Having kids is not terribly expensive everywhere. Not all need to have super expensive hobbies either. I guess there is a huge regional difference - starting from cost daycare.
That may be, but I can only speak as to my reality. It is not actionable to me that in X country things are cheaper. I don’t live there and I’m not moving either.
Also, I’m not talking about “expensive” hobbies. Almost all sports need some sort of equipment and time investment from the parents. Summer camps for some parents are a necessity because they need child care during summer months. Vacations for kids are also expensive and people typically save all year long to take them. I could go on.
I estimate I spend about €1000 more per month for having one baby. It's pretty significant in a country where the average employee earns €2000/month after tax (and a senior engineer is at €3500/month roughly).
Good preschool is $10k+. In large swaths of the country decent schools only exist where housing is prohibitively expensive. The combination of camp and afternoon care in the summer is thousands of dollars a month.
It all adds up and while you can get clothes at goodwill there are some expenses that are unavoidable and scale linearly with quality.
In my country preschool is free and it’s all around good. I don’t think we ever had to use any summer care either. Kids are now 12 and 15… the only necessary thing that is more expensive is the house since it needs to fit more people but that is just about the size, not location dictated by a good school as such.
For us all expenses related to quality of life just scale linearly with headcount.
