Item — HN Reader

I'm in the Netherlands, and my partner and I don't want kids for a multitude of reasons, but the biggest one for us and many other friends of ours is the obscene costs of having a child. Even the ones that really want kids simply cannot afford to have one, because the price of living is simply absurd.

I'm extremely fortunate to be working at a large tech company and I have good money, but even with my income having a kid would be financially ruinous for us. Daycare costs alone are ludicrous, somewhere in the region of 2000-3000 euros PER MONTH. Now, most people get some form of gov't support for things like these, but we definitely wouldn't due to my income, and while I'm well off, I'm not that well off to be able to afford an expense like that.

Not to mention all the other costs associated with having a child, both material like the ludicrous price of housing but also mental.

7 comments

> Even the ones that really want kids simply cannot afford to have one, because the price of living is simply absurd.

Perhaps the price of living to which you are accustomed to is absurd.

> I'm extremely fortunate to be working at a large tech company and I have good money, but even with my income having a kid would be financially ruinous for us.

Would it though? Couples having been raising children with much less for millennia.

> Daycare costs alone are ludicrous, somewhere in the region of 2000-3000 euros PER MONTH.

Children have a lot of economies of scale. If one spouse stays home to watch them, that covers as many kids as you have.

Spending time with grandparents is also common. This is both cost effective and facilitates generational knowledge and culture transfer.

> If one spouse stays home to watch them, that covers as many kids as you have.

That's debatable ;)

I have two kids, and taking care of both during the day is vastly harder - both mentally and physically - than working two jobs. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child, and I don't think many people have that village anymore. As a result, a lot of kids are being raised by TV or the internet, and if you don't want that, you'll find yourself occupied with them almost 100% of the time.

Another issue is that the spouse who stays home can effectively kiss their career goodbye if they spend seven or eight years out of the workforce. Given current divorce rates, that's not a trivial risk.

I wish I had grandparents living nearby, but that's not the case either.

I'm not saying it's impossible - I have two children myself and would probably have had more if I'd started earlier - but it's not easy. And, judging from my admittedly small sample size, it seems to be getting harder.

This varies majorly by child, parent/caretaker, and environment. For instance with my children if we go outside, then they are on full auto mode. They could play in the yard by themselves pretty much all day long as long as at least one parent's nearby watching them. But if we're indoors then they demand full attention. On the other hand somehow our nanny has got them to be able to happily play indoors while she mostly just chills out doing stuff on her phone or whatever - and I have no complaints since it works out great for everybody.

> Perhaps the price of living to which you are accustomed to is absurd.

That is not really an actionable observation. The Netherlands is an extremely dense country already, what is OP exactly supposed to do to make their cost of living non-absurd?

> Couples having been raising children with much less for mill

It wasn't just couples then, though. It was the entire village or neighbourhood: cousins, aunts, neighbours, godparents. Nowadays our society is so fragmented that you indeed usually are alone to tackle everything. This change from extended family to nuclear family model definitely has some impact on total fertility.

> Children have a lot of economies of scale. If one spouse stays home to watch them, that covers as many kids as you have.

Which also means that there is no spouse's income anymore. Unless your spouse makes really little money, you will end up in a similar financial hole either way.

> Spending time with grandparents is also common. This is both cost effective and facilitates generational knowledge and culture transfer.

If people have kids in their 30s, the grandparents are quite often too old and sick to help. They may also live way too far to be able to visit daily or even weekly.

My friend works in large tech; think SV, a satellite office in Amsterdam. Both of them earn greatly. With two kids, they literally don't have any saving at the end of the month. With 52% taxes and mortgage, even with child benefits. of course you don't pay a lot for the education, but the daily operational cost is very high. Small unplanned activity in NL can make you go in the red. Rising energy and grocery prices are not helping either.

Reddit for expat in netherlands is full these posts.

What always irks me about posts talking about how the upper middle class cannot afford to raise children is how the conversation ignores the idea that raising children will cause you to alter your lifestyle. You may need to live somewhere else, eat out less, or what have you, but I assure you that you can afford it. Many are simply not willing to compromise on their lifestyle comforts.

Well, duh. Some of us want to enjoy the life instead of being an incubator for another being.

I’m really interested how you got these numbers. Using some of the daycare providers in our most expensive city (Amsterdam) with an obscene collective income (250k) with 5 full days of daycare (which not many parents even want) I get net 1300 per child.

For 3 days with more normal incomes it is closer to 700-800 euros

If you make very good money and childcare is 30 thousand euro per year, why doesn't your wife raise the children instead of outsourcing it? The answer (and I'm not sure what it is in your case) is the ever-illuminating stated vs revealed preference.

> Daycare costs alone are ludicrous, somewhere in the region of 2000-3000 euros PER MONTH.

Very attractive numbers. I should look into the daycare business. I am guessing the people running daycare centers probably have several tax incentives too.

You probably don't. Although I'm not from Netherland and can't say for sure, but it probably means that regulation and expenses are also ludicrous.

you are most probably right.

My mother told me that daycare used to be FREE in the 70s and early 80s. She was a working single mother.

Vote long enough for the VVD and you will see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.

The demographic structure was also different.

Europe has become a pensioner-heavy society since then, these people vote, and vote, quite logically, for the welfare system to support themselves.

All the rich societies which slowly transform from 10 per cent old people to 40 per cent old people will have similar cashflow changes.