Nah its like 18k USD or so if you're uninsured. 3k or so if you are. Daycare and supplies are brutal though, probably 20k on average annually - higher if you live in an expensive state. Childcare specific costs get cheaper as they grow and eventually they hit public school. Past that you still have to cloth, feed, transport and lodge them - so just imagine what you spend on yourself and thats about what you spend on each child.

Yeah I'm not the guy that advocates for kids or anything and definitely have my share of regret in that area, but we have pretty basic insurance in the US and the entire cost of the pregnancy was $200 out of pocket, not including parking. Every doctor visit, the delivery, and our own recovery room.

A coworker who is insured through his wife just had a little girl last week and actually only had to do copays for prenatal prescriptions. Oh and parking. They always fuck you there.

E. I asked another buddy just for shits and he paid ~$1200 flat rate for each of his three kids delivery with a few hundred each prenatal. Expensive but manageable at least.

If you have halfway decent insurance (which not everyone does of course) it is not particularly expensive out of pocket. The bill from the hospital is huge though, yes, but it gets picked up with insurance.

A "funny" feature of US healthcare is that it may be cheaper to get pregnant in November-February or so, because then the bulk of the healthcare will take place in one year and you'll meet any out of pocket max in one year only. Giving birth in January, on the other hand, means you probably meet your out of pocket twice

once for pregnancy, once for birth.

Assuming you have health insurance, which we all should have, it's nowhere close to that expensive. A C-section cost me about $1500 in silicon valley with a high deductible crappy insurance plan. A regular delivery would have been even cheaper.

Kids are not very expensive except in two areas... Child care, or the opportunity cost of a parent staying home to take care of them, and college. And maybe feeding them when they become teenagers.... Because holy crap they eat a lot!

Now I'm lucky enough that I made enough money that my wife was able to not work when we started having kids, but if I ignore that opportunity cost (which is fucking massive), in me experience kids are actually quite cheap.

Food was cheap, clothing was hand-me-down, even most infant care stuff was cheap if you get it used and people are always giving away used stuff that their kids outgrow. Child care was the only thing I would consider expensive when they're young. (This is looking at things from a middle class perspective)