Financial pressures are dramatically reshaping American family planning decisions, with a striking 70% of citizens now declaring children too expensive to raise according to new research.
Survey Reveals Unprecedented Consensus on Child Costs
The 2025 American Family Survey, conducted by BYU's Wheatley Institute and Deseret News, demonstrates remarkable agreement among Americans about the financial barriers to parenthood. Seven in ten respondents identified raising children as prohibitively expensive, marking a substantial 13-point increase from the previous year's findings.
"To get 70 percent of Americans to agree on something, just that alone is telling us something," observed Susan Brown, director of Bowling Green State University's Center for Family and Demographic Research, in comments to the Washington Post.
The comprehensive poll surveyed 3,000 people between August 6 and 18, 2025, with participants carefully selected to reflect national demographics across gender, age, race, and education. The survey carries a margin of error of just 2 percentage points.
Financial Realities Outweigh Other Considerations
Financial constraints emerged as the dominant factor influencing family size decisions, with 43 percent of respondents citing "insufficient money" as their primary reason for having fewer children or none at all. This financial concern was cited twice as frequently as any other factor.
Interestingly, 41 percent of participants indicated that none of the listed factors—including relationship instability, lack of family support, or career conflicts—affected their decisions about family size. Among those who did identify other influences, "lack of personal desire" and "absence of a supportive partner" were most commonly mentioned.
The research highlights how economic considerations now fundamentally shape American decisions about whether to have children, when to have them, and how many to raise. This trend coincides with the US birth rate remaining near historic lows at 1.6 children per woman in 2024, following record lows in 2023.
The Soaring Cost of Raising Children
Historical data from the US Department of Agriculture underscores the financial challenges facing prospective parents. The department's final report from 2015 calculated that a child born that year would cost an average of $233,610 for a middle-income married couple to raise to adulthood, excluding college expenses.
When adjusted for inflation through June 2025, this figure balloons to $322,427. The financial burden varies significantly by income level, with lower-income families potentially spending around $241,106 while higher-income households could face costs reaching $513,722.
Isabel V. Sawhill, senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, noted that the USDA estimate assumed a 2.2 percent inflation rate—substantially lower than current levels—suggesting the actual cost of raising children may be even higher than these adjusted figures indicate.
Political Divisions and Policy Responses
The survey revealed distinct partisan differences in attitudes toward family planning and government support. Democrats proved more likely than Republicans or independents to cite financial reasons for limiting family size, though majorities across all political groups supported expanding the child tax credit.
Republicans demonstrated the least enthusiasm for broader government assistance programmes, such as universal daycare or direct payments to parents. This political divide emerges as conservatives champion the "pronatalist" movement, encouraging larger families through supportive government policies.
Policymakers are exploring various solutions to address these challenges, including New Mexico's free childcare pilot programme and former President Trump's proposal for 50-year home mortgages aimed at reducing financial pressures on families.
Limits of Government Intervention
Despite growing interest in policy solutions, experts caution that even generous government programmes may have limited impact on birth rates.
"It's really hard to say that you would have a child if given X amount of money from the government, because I think that's just not the calculus," explained researcher Gibson-Davis. "It is a very intimate, personal decision that people make."
The findings underscore how rising economic pressures—from increased grocery and energy costs to employment uncertainties—are fundamentally reshaping life choices and voter priorities across the United States.
