Having Children Is an Enormous Financial Decision

 

As I noted yesterday, there are a typically a number of things that underwrite anyone's decision to remain childfree — and one of the big ones is the financial cost of parenting. 

According to a new report in The Independent, finances are of particular concern to women, even women who want to have children in the future:

Women were more likely to report financial concerns and their own work or study than men (45 per cent, compared with 40 per cent) as reasons for not currently trying to conceive. 

[...] “The slightly higher prevalence of these concerns among women may reflect existing evidence that women’s careers often suffer setbacks in income and career progression after childbirth.”

Overall, around a quarter of the more than 7,000 respondents said they were not sure about having more children or becoming parents for the first time, a finding which researchers said could indicate likely smaller families and more people without children in future.

The paper stated: “Previous research has shown that a high proportion of individuals who have uncertain fertility intentions in their twenties and thirties, or postpone having children, end up not having children at all.

“Taken together, our findings suggest that we might expect to see a smaller average family size and a higher proportion of individuals without children among this cohort compared to older generations.”

Just this morning, I was watching a video about retirement planning, and the young presenter said, "Having children makes saving for retirement a lot more difficult, but hopefully there's some benefit to it." He wasn't joking, but my partner and I both burst out laughing.

It was a sentiment that we never would have seen when we were young — a very straightforward cost-benefit analysis to deciding whether to parent. And it was great to see! Young people should absolutely be considering what their own futures will look like before having children out of obligation or tradition.

It's not selfish to make sure the only life you're given is shaped the way you want.

Being able to do that is, unfortunately, heavily dependent on the financial decisions you make. And choosing to parent vs. remaining childfree is one of the most crucial financial decisions any of us will make in our lives.


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