The Costs of Raising Children in the USA: A Financial and Emotional Analysis

[00:00:02]A new report lists the best countries in the world to raise [music] children. The United States, we don't even break the top 10.

[00:00:10]>> Somehow it's [music] elitism to try and find affordable child care.

[00:00:14]>> We are depleting our savings dramatically. We take 10,000 a month out of [music] savings.

[00:00:20]>> 63% of workers say they wouldn't be able to cover a $500 emergency expense. The cost to raise a child from birth [music] to high school is now $300,000.

[00:00:30]So, it's pretty sad that you have to think as a parent, can I afford to have a kid? In the United States, [music] raising children has quietly become one of the hardest things the [music] average family can try to do. The costs are rising, and for many parents, the math, both financial and emotional, simply doesn't add up [music] anymore.

[00:00:49]But how did we get here? Why does one of the richest countries in the world make it so difficult to raise kids? And what can we actually do about it? This is a story of why raising children in America feels [music] impossible.

[00:01:06]Let's get started.

[00:01:16]Let's start with the obvious. Money. The average cost for raising a child in the United States from birth to age 18 is now over $310,000. [music] And that's before higher education. And the biggest expense, child care. Since the 1990s, child care costs have grown twice [music] as fast as wages. In fact, it costs just as much as a college degree in most US states. Seriously.

[00:01:46][music] Around 47% of parents spend up to $18,000 a year on their child care expenses, while 20% of parents indicated that they spend more than $36,000 in a year. [music] So, compare this to tuition and room and board at a public state university, and [music] you're certainly in for some sticker shock. For the 2023 24 school year, the average cost of attendance at a 4-year public university, including all tuition fees and room and board, was [music] $24,030, according to the US Department of Education. That means that within the first 5 years of their child's life, if we assume the average of $18,000, [music] parents are forking over $90,000 in child care alone. So, how are parents making all of this work?

[00:02:32]Most aren't. It is simply a financial hole that for many is nearly impossible to climb out of. Some US families are taking out lines of credit. Some working second jobs are commuting hours out of their way to bring their kids to daycare. Others are foregoing their careers entirely. According to research, 25% of parents in the US have quit a job or dropped out of school to avoid the soaring costs of child care. Plus, most child care programs don't take infants under 6 weeks old. That means that even if you can afford the child care, [music] you're still out of luck if you're of one of the 1 in4 moms who have to go back to work within 2 weeks of a new baby arriving. And despite the fact that virtually every other similarly wealthy nation has some form of guaranteed paid family medical leave after a new baby arrives, the US does not. As many of you know, in the US, parents are not legally entitled to take paid parental leave.

[00:03:32]And only 27% of workers in the US have access to paid paternity leave through their employers. And truly, the childare crisis should be a major red flag for everyone, not just parents. [music] It is the reflection of a systematic failure of our social safety net that impacts the entire nation's economic growth. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, child care is only considered affordable when it costs families no more than 7% of their household income. But the current market doesn't match that. Again, with most parents paying upwards of 18K on child care, they spend an average of 24% of their household income with many forking over way more for their children to be cared for while they're at work. And listen, [music] ideally, we shouldn't have to live in a world where parents don't have to choose between their family or their career. If it's a choice you make intentionally, that's great for you. But too often, however, people lose control over their decisions due to the overwhelming cost of child care. And when parents struggle to find child care that aligns with their needs, work style, and schedules, the negative impacts of career trajectories and result in pay gaps overwhelmingly affect women. The United States has the most educated workforce of women in the labor market, but the lowest labor force participation rate of women. And if money wasn't enough, there's time, or lack thereof of it. And things have gotten so bad that one US school system is now training children to work sick. Just before the start of this school year, a Tennessee school district adopted a policy to reject doctor's notes [music] as a valid excuse for a child missing school. The new policy also requires school officials to refer families to juvenile court if a child has missed 8 days of school, not consecutively, 8 days in an entire year. So, if your child is sick with the measles or the flu or any other injury for a week and a half, the court system is now involved.

[00:05:44]Unbelievably, the director of school said, and I directly quote, "If you've got the sniffles, that's fine. You're going to have them when you go to work one day. We've all gone to work sick and hurt and beat up. [music] And I think as a group and a society, we're losing that reliability and that opportunity that begins in the schoolhouse." End quote. Now, you might be thinking, Ashton, does this school have an unusual problem with student absences?

