A particularly deceitful attack on parenthood and children happens via fear-mongering on the supposed cost of raising a child. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued an annual report from 1960 through 2017 entitled “Expenditures on Children by Families,” better known as “The Cost of Raising a Child.” The reports are collected here. When the 2017 report was released, providing the cost of raising a child through age 17, many newspapers and magazines carried headlines like these: The Cost of Raising a Child Jumps to $233,610 (Mahita Gajanan, Money Magazine, Jan. 9, 2017) and Raising a Child in the United States Costs $233,610 (Rebecca Shapiro, Huffington Post, Jan. 10, 2017).

This 2017 report, though nine years old now, endures in current news because some have taken the figure of $233,000 and simply (and erroneously) adjusted it for inflation. Thus, a recent report states that the cost, adjusted for inflation, is now $414,000 (Jacqueline DeMarco, “Average Cost of Raising a Child to 18 Per Year,” SoFi, Feb. 5, 2025). Another report (Tim Parker, “How Much Does It Cost to Raise a Child in the U.S.?” Investopia, Jan. 22, 2025, which relies on a 2022 item which in turn relies on the 2017 USDA report) states the cost in 2022 was $310,605. (The 2022 report is Morgan Welch and Isabel Sawhill, “Future Estimated Annual Expenditures of Raising a child, Assuming a Higher Inflation Rate of 4 percent after 2020,” Aug. 2022.) Last year, a financial newsletter called Bankrate relied on the 2017 USDA report and recorded the inflation-adjusted cost as $314,000 (Bankrate: Ashlyn Brook, “How Much Does It Cost to Raise a Child?” June 19, 2024). In 2023 there were at least these two instances of reliance on the 2017 report: Illinois Department of Human Services’ Division of Early Childhood, 2023, $280,000 to $314,000; Northwestern Mutual, Sept. 26, 2023, $332,000.

My critique of the 2017 report, sent to the Department of Agriculture, described a dozen deficiencies. I am pleased to report that the Department has not issued a report since 2017 and, as of November 2024, continues to “evaluat[e] the methods used to inform this report.” Among other things, I had pointed out that its severe problems included its failure to distinguish between the cost of necessities for children and discretionary spending like private tennis lessons. In other words, the publicized cost of raising a child included a smorgasbord of expensive discretionary spending. What fools and ideologues these bureaucrats with doctorates be!

To be sure, there are alternative attempts to quantify the costs of raising children, and I have not examined their analytical methods. For example, the SmartAsset report of 2024 says the cost ranges from $38,000 per year (or $646,000 over 17 years) in Boston (including $23,000 per year for childcare) to $18,000 per year in New Orleans (including $7,800 for child care). See Jaclyn DeJohn, “Cost of Raising a Child in the Largest U.S. Metros – 2024 Study,” June 11, 2024, for more. Obviously, these reports assume that no parent is stay-at-home. Another example of an alternative attempt to quantify the cost of raising children is a 2023 report by Lending Tree which says the costs in 2021, ranging over a child’s 17 years, was the highest in Hawaii at $314,529 and lowest in South Carolina at $169,327 (Jamie Cattanach, “Annual Costs to Raise a Small Child Increased By 19.3% Nationwide to $21,681 Between 2016 and 2021,” LendingTree.com, Sept. 11, 2023).

If the reports from our government and the private sector aren’t written with the purpose of deterring people from having children, they are certainly used that way. What is the message that yells at us from headlines stating a dollar figure of $414,000 per year over 17 years, or another that says $38,000 per year? The message isn’t Planned Parenthood’s “No child should be unwanted.” Rather, it’s “You can’t afford to have a child,” “No child should be wanted by you,” “Children not welcome here,” and “Children need not apply.”

Even if these reports accurately quantified the cost of raising children, we would still have to put their figures in a tiny little box as we consider how we wish to live our adult lives. Of course, it costs money and time to rear a child. It also costs money and time to have friends, to have a hobby, to vacation, to obtain an education, to care for one’s spouse, parents, aunts, uncles, or siblings, to eat at a restaurant, to drink alcohol, or to buy a big TV to watch movies and sports.

