There's nothing quite like a Fraser Institute report on anything parenting related to get folks in B.C. huffing in indignation or chuckling in bemusement.
The recent report from the frequently contentious thinktank - which determined that it costs a mere $4,000 a year to raise a child - was no different: cue outrage and/or eye-rolling from Vancouver to Fort Nelson.
If your Wi-Fi has been broken all week and you've not been exposed to the brouhaha via your news feed, Facebook or Twitter, here's the sum up: a child's needs can be met, successfully, by spending somewhere in the range of $3,000 to $4,500 annually - far below the $10,000-plus estimates that have been touted in the past.
The response from parents, family organizations, and most observers has ranged from "ludicrous!" to "are we really going to have another debate about another report from THOSE GUYS."
I should probably duck before I say this, but personally, I think they've got a point - we could all be a little more frugal, couldn't we, and covering the basics shouldn't really be all that much? In fact, the more I ponder it, the more I can't help but think that anyone spending even $4,000 is a sucker. Why not $2,000? Or less! Let's pull out our calculators and sharpen our pencils, shall we? Every parent knows that food is a huge garburator in our budget that just chews up stacks of cash, so anyone looking to trim up their costs should consider this area first.
I don't know about your kids but mine love macaroni and cheese. And, if I choose a no-name brand (on sale, nonetheless), I'm pretty sure I could stock up on a year's worth for breakfast, lunch and dinner for just a couple hundred bucks.
Apples, milk, eggs, bananas, bread, seafood, greens - that stuff will just add cost after cost to your grocery bill. So, off it goes. Frugal! Next up: clothes. Now, I know that the newest DC shoes cost a pretty penny, so they're gone for sure, but let's face it, even plain old T's and jeans are going to add up. I think we need to take a page from history here and realize that no one needs more than three outfits: one for school days, one for Sundays and one for chores. What about shoes? Kids are terrible for growing right out of them and scuffing them up terribly within weeks or months of buying them. I'm pretty sure that if you go barefoot long enough, the sole of your foot will harden up well enough so that the long walk to school (and everywhere else) doesn't hurt hardly at all.
That's right. I said "the long walk" because that car sitting in your driveway (the one that takes your kids to school, to soccer, to piano lessons, to playdates, to family gatherings, to church, to all of those places outside of home they sometimes like to go to) is just burning up your money every time you turn on the engine.
Now, some of you may be starting to sputter: what about sports! What about extracurricular activities! What about all those enriching experiences like the trip to the science centre or the art gallery! Well, I'm here to tell you, scrap it all, my friends. Find a stick, a rock, a bit of pavement and your kids are good to go for hours of stick-rockbaseball fun!
And the next time my son tells me he's been invited to a birthday party, I'll tell him we can't go - that present (and a gift bag and tissue paper) will eat up too much of my lessthan-$4,000 budget and his classmate's birthday is hardly essential.
If you haven't got extended dental plans, it's probably time to just drop those checkups to once every few years - or not at all. And skip the Band-Aids and cough syrup (every little bit adds up!) and if you're dealing with a special need that results in additional expenses in supports and therapies, you should probably just re-evaluate if you really have to. How important is it, anyway? What else can we trim out of the budget? Daycare? No, wait: the report didn't include daycare costs. Or the decrease in income if parents leave work or work less to care for children. In fact, it didn't include all sorts of very real expenses that almost every parent faces.
Look, I get it, I really do: there are plenty of unnecessary costs along the way. Does every single family need to (or want to) spend $10,000 or $15,000 or more a year on raising their children? Probably not.
The report's conclusions are based on "raising a child at a socially acceptable standard of living using a budgetbased approached." I've no doubt the math all adds up, within the categories that were included and with an optimistic interpretation of how much even the "essentials" can cost.
So let's just quietly tuck this report back on the shelf, next to the annual Report Card on Schools and all the other headlineand-hubbub making documents we've seen from the Fraser Institute in the last few years.
Life, particularly a child's life, is much more than "essentials." Could we spend less, tighten belts, and improve budgets? Yes, I'm sure we can. I'm not so sure, however, that it would be to anyone's good.
Christina Myers is a former reporter with the Burnaby NOW and a mother of two. Follow her @ChristinaMyersA on Twitter, or check out her blog midlifeleap.wordpress. com.
