out so they can have enough money to buy a fancy car and go on trips. In my neighborhood I've seen a lot of boomrang children and believe that parents need to relax. The college of real life is a challenge but the best learning experience a child can have.

I read these 'research papers' and kick myself for doing so...

Blah blah blah, and I had to walk 12 miles uphill in a foot of snow to go to school... Who lives with their parents until they are 24? Unbelievable!

Oh, and by the way, a laptop computer, an iPod, and a cell phone in 2026 won't be worth a dime on ebay.

Good point, Marley209. But then again, in 2026 a dollar won't be worth what a dollar is now, either. -- LMA

Unless you're poor and on welfare. Then the state pays for everything! Huzzah!!! Might as well have more kids as an unwed mother with multiple fathers...

Finance; the best contraceptive out there!

So if I didn't have my 2 kids I would be 2 million dollars richer. I don't think so. 1st post said it all. Dumbest stat ever.

No kidding...just ask any non-custodial parent about the cost...

I think the value in these types of studies is that it might make one question 'needs' vs. 'wants'. The definition of what kids 'need' has gotten seriously out of whack. Honestly, kids can live without cell phones (I live without one too, so I know of what I speak), cable TV, video games, and clothing purchased new. Kids can thrive without diaper wipe warmers, baby knee pads, and every baby Enstein video known to man. Your baby will not drop dead if you push her around in a stroller you got for $25 at a yard sale vs. a $500 designer 'system'. If your kid doesn't have a lesson or a sport every day of the week, they will not be stunted. Sure, college costs money. But not everyone needs to go to Harvard, and student loans, while unpleasant, can be managed if they are taught the financial skills to do so. It took me 15 years to pay off my college loans, but I did it, and I didn't have to live with my folks to do it. I just had to resist buying everything NOW and make do with what I had. Give kids what they really need (good education and health care, and healthy food) and you can get by without a lot of the rest.

Way to go Gingit and akmom.

Sometimes I think these stories are written to justify a more solicialized, steal from a village, mentality.

Spending within your means is a lesson to be taken seriously. Financially, I'd be far better off w/o having had kids, but I'd be less rich in life had I made such a choice. Kids help to define us in many ways where no other could. I always say, 'kids make us human'. Caveat: 'as well as insane'.

There are other factors to consider as far as the economic loss taken by the couple that choose to do it on one income. Despite the savings in daycare, there is a real opportunity lost over time due to someone sacrificing a career and better earning outcomes because of it.

Why is this article directed towards females? Fathers would be interested as well.

Have you considered outsourcing? Cost is considerably cheaper.

There are lots of very good, bigger-picture reasons not to have kids (among them, the world, with 7 billion people and counting, doesn't need any more), but it's the looming cost of providing for them that easiest to grasp. The high cost of providing education to kids is certainly one of several reasons I decided not to become a parent.

In my adult life (I am 47 yrs. old), the cost of higher education has increased, year in and year out, without letup, at a rate greater than the rate of inflation. And even in this deep recession, tuition keeps going up at these high rates, while real income drops to new lows. In a few more years, absent even bigger lending programs, it will be impossible for middle class families to send their kids ot college.

And I have already seen these high costs bankrupt a few families. My parents' generation could send a kid to college, with some sacrifice, of course, but still as a rational act. Among my contemporaries, it means giving up all retirement savings for years and re-mortgaging the house. It is insane.

Just a small comment.
Mass unemployment insurance pays $25 /week for each child.
Enjoy your spending.

These numbers are complete fantasy. If they were anywhere near accurate, every average person with children would be bankrupt. According to the US Census Bureau, the median US household income is just over $58,407 and the average number of children (under 18) in a family with children is 1.86.

Assuming all values are constant in dollars, it would cost $1,543,798.35 to raise 1.86 children for 18 years (including the 25 percent discount for child .86), or $85,766.57 per year. You tell me how these numbers for raising kids are not a total fantasy if the annual median household income is $58,407 before taxes? Of course, this would explain the current state of our economy.

The people doing these calculations are probably the same ones who figured out that Boston will be under water by 2050.

Look at Europe...kids live at home til they get married. Say, 30 ish.
Parents are usually happy since they want the kids around but Here we had the fend for yourself attitude that drove many to success in my view.

We're marrying later too, just like europe, must be as a country ages it lacks the economic engine to get people out on the workforce and provide. It seems to go in long cycles. Europe got stuck in my view when the last time around they adopted more socialistic edge to policy.
Also Europe had a war to recover from ( mentally) . Physically the war rebuilding got people jobs.

Does the statistic factor in income attributable to the children? For example, you get a tax break for each child. If you didn't have the kid presumably you would pay more tax. This tax break should be a "negative expense." Also, I started working when I was 16. I paid for some of my own "essentials". That should be deducted from the expense as well.