No dollar amount can put a price on the value of living a life as an adult that is filled with friends and relations, especially children, including children whose conditions are in most need of our love and care — orphans, impoverished children, children with mental or physical disabilities or chronic conditions. I know this personally, as a father and as one who lived in a home for three years with 11 teenage boys with physical and mental disabilities. (See my blog essay of May 1, 2023.)

We sometimes need to be reminded of the countless number of people who, despite their humble circumstances, bore and raised children. We should consider this not from the point of view of the children but from that of the adult couple considering parenthood. Here is a sampling of the modest parents of some famous women and men:

Parents of Famous Women

• Her father was an itinerant bookseller. The eighth of 17 children, she was one of the nine who survived to adulthood: Betsy Ross
• Her parents had been enslaved. She was fifteenth of 17 children born in a small log cabin on a small farm: Mary MacLeod Bethune
• Her father had to move 21 times in 30 years: Louisa May Alcott
• Her father sold ice and coal: Marian Anderson
• Her father was the editor of a local paper in Kansas: Mabel Walker Willebrandt
• Her father was the owner of a stationer’s business: Frances Perkins
• Her parents were missionaries to China: Pearl Buck
• She was born in a one-room cabin and had 11 siblings. Her father was an illiterate sharecropper and later had a small tobacco farm. Her mother was a homemaker: Dolly Parton
• Her father was a telephone lineman who died when she was three. Her maternal grandparents helped raise her: Lucille Ball
• Her father was a clerk: Mary Tyler Moore
• Her father was a crane operator; her stepfather a moving van owner: Erma Bombeck
• Her parents were immigrant shopkeepers: Dinah Shore
• Her father was a railway porter, her mother a maid. She was the twentieth of 22 children: Wilma Rudolph

Parents of Famous Men

• His father died before his birth in a logging accident while clearing land in a remote area: Andrew Jackson
• His parents were enslaved and he was born into slavery: Frederick Douglass
• His mother was enslaved and his stepfather was an escaped slave who worked in the salt furnaces and coal mines of West Virginia. He was born into slavery: Booker T. Washington
• His father was a small farmer: Abraham Lincoln
• His father was a tanner: U.S. Grant
• He was the seventh of seven children. His father split shingles for roofs and was a tailor. His mother was a schoolteacher before being a full-time homemaker. He was home-schooled: Thomas Edison
• His father was a shopkeeper, his mother a seamstress: Mario Lanza
• His father held odd jobs: Elvis Presley
• His father was a farmworker, his mother a domestic worker: Clarence Thomas
• His adoptive father was a postal maintenance worker: Jesse Jackson, Sr.
• His father was a stonemason and his mother a cleaner: Bob Hope
• His father was an alcoholic salesman: Ronald Reagan
• His father was a millhand who became disabled: Perry Como
• His father died before his birth; his mother went to nursing school while her parents, owners of a small grocery store, cared for him: Bill Clinton
• His father was a plumber and his mother a teacher: John Glenn
• His adoptive father was a machinist without a high school diploma: Steve Jobs
• His father was a shipping clerk, his mother a seamstress: Colin Powell

My mother was one of seven and my father one of five. I was one of their seven children. I have cousins who were members of families of 14 and eight and six children. I once met a young woman who was, as she said proudly, “the eleventh eldest.” We asked her, “Of how many?” Her reply: 23. I have known many members of large families. I’ve never met parents, or children, who regretted the size of their family, who wished there had been only one, two, or three children so that they would have more money and time for… what? An instructive book in this regard is Catherine Pakaluk’s Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth (2024). Another is Steve Mosher’s short Ten Great Reasons to Have Another Child (2018).

Don’t be scared by reports on maternal mortality, on unintended pregnancies, and on the cost of raising children. Give life. Your parents did.