Raising a Child: The Unquantified 40-Year Mortgage

Having a Child: Between a 40-Year Mortgage and 'Priceless'

In January 2014, someone posed the question with a notebook open: Is it worth having children? The starting point acknowledged various reasons—enjoying parenthood, avoiding loneliness in old age—but led to an uncomfortable balance sheet: loss of freedom, the need for secure employment to support them, perpetual worry, physical and psychiatric illnesses, with attention deficit being diagnosed "more or less accurately." The second question remained unanswered: What is the average cost of raising a middle-class child over 18 years? No one put a figure on the table.

Do Children Give More Than They Take?

The negative response was quick. "It doesn't particularly appeal to me, however beautiful it may be; I see it from the outside and observe great weariness, sacrifice, and life complications." Others qualified that yes, provided there is money, time, and stability to raise them. And the fundamental objection appeared early: treating it as a balance sheet is the problem. "If you ask yourself that question in those terms, my answer is clear: it won't be worth it," because a child is not a consumer object. Those who have them so they will be cared for in old age, he added, start from a flawed premise.

The most cynical summary was signed by the mortgage metaphor. Having children, it was said, is "worse than a 40-year mortgage." One specific case took it to domestic extremes: three children equal three mortgages, with four years paying off the first, two the second, and two months the third. "In this case, I prefer buying to renting," he concluded. The financial metaphor is no accident in an era breathing Euribor rates, but it leaves out exactly what cannot be amortized.

The Cost No One Calculates: 18 Years of Maintenance

The economic question was the most concrete and elusive. How much is spent in 18 years? Not a single figure. What was listed were the components: orthodontics, school books, unstable work that doesn't even guarantee covering those basics. The prevailing conclusion is that the idea of having children becomes hell when the labor market doesn't provide for the essentials. And an idea beyond money: previously, children were labor helping in fields or family businesses; today, without that function, the calculation loses its meaning. "Economically speaking, it's like tying a millstone around your neck."

How Much Does the State Pay for Having Children?

Here incentives enter. Reference was made to a 420 euros aid linked to having at least one child and thresholds dividing the couple's salary among dependents to not exceed 480 euros per person. For those viewing parenthood as business, the margin doesn't close. The fundamental criticism wasn't the aid itself, but that the design doesn't distinguish real needs.

From 'I'll Never Have Kids' to Counting Little Fingers

The most revealing part was personal evolution. Several stories coincide: at 15, never marry; at 19, married. "I didn't like children at all." At 26, one on the way: antiestéticar, worry, "not knowing how to raise him, not wanting to." And upon birth, crying and counting little fingers. Others reached 40 with a six-year-old daughter and a partner who had it clear. "It was very thought-out." Changing one's mind, they argue, is not weakness: it's digesting what happens to you.

Those Who Are Already Parents: Experience vs. Theory

Stories with real children don't hide hardships. One summarizes: I have a daughter, life changes for you; I don't regret it; it entails sacrifices, but the positive far outweighs them. Another puts it in profitability terms: IRR, nominal interest rate, and NPV completely negative, yet still "an essential life experience to say you've lived fully." And one of the harshest interventions against those rejecting parenthood argues that non-parents "were better silent than saying nonsense about what they don't know."

'Lineage is the Reason to Live,' and the Rest

Not everyone reasons in euros. The idea of children as the evolution of a shared life project appears, lineage as the reason to live, and the warning not to raise from antiestéticar: "what you shouldn't do to have children is live terrified." Opposing this is the antiestéticar that they end up as cheap labor in a world of 8 billion people and 50 million inhabitants in Spain, figures provided by one participant. Underlying it all is the question no one fully answers: What if your parents had asked themselves the same?

Here the analysis stalls. Eighteen years of upbringing, a savings of freedom, a list of expenses without total. The only repeated figure is the mortgage, and it's not a figure: it's a feeling.