Expanding your family is often a difficult financial decision to make. I would know: a few years ago I had an abortion because it was not financially feasible for me to be pregnant or to have a child.
At the time, I was still breastfeeding my one and a half years old, and my use of breastfeeding as contraception had failed. (Breastfeeding a newborn with consistent intervals can sometimes be used as a form of contraception because ovulation can prevent. It is usually only about six months effective, According to Kaiser permanent.)
It was the depths of the COVID-19 Pandemie. My husband and I already took care of a toddler and my 9-year-old stepson during lockdowns, and I was a full-time student who pulled double duty as a mother who stays at home. We could not bring a new baby to our lives.
My OB-Gyn had also told me that another pregnancy could kill me. During my first pregnancy I was rushed to a caesarean section in an emergency because my daughter was caught in my birth canal after 45 minutes of pushing. My doctor told me that I could choose to give birth again, but making that decision could leave my husband to only raise our family as a widower.
In the three years since I had my abortion, I graduated with my bachelor’s degree and I am closer to my master’s degree. I was promoted to a full-time job as a manager with a non-profit and upgraded to a larger house.
My husband and I finally felt ready to expand our family, so we started the process to get a permit to promote. However, we recently paused that process. My husband pays rates for supplies for his small, construction -related company. My employer is financed by the state and threaten possible financing reductions one of my contracts. This means that increased adjustments or adjustments to the costs of living are more difficult to budget.
Financial stress leads to life -changing decisions throughout the country. Many people in the United States state the decision to expand or completely reject their families. I spoke with three of them about how the economy and specific, the recently brought to the market by President Donald Trump Trump’s tax insurance account, as the “large, beautiful bill”-has an influence on their decisions about the planning of the family.
Many said that the affordability crisis of the nation, together with the restrictive reproductive policy of the post-Roe v. Wade ERA played an important role in their decision.
Rising costs
“Building a family is expensive,” said Mrinmoyee Chatterjee, a senior research into social sciences and data analyst for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, in an interview with Rewire News Group.
Chatterjee’s research focuses on gender equality, the work of women and fertility, and she provided for RNG With her data.
((Read more: Baby making sex can be ‘Some of the worst sex people have’))
Chatterjee noted that although the costs of raising a child around the world are rising, they are especially amazing in the US. The most conservative estimates adjust the costs of raising a child Almost $ 30,000 a year—Palal more than 35 percent compared to 2023 due to the increasing costs of food, childcare and insurance, research by online lenders.
Over 21 percent of American households Even get $ 35,000 annually.
In addition, Chatterjee said, the weakening economy Has a major impact on women in the workforce. For example, when the economy is weak and childcare is not affordable, mothers are more often at home to stay at home for longer after the birth and less chance of returning to the workforce.
Returning to paid work after years of interruption can be difficult. That was certainly my experience after staying with my daughter at home for almost three years.
“The profit in the employment of women and when closing the pay gap between men and women … will always be less likely if the economy is generally weak,” Chatterjee explained.
An example of a costs that continue to rise, said Chatterjee is the price tag of a university education. Since 2006, tuition fees and reimbursements at public universities have risen 24 percent, According to inflation-corrected data from American news. Tuition fees and costs rose by 29 percent in the same period.
The costs of the university are not counted in official estimates of the lifelong costs for the realization of children, which are often calculated until a child is 17 years old. Because food, childcare and education costs continue to rise, estimate the real lifelong costs to raise a child, but Chatterjee tried.
“The actual costs for raising a child from birth to 17 years are almost $ 300,000,” she concluded.
Faced with that amount, the newly created baby bonds of the government, or “Trump accounts” – which are meant to stimulate couples to have babies – Chatterjee said: “A drop in the bucket.”
The economic toll
For the people I spoke to who decided not to pursue pregnancy, the financial security was an important factor in the decision.
Hailey, a former teacher in the South Bend, Indiana, and her partner have put their plans to put their first child on hold for the time being. Hailey asked to use her first name to keep privacy because she is looking for a new job.
Hailey and her partner have their house owns for more than a year, and they see that home ownership is actually less expensive than renting. But Hailey recently resigned her job as a kindergarten after five years because she was burned out, she said.
She is looking for a new career path in part because she is worried that the mental and emotional exhaustion of teaching can influence a potential pregnancy and parenthood.
