Children are an expense. It is disingenuous to argue otherwise. If you are struggling to pay the bills, you have to actively make choices. You have to choose to get out of debt and if you are smart, you choose to wait for children until they can be cared for properly. Living in a home that exists paycheck to paycheck or worse is a terrible burden on a child, one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

Every child should be wanted and should be born into a situation where they can be cared for properly. Surprise babies due to poor planning and lack of prevention can do considerable damage, both to your finances and to your relationships. Yes, children can take care of YOU but you have to raise them first. Kids whose parents had to work multiple jobs just to pay the rent know how hard that kind of life can be. Why put yourself and your children in that position when you don’t have to?

In terms of the mental and physical benefits, talk to parents of kids who run away from home. Who get involved with drugs, who get pregnant themselves before they’re even 15. Kids who have serious birth defects or who develop serious illnesses. Kids who are autistic or blind or deaf. Life is HARD for those parents and those kids and while I’m sure there is a lot of love there, it’s not the kind of life that someone who has to make choices about what they pay for and they don’t will really be able to handle.

I’ve had too many friend and relatives have surprise babies and have it ruin their lives. Not every child is born healthy, not every child is happy and pleasant. There are complications to every parent/child relationship. To think that having a baby will make life rosy and sweet no matter how little money you have is simply naive and frankly ignorant.

I believe that until you are actually pregnant, then it is a medical issue and it does come down to money and prevention.

Rather, I’m addressing a particular thought which people sometimes have–”I can’t afford it”–and asking them to consider the different effects that not being able to afford it will have down the road. Specifically, the financial repercussions, because “can’t afford it” is the basis for their decision, and this is a personal finance blog.

In this case, I’m focusing on things which are related to medicine–I’m not including, say, whether private school for children is worthwhile because that’s not medical. I decided to limit my focus so narrowly because otherwise it would take pages and pages to write. I may do more in the future on other limited topics. Since birth control can involve medicine and usually involves pharmacies, I included it here.

If you are seeing me compare a child to a dead tooth, maybe I didn’t execute my concept well enough.

I believe that having a child is such a life-changing, nuanced (financial, emotional, and other reasons), and important decision that a couple can make that it shouldn’t be made casually and accidentally because you can’t afford birth control that week. Children also come through accidents, and those children are often no less loved and do well in life (my mother, for instance), but just because you can bring something good out of an accident doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to avoid that accident in the first place.

A child is not purely a medical problem like a dead tooth. It frightens me that you felt okay reducing children to an expense because that’s all you wanted to consider here. You can’t do that to people.

And even seen through the purely medical/financial perspective, children provide benefits. There are proven mental and physical health benefits for parents. And how many elderly parents depend on their children to help them with papers, expenses, or even just keeping an eye on nursing home care?

It wasn’t intended as a value judgment on children or on having them.

However, if a person isn’t responsible enough to use birth control when they’re not ready to be a parent, and if they don’t have enough money for birth control, then maybe having kids right now is a bad thing for them.

I’m in no way ready to have children–financially, emotionally, etc. Were I to find myself pregnant, I’d probably have a complete mental breakdown. I’d also do my best to be a good mother, etc, but that doesn’t mean it’d be a good thing for me….or for the child.

Judge me as harshly as you like for saying that.

Children rank with suicide and dental decay on your list of bad things a little maintenance can prevent? I see you trying to qualify it with “if you need them,” but this is horrible.