Between school supplies and summer camps, sports and doctor’s visits, raising children increasingly takes more and more money. We’ve been blessed in recent years, but I know what it’s like to start a family and struggle to make ends meet. Since the 1960s, there has been a consistent gap between intended and total fertility, even as the number of children American women desire to have and the total birthrate have declined over time. There are many causes for this gap, but the increasing cost of childbearing clearly has played a role in its development. We simply cannot have a strong nation without strong families, and working Americans face a challenge in the cost of raising children that threatens the health and vitality of our country.

Source: New York Times November 05, 2017 23:48 UTC