Can we afford to have a baby?

One page in this library answers this, and it answers one part of it. Price the childcare before you decide starts from the fog of “kids are expensive” and picks one part of it that has a price you can look up: childcare. It is about the money, not about whether you want a child. A second page, Pay yourself first, even if it’s $5, is about moving money before you can spend it. If you are already pregnant or already have a baby and money is tight, the help section below applies to you now.

If money is what makes you hesitate about having a child, look up what childcare costs where you live and what help exists, and put that number in your budget now, before you decide. Many people say the cost of childcare is set so high against wages that it is the main thing between them and having a child, and some put it as costing about as much as a full-time salary. Some people also say not to underestimate it, and to research it early and budget for it. Whether that matches your own place is something only your own place can say: some people note that childcare costs vary a great deal by location and by type, with a home setting and a center priced differently, and that $1,400 a month is cheap in some areas and expensive in others. That is the reason to look up your own number and not borrow someone else’s.

How to find the number. The US Department of Labor keeps a National Database of Childcare Prices. It describes itself as the most comprehensive federal source of childcare prices at the county level, split by the child’s age and by type of care, and it shows the price as a share of a median family’s income. Its figures run up to 2022, so treat them as a starting point. The page’s exercise: find your county, write down the yearly price for an infant in a center and in a home, divide each by 12, and put the monthly figure beside your monthly take-home pay. Then ask one local provider three things: the price today, whether there is a waiting list and how long, and whether they take child care assistance. One person describes waiting lists of eight to twelve months where they live; where a place is scarce, the wait can matter as much as the price, and a database cannot show it. You are not deciding anything that day. You are replacing the word “expensive” with a number.

Put the number in your budget now. One person suggests a practice run: work out the full monthly cost of a child, then set that amount aside every month from now, and adjust your spending to make it fit. The point is that you find out what bends and what does not while nothing depends on it. Pay yourself first, even if it’s $5 is the page for the mechanism: automate a transfer for payday, so the money leaves before it ever feels like yours, into a separate account you do not see every day. Its own warning is that automating too much, too fast is how this goes wrong, because a transfer that lands before a bill can overdraw you, and it says to raise the amount only after a month with no bounced payments. Is childcare the whole cost of a child? No, and the childcare page does not try to total the rest. One person suggests paying down debt first, building a cushion of at least six months of expenses, and keeping two months of food and supplies in the house.

What help exists, and what it does not promise. One person describes a situation where Medicaid, WIC and free daycare together left them living without financial stress and with savings intact. That is one person’s situation, and it may not hold in every region or at every income. Here is what the official sources say, as the page gives them.

WIC. The US Department of Agriculture says WIC serves pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding women, infants, and children up to age 5. You must meet an income limit, which is gross income at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, and you are automatically counted as meeting it if you or certain family members get SNAP, Medicaid or TANF. A health professional also checks for nutritional risk, and that check is free.

Health coverage. HealthCare.gov says Medicaid and CHIP offer free or low-cost coverage to eligible pregnant women, depending on household income, household size and immigration status, and that you can apply at any time of year. It says every Marketplace and Medicaid plan covers pregnancy and childbirth. Being pregnant does not open a special enrollment period for a Marketplace plan, but the birth of a child does, for 60 days. If you have Medicaid when you give birth, your newborn is enrolled automatically and stays eligible for at least a year.

Help paying for childcare. The federal Child Care and Development Fund helps low-income families with a child under 13 pay for care. The parent must be working, in training or in school, and each state sets its own income limit, no higher than 85 percent of the state’s median income. You apply through your state, and Child Care Aware can point you to your local referral agency. The limit is that a right to apply is not a place: the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that in 2021, 15 percent of children eligible under the federal rules received a subsidy, and the page gives 22 percent under state rules, which can be stricter. Medicaid, WIC and child care assistance each have their own income rules, and some depend on immigration status; each state runs its own programs, so check your state’s page and not this summary.

What if family will look after the child? Then the line may be smaller, and that is worth knowing. One person cautions against treating family help as a given when you plan the budget, since it is not guaranteed. One person adds that family involvement works best when it is offered freely and not treated as a service you are owed. One person says parents can swap childcare with other parents they know.

In the UK, the government’s page on help with childcare costs lists Tax-Free Childcare, free childcare in England for working parents of children aged 9 months to 4 years (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own schemes), and help with childcare costs through Universal Credit. Its childcare calculator at gov.uk/childcare-calculator shows what you could get. Turn2us, in the Resource Bank, has free online tools to check which benefits you could claim and to search for charitable grants. Health care there works differently from the US, and some people point out that health costs and insurance rules differ a lot by country, so the US points on health coverage above do not carry over. Elsewhere, your local government or health service is the place to ask.

Who this is not for. Does this mean you should wait, or not have a child? No: the counsel is to turn one vague worry into a number, and what you do with the number is yours. If your real question is whether you want a child at all, whether your partner is the right person, or whether you would regret it, the page does not weigh that; people who write about those questions disagree strongly, and money is one input among several. They also disagree about whether it is irresponsible to have a child you cannot afford, and about whether cost is a personal hurdle or a problem with the system, and about whether the regret stories online reflect how parents feel about it; the page takes no side in any of those. It is mostly about the United States, its price figures are county averages that end in 2022, and nothing in it is financial or legal advice.