There is surely a spectrum between small apartment with asbestos and 5m$ house.
I read on HN all the time that once you have kid it is unavoidable to spend 300k$ a year. But yet 99.9% of the world and the US manages to raise kids with a fraction of that income and they turn out mostly fine. (Before you ask, yes I have kids and yes we still live simply)
I have 2 kids and we have a single Kia soul and a little house I do most of the work. I pay for a good private school mostly out of fear of big schools and gun violence in the US and giving my kids multilingual education. I can assure the rich kids have a lot of problems and have a schedule like a company CEO, they go to our place and have a blast, free range fun. The kids need money thing is mostly a marketing thing the system puts into parents minds.
> There is surely a spectrum between small apartment with asbestos and 5m$ house.
That's exaggerating a bit, but some places near offices are kind of that way. (Why I love working remote, which absolutely increases the spectrum of choices.)
The mental gymnastics I've seen kids enable is Olympic level. Need to upgrade to a bigger house, need to upgrade the car to a SUV, need keep traveling 2-3 times a year, need to sign up for some crazy sports league and coach which means domestic flights and hotels every other week.
American trucks are an arms race. You need one to protect the occupants from the other trucks on the road, unless someone legislates to stop all of you from driving them.
I feel we are engaged in the same race to the bottom in the UK, although it is not as extreme as it is in the US. One of the few constraining factors in the UK is that our car parking spaces are generally quite small and no-one wants to buy something they can't park anywhere.
Many of the homes in the world were built when lead and/or asbestos were in use. Asbestos isn't much of a concern if you don't disturb it - don't let your kids play in the attic or tear out the drywall, and you should be fine. Don't let them lick the paint, and you're probably good. Or paint over it / get it remediated - it doesn't have to be a deal killer.
I certainly agree that it'd be hard to have kids in a small space though, I definitely appreciate having more room - especially with a WFH setup.
I have asbestos in this modest[0] house: it's not any sort of a problem. (Lead only in my soldering kit in significant quantities so far as I know...)
I always have been fairly frugal and am in semi-retirement now from the residues of my last two small start-ups (to which COVID was unkind, so died simultaneously!).
My extended family has/had big houses, including one in which a famous film was set it seems, but I see those as mainly expensive liabilities. Never owned a car. Etc etc.
[0] As described by a visiting Secretary of State!
Plenty of people grow up in apartments in cities and live great lives. Often, they enjoy greater autonomy as they age into adolescence. Suburbs are basically prisons for children these days.
The truth is you don’t need a home or an SUV or a front lawn to raise children. And it’s also not necessarily better for them. It might be more cushy, sure, but that doesn’t mean it materially improves their lives in any meaningful way.
I agree with this. From my experience the more isolated and cushy early kid's life are, the less capable they end up being able to manage rough situation later in life. It's counterintuitive because as parents we feel like we need to build a golden prison in the suburbs for them.
I read on HN all the time that once you have kid it is unavoidable to spend 300k$ a year. But yet 99.9% of the world and the US manages to raise kids with a fraction of that income and they turn out mostly fine. (Before you ask, yes I have kids and yes we still live simply)