The Economics of Haveing Children:

I recently got engaged to a wonderful woman whom I love dearly. We are both on our thirties, neither one of us has been married before, nor do either one of us have children of our own. We are both practiceing Catholics. So in our discussions of the marriage life after we get married we naturaly talked about haveing children. We are both hard working individuals, she's white collar, and I'm blue collar. I have an uneven scheduale, she works Monday through Friday. We both love kids, we love being around them and haveing them around, so it's only natural to think that we might like to have our own. Sounds reasonable right? Sure until you start the pro's and con's of haveing children. One of the con's is cost, both terms of time and money. Do we realy want to spend the type of money that haveing children requires us to spend? Do we want to be tied down by when we can go to bed or have to stay up beacasue Jr. is crying? It can be argued that the sacrifice we make for our children is worth it when we feel with pride the way they turn out. But that in it's self is a risk. We could be like everyone else who has a rebellious child, that is eager to go their own way, do things their way.

Perhaps the biggest con of haveing children is cost. The cost for food, diapers, food, medince, doctors bills, daycare, education, etc. When you add it all up haveing kids is a pricy, and sometimes risky propostion. We are not rich, we have modest incomes, we work hard for what we have, and every penny counts. It seem's nowaday's that you allmost have to be rich to have children. In terms of daycare alone you are looking at about 200 dollars a week. Now when you make 400 a week that's half your check, that does'nt leave much on the table. Now I get paid by the hour, and my boss is salery, in terms of pay he does'nt make too much more than me, yet he has children, and has those expenses, if his wife did'nt have the type of job that she does, they would be poor because of the cost that the children occur. do you think I want to have those cost's? Excuse me for being a bit selfish, but no I dont want those cost's hanging over my head. As it is, it's tough at times not being rich, and knowing that I'm one misstep from being poor.

Thus you have to wonder if the new morality in this century is not to have children, because people are better off without hveing them. Thus there are two sacrfices to the same issue. If you have children you are makeing a sacrifice with time and mony. If you don't have children then you are makeing the reverse sacrifice of not haveing children, so that others might continue to live a better life. The economics of haveing children no longer make much sence, because children are no longer a cheap soaurce of anything, in fact they are an expensive source of life. Thus the cost vs. value favor is weighted for cost. Now if children were cheap to have, then their value would be different, as they would be valued more in that they are cheap to have, thus of more value to exsist.