Raising seven children in Jacksonville, Fla., requires Tanya Hardaker and her husband to stretch their dollars, especially as basic costs like food and transportation keep soaring. While he earns more than $200,000 annually, which she knows "is a lot," they must be "extremely thrifty" to stay financially secure as a family of nine on a single income.
Their seven children, four of whom were adopted and are on Medicaid, are now ages 9 to 18. The kids eat free breakfast and lunch at school, keeping the weekly grocery bill to about $250 during the school year. (It doubles during the summer when all seven kids are home.) The family upcycles and trades clothes with other families at their church. Their house is less than 2,000 square feet, even after making an addition. For vacations, they go camping or sometimes rent a beach house in Jacksonville.
People have a vision of what success in America looks like - a big house, new cars - but "we've done what's best for us," Hardaker told MarketWatch. As her kids start going to college, the former accountant plans to return to work to offset new costs.
"I'm not a tradwife. I never meant to stay home," Hardaker said. "But God really has blessed us, and I've used my time, talent and treasure to run this big old household."
Families as large as Hardaker's are rare in the U.S. The typical American family with kids today has two or fewer children, and only 20% of families with children under age 18 had three or more kids in 2023, according to calculations based on Census Bureau data.
The country's fertility rate is hovering near record lows and remains below the so-called replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain the size of the population. An increasing share of Americans say they are unlikely to have children at all. The reasons behind this phenomenon are a source of intense debate.
Americans of reproductive age themselves point to shifting personal priorities, as well as affordability and societal issues like climate concerns. The intensity of modern parenting, which research indicates is a response to rising inequality, may also be fueling ambivalence about having kids.
Left-leaning advocates focus on family policy, and highlight things like the lack of child care and paid family leave as signs that the U.S. government and society aren't pro-family. They also emphasize federal programs, like Medicaid and Head Start, as important supports for Americans who have more children.
On the right, where concerns about declining fertility have caught the attention of prominent figures like Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk, policymakers are entertaining a slew of ideas to encourage families to have more children. Conservative pronatalist groups, which support increasing the fertility rate, have been sharing ideas with the White House, including a $5,000 baby bonus and more education for women about their ovulation cycles. Lawmakers are also exploring expanding the child tax credit and providing families with government-funded "Trump accounts" that would give every newborn $1,000 in an investment account, which could be used when they turn 18 for funding education, buying a home or starting a business.
While family-friendly policies can ease the serious economic challenges weighing down many American parents today, they are unlikely to set off the "baby boom" President Donald Trump hopes to ignite.
Hardaker, the mother in Jacksonville, said she has heard many politicians talk about the importance of families, but said there is no serious support for working and low-income parents in America. She pointed to the lack of high-quality and affordable child care, sufficient parental leave and paid time off at corporations, and affordable housing near public schools and public libraries.
Politically as well as culturally, "we have not valued families. We have not valued mothers. And ultimately, we really don't value children," Hardaker said.
MarketWatch spoke with parents across the U.S. with four or more children about their decision to have larger-than-average families and the financial demands of supporting them. All of the parents who agreed to be interviewed were married, and most were religious. Many said they simply wanted to have a lot of kids. They generally had high household incomes for their areas and for families their size - more than $200,000 - and noted that supporting their family was still financially difficult and required lifestyle compromises and careful management of their money and time. Some of the families had two earners; others had one. Many of the working parents had flexibility in their work schedules and the ability to work from home - benefits they described as critical for allowing them to be available for their children.
But when asked whether they felt government policy could encourage people to have more children, these parents said the costs of raising a family are so large that a one-time baby bonus or even an annual tax break, while helpful, would not likely be enough to financially move the needle for those on the fence, especially as Americans face a broader affordability crisis that is forcing them to focus on other needs. They felt the decline in the fertility rate was the result of society at large, including lawmakers not prioritizing families - let alone large families - in the face of such challenges.
Having a larger family is a decision made for spiritual, not material, gain, they noted - but the overall high cost of living today means most Americans feel they must concentrate their energy on work instead.
These days, "everybody needs to go to college, everybody needs to have a career," Hardaker said, and such expectations leave "less time and money for children." In an age when many people are worried about the economy and their own financial security, raising a family - especially a large one - can "just feel like one more thing to worry about," she added.
"It is an expensive world," Rep. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican who has four children, told MarketWatch. "You're going to want your child to have a better future and more upward mobility than you have," and there are "some really difficult economic factors that exist in our country today" for people considering having children, he said.
While Moore himself introduced a bill to enhance the child tax credit so that "families are supported," he added: "I don't think you can offer a dollar amount of economic bonus to encourage a couple to have a child."
Having more children ultimately "has to be an emotional decision," said Rebecca Hedaya-Heller, an estate attorney who has four children in Long Island, N.Y. Lawmakers could relieve some of the financial pressures parents face, and "I would like the money, but it's not enough," she said. "It's not a math thing. ... You're giving years of your life" to raise a child.
Large families are the norm for Hedaya-Heller, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community as one of six children. When she unexpectedly became pregnant with her fourth child a few years ago, she felt like it was "another jewel in my crown." She lives in a four-bedroom house with her husband and kids, now ages 11, 9, 5 and 2, and works from home.
"Everyone has different lifestyles," she said. For a family of six on Long Island, even a simple lifestyle still requires generous financial resources, Hedaya-Heller acknowledged. She and her husband, who works as an engineer, have a household income in the top 20% for their area. Yet having a big family means no big vacations - summers are often as simple as getting a local beach pass - or, at most, going to Florida to visit the grandparents.
"These days, families have very adventurous, exotic life experiences that we are foregoing," she said.
In aspirational TikTok videos about big-family life, the kids are often well behaved and well dressed, standing in height order, dancing for the camera. Their homes are spacious and clutter-free. The parents' financial resources seem as abundant as their patience.
"Are you going to stop now that you got a boy?" read the caption in one family's video as five daughters in matching floral dresses walk past their father, one by one, in age order, followed by their baby brother, the sixth child. The answer is apparent when their mother, who is pregnant, appears onscreen at the end, glowing.
As with most content on social media, these are idealized portrayals. "It doesn't align with my life," said Rachel Greszler, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank.
Greszler, an economist, has six children between the ages of 7 and 16, and works full time with "a lot of flexibility" in her hours and her ability to work remotely. "I love having a big family," she told MarketWatch. "But no, it's not tied up with a pretty pink bow."
Greszler normally wakes up at 4:45 a.m., has a coffee, reads her Bible and goes out for a run before her children leave for school. Her four oldest kids can walk or bike to school on their own. She or her husband then takes their two youngest to school, which starts at 9:25 a.m., and commutes to work. One of them usually returns home by 3:45 p.m. to walk the youngest children home and then continues working remotely from soccer practice and other activities.
"It's messy. It's loud. But it's fun, and it's great, and I wouldn't trade it for anything," Greszler said.
Like some parents interviewed for this piece, she declined to share her household income, but said they are in the top 20% of earners in their area. Greszler and her husband expanded their house to have seven bedrooms, with the six kids sharing four of them. The home has five bathrooms. They drive a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van that can accommodate 12 passengers and "looks like an Amazon delivery truck," she said. For vacations, they often drive to see grandparents in western New York.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.