In response to your response, LMA, you'll see from majority of comments that this article IS alarmist. Lots of people watch the news before a snowstorm and then there's a rush at the grocery store. Does that mean they were "looking for a reason" to get worried and overanxious? Yours was a strange response to a valid criticism.

Perhaps comments would have been different if you had adequately represented the other side--does it really take all that $ to raise a child responsibly and well? For example, let's consider that only 29% of Americans have bachelor's degrees, and only a percentage of those will pay top dollar for their educations. You see, the numbers very quickly can become meaningless. This is the problem with quoting average figures--they can rarely be applied individually. (That's also why median is a better figure to use in general.)

mp, thanks for your response, but I don't think your snowstorm analogy works. In the case of the storm, people are watching the news to get information about something that's about to happen in their area/to them, and rushing to the store to prepare for it. If applied to parenting, it would be like reading this article to find out if you're pregnant and then, if it says you are, rushing out and robbing a bank.

See? Doesn't work.

I like your question: "Does it really take all that $ to raise a child responsibly and well?" That's a great point. I don't think it does, though some expenses -- health care, housing, transportation, food, etc. -- are unavoidable whether you choose to have children or not. Readers... what say you? -- LMA

David (#24), you're making a bad assumption that the median income correlates to families. Families have to make more, and nearly always do, because the median household numbers are nearly half composed of single people, which ironically enough includes all those 24 year olds not living at home.
What all these studies do not take into account is the bigger houses and cars that families require solely because they have kids. The story clearly said the per child cost was only about $380k, the headline was refuted by the author. However, what is $380k in middle America is about a million here. Yes, it can be done for a bit less, but we're talking about averages (and not even including private schools which affect about 30% of families in our area).

Yesterday, you published what all the items in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" would cost today.

This is equally meaningful.

Thanks for commenting, Cosmogirl, but I didn't publish the 12 Days of Christmas piece. That was an AP story that ran in the Business section. Point taken, though. -- LMA

I think it's a crock. We have twin toddlers and our costs prior to having them included all the same things we have now, except their food and diapers. Clothes and toys come from friends or second-hand stores. The numbers are not realistic. We raise our two boys AND pay child support for 2 others kids (to the tune of $1500/month) and our household income is only 80,000/year (60K after tax). We are not suffering, even though we had to buy a slightly bigger house and car to accomodate all 4 children when the first 2 are here. What we send in terms of child support for 2 children is way more than we have ever spend monthly on our two kids, and that is only our share, the custodial parents is supposed to pay the other half, so they are saying that 2 kids alone cost 3000 after tax? That pays all our household bills and keeps our kids happy and healthy. When I see studies like this I am always worried they are going to try to get more child support, when child support payments like ours are already way over the top.

Wow Patricia, your husband is paying his ex 1500/monthly between two children. I wanna move to the state you're in because over here in Pennsylvania, I get 138/monthly in child support, that the dad doesn't even pay .. yet he's never found in comtempt for non payment, I must be doing something wrong. At least your husbands kids are being taken care of, that's the important thing!

I'm not sure I see controversy here. It seems as though a lot of readers have taken offense to something that's more just a point of fact. Why is it alarmist or even surprising that the cost of raising a child is a million dollars from birth to age 18? A million bucks doesn't go as far as it used to these days and if I won a million tomorrow, I probably wouldn't quit my job for that very fact.

A million to raise a child over 18 years isn't staggering. It's realistic.

Consider that buying a large cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee 5 days a week over the course of 18 years at the current cost of 2.94 a cup equals 13, 729.20. That's a rather staggering sum for a coffee fix that 's not even adjusted for inflation, but we don't even think about it, do we?

I worked out what we've spent in the first 19 months of our daughter's life on just her needs: doctor's (well baby and sick) visits, ER visit (1) and Special Care Nursery, plus diapers, formula, clothes, toys, furniture, car seat, carriages and additional cost in groceries after she was weaned (I buy a lot that I wouldn't were it just me or me and my husband) and so far, in less than 2 years, it's around 12,000. We don't pay day care, but as the cost of living continues to increase, we will have to factor after-school activities, possibly tuition, more clothes and so on...and I can see that figure rising sharply before she turns legally, into an adult.

I wouldn't take it back or trade it for the world, but I wouldn't sugar coat the fact that cost is a factor in our choices for future family planning and we knew that long before we saw this statistic. If you can make it work though, why should a simple statistic get you all in a tizzy? We may keep it under a million because we're not going to spend for her college tuition, and I'm a firm believer in "earning" expensive toys and gadgets, so if she wants a cell phone or iPod, she can bloody well get a job and buy it with her own money.

A kid costs over half a million dollars. I mean instead of feeding a kid 3 times a day for 365 days a year times 20 years, you could have used that same money and compounded it @ 12 percent with good stocks. GOOGLE COMPOUNDING and the cost of kids, if you don’t believe the half a mil.

Many people don’t understand math or the power of compounding that’s why they have a kid.
So the question becomes would you use a condom to get over $500,000 aka half a mil?