Those "youngsters" are going to cost you!

There is probably a new shift in the "Decline of the American family". That is much MORE polarizing than same sex unions .  Which most religious righter's blame as a cause .  Our society is so outta focus with its increasing trends in our ultra dollar economic stagnation . **The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low.  Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of 6.8 marriages per 1000 people. That might be the reason that is destroying the family , perhaps forcing newlyweds not to have children at all.A new government report says child-rearing has increased 23% since 1960 even adjusted for inflation. A lot of the reason has to do with more expensive housing as well as higher costs for health care and child care . Middle-income parents who welcomed a new child last year can expect to spend nearly $300,000 over the next 17 years, according to a new report. The U.S. Department of Agriculture prepares an annual report about families’ expenditures on children for use in developing state child-support and foster-care guidelines. Annual child-rearing expense estimates ranged between $12,290 and $14,320 for a child in a two-child, married-couple family in the middle-income group, which is defined as a before-tax income between $59,410 and $102,870.The amount spent on a child by families in the highest income group, on average, was more than twice the amount spent by families in the lowest income group. A child born last year to someone in the lowest income group would cost $212,370 over 17 years, compared to $490,830 for highest earners. The biggest share of the expense in raising a child, according to the report, is housing at 30%, followed by child-care and education at 18%, food at 16%, transportation at 14% and health care at 8%. For $235k you could by a Ferrari...then spend a few million dollars more maintaining said Ferrari.Besides,it's not like you're forking over the 235k on your child's birthday,those are all expenses that are accrued over time. At 235k you're spending about $265/wk on your child for 17 years.With a Ferrari you're gonna cut a check for 235k in 1 day,spend a couple thousand a week on it and definitely not keep it for 17 years.When it's time to sell,you're dealing with depreciation,not appreciation as would be the case with kids should they turn out successful.I find such analogies very lazy and near-sighted. At the same time, wages aren't keeping up. The country's median annual household income has fallen by more than $4,000 since 2000, after adjusting for inflation, and many of the jobs lost during the recent recession have been replaced with lower-wage positions. With all this madness , inflation , taxation , loss of the American dream . It's all about how  to frighten people away from having children

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 ** Back in 1950, 78 percent of all households in the United States contained a married couple.  Today, that number has declined to 48 percent.In the United States today, more than half of all couples "move in together" before they get married.The divorce rate for couples that live together first is significantly higher than for those that do not.For women under the age of 30 in the United States, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.  According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 69.3 births per 1,000 women in the 15 to 44 year old age bracket in 2007. Now the rate has fallen to 63.2 births per 1,000 women. The birth rate for American women in the 20 to 24 year old age bracket has fallen to 85.3 births per 1,000 women.  That is a new all-time record low. The United States has the highest divorce rate in the entire world.