“I do more damage to my body with the stress [of] Being exhausted in my work? “” She asked herself this last school year. ‘I could never balance [teaching and motherhood] Because I could never give 100 percent. ‘
Hailey said she should find another job to make parenthood possible at all; The stable income of her partner as a website editor is not enough to expand their families.
“The costs of living here are expensive,” she said, from South Bend.
General, South Bend costs less to live in than the national averageBut Median households earn also less.
“Growing up with financial struggles, it’s always a bit in mind,” said Hailey.
Keith, 30, is a manager at a financial institution that lives in Denver. (Keith asked to go alone with his first name to maintain the personal and professional privacy of his family.) His wife works as a case manager for a Medicaid contractor.
Together they earn a little more than $ 100,000, which means that their income will stop About the top 40 percent of the national households. Yet they also postpone a first child, largely for financial reasons.
“The costs of living in the Denver Metro area are ridiculously high,” said Keith.
Keith and his wife live in an apartment with one bedroom, and they enlarge $ 2,300 a month for that space.
“Interest rates and blown house prices keep us locked up when the deposit post keeps moving faster and faster,” said Keith. “The economy and the country seem very unstable and have most of my adult life.”
Keith noted that possessing a car there is also essential.
“Public transport exists,” he said. But “it is not conducive to maintain stable employment,” he added, referring to a lack of routes and times.
Abortion bans and medicaid cuts contribute to the comparison
Decreasing access to contraception And draconian new restrictions on the decisions of abortion complex families to have a child.
Indiana anti-abortion lawsFor example, Hailey and her family forced to discuss what they would do in the case of a reproductive or pregnancy -related emergency.
Hailey is worrying that if she could dismiss a miscarriage, doctors could deny her the treatment needed to erase her body from the failed pregnancy – despite the fact that, medical, medical, Procedures for abortion and miscarriage are usually the same. But in Indiana the anti-abortion laws are that So strict that she may not be able to receive medication or procedural abortion care.
Lindsay, an auditor from Maine, repeated Hailey’s concerns about anti-abortion laws. She and her partner have been trying to have a baby for more than four years. Earlier this year in 2025 she became pregnant – but the pregnancy was ectopic, a dangerous state where a fertilized egg implants outside the womb.
“For states such as Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida and others who prevent abortion completely or after six weeks, I would have died in those states or had to travel elsewhere to treat my ectopic pregnancy,” Lindsay said. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever had to go through, because we desperately wanted that baby.”
They also suffered financially in their attempts to grow their families.
((Read more: Child mortality rises in states with limiting abortion laws – new research))
Lindsay, with her partner on her side who supports her with every step of the road, has done fertility treatments for three years, including intra-uterine insemination (IUI), acupuncture, prescription medicine, freely available supplements and in vitro fertilization. Lindsay estimates that the couple has spent more than half of their family income trying to become pregnant.
“We already have so much medical debt,” she complained.
Republicans, she said, make the financial pain of this process worse with their failures to act to make reproductive health care interventions, such as IVF, more accessible to those who are not rich.
“They make it impossible for those of us who go through extreme measures to try by keeping financial access to treatments,” she added.
Federal spending cuts, in particular for the Public Insurance Program Medicaid, can also influence the medical care of pregnant people.
Chatterjee explained that Medicaid extended rather increased the quality of care of pregnant people by increasing how many pregnant people attended prenatal agreements and how early in their pregnancy they did. Previous restrictions on Title X financing led to Losses for healthcare And Contraception deserts.
‘[With] Slash programs such as these and other state/local programs, health results will be worse, “said Chatterjee.
Birth rates lower if the costs of raising children increase
All this research and data from the past do not predict historically well for birth rates.
On July 24, 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report that discovered that the American fertility rate had fallen into a low point in 2024. The total American fertility percentage was slightly less than 1.6 children per womanAgainst 1,621 in 2023.
Birth rates have been decades worldwideAnd Researchers have attributed the decrease For fear of climate change, including fewer teenage pregnancies and gender equality.
“The decrease in birth rates that happened in the past is a symptom of the economy that makes it more difficult for families and caregivers to have and raise children,” said Chatterjee. “The efforts of the current government do not seem to make it any easier, especially for the families who need the most support: those with women of color, immigrant women, single -parent families, [and] Families with a low household income. “
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