[00:06:18]Nope. Their school district falls below both the national and state averages for truency. [music] What the director of schools is directly saying here in both statement and school policy is that American workers are expected to show up even if [music] they're sick and injured. and it's the school's job to prepare that next generation of American workers. Well, then it that means that we have to make sure that even small children as young as five and six are taught that being sick is a luxury that they can't afford. [music] Which as callous and cruel as it seems in my personal opinion, it's also not completely wrong. Americans by and large cannot afford to be sick. Only 18 states along with Washington DC have paid sick time laws. And that number, by the way, was supposed to be higher this year, but the governor of Missouri swooped in and repealed the earned paid sick [music] time statute that Missouri voters passed via a ballot measure the year prior.

[00:07:18]Currently in the United States, federal law does not guarantee workers a single paid day off, and many workers aren't even entitled to unpaid time off. You see, most US companies have transitioned to something called PTO or paid time off, which is a set number of hours or days that they can have paid away from their job. These hours or days are either given as part of their contract or on an acrruel method where employees earn time based on how much they [music] work. The average number of PTO for full-time private sector workers in the US is 11 days after one year of service which increases with tenure to 15 days after 5 years and 18 days after 10 years. But keep in mind PTO is collective. So, if you have a family with children, those 18 days are not only for relaxing on vacation. They're also for covering your sick days, your children's sick days, your children's school closures, time off to attend a school function, or for taking your children to the doctor or dentist for a checkup. And for too many workers, this squeeze from lack of paid sick leave can mean that they forego care altogether.

[00:08:30]In a 2022 study, nearly 40% of workers reported they or a family member had gone without needed medical treatment in lie of taking the needed leave because they didn't have any paid time off left, which let's be clear is highly unusual.

[00:08:46]If you use the UN's number, there are 195 countries on this planet. 179 of them have paid sick leave. That's 94%.

[00:08:56]That's not just the highincome countries. That's out of everyone. The United States is a complete outlier in all forms of paid sick leave. But in the US, no sick leave is completely normal.

[00:09:09]If you aren't literally on death store, and sometimes even when you are, the degree to which you are expected to show up to work when you're sick [music] almost directly corresponds to how unskilled or disposable your job is considered. You're considered a good and faithful employee if you come into work sick. It shows grit. It shows dedication.

[00:09:32]But it also shows just how impossible it has become to raise a child in the United States. But perhaps the strain can be felt most by the largest budget item for most families, housing. You see, the dream used to be simple. Work hard, buy a home, raise a family. But today, that dream is slipping away.

[00:09:52][music] We begin our coverage tonight of what's been called the worst financial crisis in modern times.

[00:09:59]>> Most of my fellow members of the millennial generation entered adulthood during the 2008 [music] financial crisis and the aftermath. They faced a bleak job market, stagnant wages, and mounting student debt, [music] which hindered their ability to save. As they entered their peak home buying years, they faced a housing shortage that's driven the median US home price to $412,300.

[00:10:24]That's 40% higher than our parents paid in 1990, [music] even after adjusting for inflation. In 2025, the median house price sits around [music] 10 times the median household income in many metro areas. [music] On the extreme end of the spectrum is Los Angeles. there. The median price of a home in LA County is just under $960,000 according to Zillow listing data. That's 14 times the annual household income of just over $82,000 according to the most recent US Census data, [music] which yeah, okay, of course, LA is a bit of an outlier. But the rise in metro area home prices has a spillover effect in many midsize cities, which also saw an influx of buyers from larger metros seeking more space and affordability during the lockdowns in 2020, leading to rapid home price growth during the same period. For example, places like Grand Rapids, Michigan, have seen median home prices soar 54% from 2020 to $285,000 in June of 2024. That means that for families trying to buy their first home, it's nearly impossible, especially with mortgage rates doubling since 2022 and the [music] increased monthly payments.

[00:11:39]So many families either rent indefinitely, often in smaller spaces, or move far outside cities, trading [music] affordable housing for brutal commutes. And that decision impacts everything else. less time with their kids, fewer nearby support networks, and more stress. Housing used to be the foundation of family life in the United States, but now it's one of the biggest obstacles. Then, of course, there's the other cost that Americans can't escape, like healthcare, for example. In most developed countries, healthcare for children is universal. In the US, it's a patchwork of private insurance, employer plans, and out-ofpocket costs. Here's an example, by the way, of the health insurance costs at my former employer in the United States. Even with insurance, a single ER visit for a sick child can mean hundreds or thousands in bills. And the cost of having that child in the first place is substantial. Reminder, this example on the screen is an employee provided with insurance, assuming, of course, they had a complicationfree birth. And no, these costs aren't including the monthly premiums, which are hundreds of dollars a month. And education isn't exactly much better. Public schools are funded primarily by property taxes, meaning your zip code often determines the quality of your child's education.

[00:13:04]Research illustrates that children in school districts with the highest concentrations of poverty score an average of more than four grade levels below children in the richest districts.

[00:13:16]And as a result, often families will stretch their finances to move to good districts, further widening inequality.

