Or not financially possible. I just checked. In my town the average cost of housing is about $650/month, but that includes apartments of varying sizes. So lets

Or not financially possible. I just checked. In my town the average cost of housing is about $650/month, but that includes apartments of varying sizes. So lets assume a family of four is spending $10,000-$15,000 year on housing. That makes the math easy and is not too far off for the price of a three bedroom home. Average household income here is about $50,000/year, so already we're using 20% of our income on housing. According to the USDA, the "low cost" food plan for a family of 4 is another $10,255 [0]. So now we've got almost half our income in just housing and food. Add to that transportation (where I live you have to own a car), sundries, clothing, utilities, health care, school supplies and so on and I can absolutely see how two children would be a financial hardship on a single income, standard of living or not. Even at slightly higher than average that would preclude all sorts of things (the activities, travel, and so on). I'm not trying to make excuses for people's choices, but kids cost money and financial hardship happens. People get laid off, they make bad decisions, the economy goes boom or bust, changing the cost of living and incomes, shit happens. You also have long term security to think about, making sure you're putting money away for retirement and so on. It would be hard to raise kids on $50,000 a year, and I suspect the median income in most of the country is actually less than that. [0]:https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/usda_food_plans_cost_of_food/CostofFoodJul2014.pdf https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/usda_food_plan...