[paulryanrogers]

According to the USDA the average cost per child as of 2017 was 233K. That's not including college.

Take care to ask your partner what "traditional parenting" means to them. It may involve indoctrination in religion that teaches self hatred (born sinful), whipping the children with a switch, or intentionally infecting them with diseases that have vaccines.

When I say parenting industry, I'm talking about books, mommy blogs, and commenting areas like this where you'll often get all kinds of self reinforcement, feel good BS, and no/bad science. I've seen it lead to parents convinced that some ways are evil, usually well studied and common things that would make life easier (such as bottle feeding).

[agonmon]

We're moderately frugal (eat organic food, paid activities for the kids, live in CA), and our kids are on track to cost us each about 80k before university. That's less than a year salary for most HN readers.

Our friends that try to act rich have much higher costs. I assume that is where your cited number got so inflated.

Re. Parenting Industry: there's an excellent book called Hunt, Gather, Parent - which examines how traditional cultures raised children. Parenting isn't complicated, but modern marketing has completely muddied the waters.

[tarboreus]

Any other book or resource recommendations? Like your style in this thread.