It’s almost like some people see children as nothing but a burden.
In an article for CNBC updated on Thursday, author Yoni Blumberg writes that kids really are just the worst:
Your friends may tell you having kids has made them happier. They’re probably lying. Research shows that parenthood leads to a happiness gap. Maybe that’s because the pleasures of parenthood are outweighed by all the extra responsibilities, housework and, of course, the costs.
He goes on to suggest these costs may be keeping people from having kids, since Americans are, indeed, having fewer kids these days. Maybe that’s due to people like Blumberg and pro-choice activists constantly telling people that children are just the worst.
A child born in 2015 is expected to cost the average middle-income married couple between $12,350 and $13,900. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture notes in their 2017 report, that means those parents would spend about $233,610 (in 2015 dollars) on a child through the age of 17. Lower-income families would spend around $174,690 on that child, and higher-income families would spend about $372,210.- READ MORE