[00:13:26]In fact, this is such a prominent phenomenon that realer.com releases its annual list of the most popular school districts by Metro. This year's findings reveal that in 27 of the 50 most sought-after districts, high ratings come with steep price tags. Median listing prices in these top rated districts average $1.21 million US 135% higher than the surrounding metro area. Leading the list is Carol Independent School District in the Dallas metro where homes come with a 390.9% premium compared to the metro average.

[00:14:06]followed by Lagouna Beach Unified in Orange County with 322% premium and Reed Union Elementary in the San Francisco Bay area at 304.7% premium. Sadly, in the United States, preparing your child for success often means going into debt yourself. Now, money and time are measurable, but there's another part of this crisis [music] that's harder to quantify, and that's the mental load. Parents in the US are not just workers and [music] caregivers. They're also the default organizers, schedulers, chauffeers, tutors, and therapists. [music] And naturally, that leads to a lot of burnout. A recent survey found that 41% of parents said that they are so stressed on most days that they can't function. [music] And more than 57% of parents self-reported experiencing burnout. And again, a lot of this burnout and stress falls on working mothers who are expected to juggle their career and their household responsibilities. 86% of working moms say they handle all family and household responsibilities.

[00:15:11]69% of working moms say the responsibilities create a mental load and 52% are burning out due to those household responsibilities. But it's also important to point out that longitudinal research shows a birectional relationship. Parenting stress leads to more child behavioral problems and child behavioral problems lead to more parenting stress. Now to be fair, this isn't a purely American problem, but something that is experienced worldwide. High levels of parental stress and mental load reduce a parents bandwidth to engage, respond, and recover. The research linking parenting stress to child behavior problems shows how this cycle can reinforce itself. Emotional load on parents isn't isolated. It affects the whole family system and child development. But what is uniquely American about this problem is the degree to which American culture sees these as predominantly personal issues and not systemic. The design of work, child care, family expectations, gender norms, and economy all shape the emotional load. And unlike in many countries, there's little community infrastructure to share all of this burden. Parents feel isolated because we've individualized parenting to an extreme degree. We see it as a private responsibility and not a shared social one. And social media doesn't exactly help. Parents compare themselves to filtered perfection online while quietly burning out behind the scenes. It's not that American parents don't care. It's that they're trying to do everything in a system designed to make them fail. But other countries made different choices.

[00:17:00]In Germany, where I currently live, parents receive up to 14 months of paid parental leave and get heavily subsidized child care starting at 1 year old. In Sweden, it's up to 68 weeks of paid leave shared between both parents.

[00:17:16][music] and child care costs are capped at about 3% of household income. Health care free at the point of service.

[00:17:24]University often [music] free or close to it. You see, the US is an outlier not because we can't afford these things, but because we [music] choose not to.

[00:17:34]The average OECD country spends twice as much public money on family benefits per child [music] as the US does.

[00:17:43]Specifically, when you crunch the numbers, according to the OECD, family benefit spending across its member nations is about 2.3% of GDP. But there's some significant variation. On the high end, we see that public spending on family benefits is over 3.5% of GDP in Iceland and Poland. But the US spends less than 1% of GDP in this category, making it not only low, but tied for second to last. But here's something that all of these numbers and data sets can't tell you directly.

[00:18:15]These policies aren't about luxuries.

[00:18:19]They're about whether families can function without constant crisis.

[00:18:22][music] Articles like this one aren't satire.

[00:18:26]This is considered a feel-good story about family values and community in the United States. But I would wager that most, if not all, Europeans watching this video are horrified by that article. So, what would it take to make raising kids in the United States possible again? Well, for starters, being able to take a 100 days with pay to take care of your child who's sick with cancer, that should be standard if we really want to make it possible to raise children in the United States. But experts also point to a few additional key ideas. universal child care or at least subsidized care for working parents, paid family leave guaranteed at the federal level, and affordable housing near jobs and schools. [music] But the biggest recommendation is that perhaps what we really need is a fundamental cultural shift away from the idea that family life is a private struggle and towards seeing it as a shared investment in the country's future. When families thrive, economies thrive. Children aren't solely a personal expense. They're a public [music] good. Because ultimately, the cost of raising children in America isn't just measured in dollars. It's measured [music] in lost time, stress, and opportunity. Raising kids shouldn't feel impossible. It should feel like the most supported thing we do because the future, our future depends [music] on it. So, what do you think makes it the hardest to raise kids in the United States? [music] Let me know what you think down in the comments below. And as always, if you've enjoyed what you saw today, be sure to hit that thumbs up button. And for more [music] content from Tai Ashton, hit that subscribe button. So, I'll see you in the next video. Cheers.