My mother, who has four children including me, said this to my sister.
It wasn’t so much a comment on her sister’s personal finances as a reflection of the fact that having children isn’t just expensive. To some extent, it is incalculable and even impossible to plan it accurately.
In the short term, you can estimate how much diapers and daycare will cost you, but you don’t know how your child’s needs, or your own, will change over the years. .
And while having a child has always been expensive, for the current generation of potential new parents, that price has skyrocketed. Child care costs alone have increased exponentially, by some estimates by more than 260% since 1990. In addition, the prices of important big-ticket items such as housing, higher education, and health care that were once affordable for adults with regular full-time jobs have become prohibitive for many people.
Given these costs and pressures, more Americans are refusing to become parents. That makes sense to me too. I also don’t want a baby right now. On my social media feed, I see a lot of pregnancy and birth announcements from friends and the wider community, but my colleagues wonder how they can expand their families and why they might choose to do so. I often think that.
This spring and summer, as I reported on why more Americans are not having children, I talked to many women, some I know personally and others I don’t know, who have happily become parents. I talked to them.
Some have managed to follow the previously typical trajectory of getting married, buying a house, and having children at the appropriate time. Some have had to take somewhat drastic measures, such as moving across the country in search of affordability or taking advantage of other countries’ pro-family fiscal policies.
Here are the strategies, sacrifices, and situations that helped three millennial women feel safe and confident as parents.
Outside of Baltimore, “having a home really gives you peace of mind to have children.”
Marie Medina, 28, and her husband, Daniel, felt ready to have children after achieving a major financial milestone: homeownership. However, they didn’t necessarily plan it that way.
The couple married in 2018 and wanted to move around a bit before putting down roots. However, they fell in love with the church and broader community of Columbia, Maryland, and ended up purchasing a home there in 2019.
“Having a home really made it possible for me to have a child with peace of mind,” says Medina. It represented the stability of the couple.
They had always wanted to have children. “For both of us, it was never a question of if, it was just a question of when,” she says. They gave birth to their first daughter at the end of 2020 and second daughter in 2023.
Marie and Daniel Medina welcomed their first daughter in 2020 and their second daughter in 2023.
Marie Medina
“We didn’t make the decision to buy a house because we wanted to have a child in the next year. We bought the house separately from that decision. But we didn’t think, ‘Let’s have a child.’ “This is our first child,” if we didn’t already have a home. ”
Medina runs a photography business from home while her husband works as an engineer, so she doesn’t have to pay for regular childcare. This will help ease the financial burden of raising two young girls.
As your family grows, food and other expenses will naturally increase. Still, Medina says her budget before having children was strong enough that she was able to absorb the (additional) expenses without changing her lifestyle at all.
“I needed to take care of that (debt) before I brought my child into this world.”
“I’m always thinking about money,” said Yolanda Kando Guilleran, 29. She also always wanted to be a mother.
As an elementary school teacher married to a human resources professional, she knew it would be difficult to give her children the life they wanted in New York City. She and her husband moved from the Bronx to Portland, Oregon in 2021 to make their dream of having children more financially viable.
Although Kando Gilleran made a little less money as a teacher in Portland, his family’s cost of living has gone down, making it easier to save money, live frugally, and prioritize getting out of the red. Kando Guilleran had about $10,000 in private student loan debt that he wanted to eliminate before the birth of his first child.
“If I didn’t have student loans, I could have started (for my kids). I would have started sooner,” she says. “But the interest rates were so high, at least on my personal loans, that I knew I needed to address that before I brought a child into the world.”
Yolanda and Graham Kando-Gilleran welcomed their first daughter in March 2023.
The process took a little longer than expected, but she was able to pay off that debt shortly after her daughter was born in March 2023.
In preparation for the birth of their daughter, Khando Gileran and her husband made sure to save enough money for her to take a vacation. At the time, Oregon did not have a family medical leave policy. But now it is one of several states that have done so.
“We live pretty frugally, but I think it ends up costing us a lot,” she says. For example, she ordered many takeout meals after giving birth, which she felt she needed at the time but quickly added up in costs.
“The big opportunity was in our ability to be responsible, frugal, really live paycheck to paycheck, and be able to afford to have children,” she says.
New mothers feel ‘safe’ with government support in Amsterdam
For most of her life, Alejandra Rojas, a financial educator who was born in Colombia and now splits her time between the Netherlands and Maryland, didn’t want to have children.
“Coming from Colombia, I saw a lot of hardship from families with more children than they could support and children without family members,” the 29-year-old says. “In the back of your mind, you’re thinking, ‘If I had a child, what would I do? And is this the right life for a child?'”
Her pregnancy in 2023 was a surprise, but “a welcome one,” she says. In addition to being mentally prepared, she felt comfortable living in the Netherlands, her partner’s home country. This gave her even more confidence that she could have the birth experience she wanted and that she would receive government support after giving birth.
In the Netherlands, parents can receive cash payments of up to around 282 euros per quarter for their newborn, as well as tax credits to help with childcare costs.
In the back of your mind, you’re thinking, “What would I do if I brought a child into this world?” And is that the life the child deserves? ”
Alejandra Rojas
financial educator
New mothers will be accompanied by a nurse for up to 10 days after giving birth, making it possible for them to give birth at home as they wish. “It makes me feel better knowing that I can stay home and don’t have to go to the hospital,” Rojas says.
Having her baby may have been generally more affordable in Amsterdam than it was in the US. Still, as a financial educator, Rojas knows all too well how difficult raising children can be.
But once you decide to have children, she says, raising children becomes part of your life vision, and the associated expenses become less of a burden. To a certain extent, spending can be reallocated to account for new priorities.
“It always sounds expensive, right? And then there’s the cost of childcare, diapers, and everything else,” she says. “But at the end of the day, you also earn that money and use that money for other things.”
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