Pricey parenting: Numbers show it can cost Canadians nearly half a million dollars to raise two children

Jessica Wesley holds her two-month-old son Kenneth in her apartment in Toronto. A new Statistic Canada study shows that some households pay nearly $500,000 to raise a kid. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov

Raising kids can be pricey and a new report from Statistic Canada is shedding light on the exact cost of child rearing.

According to the report, a lower-income household would need roughly $238,000 to raise a child from birth to age 17. That number jumps to $293,000 – a more than 20 per cent leap – for medium-income households.

Higher-income households pay more than $403,000.

"The cost to raise a child, or multiple children, has been increasing dramatically over the last couple of years,” said Len Shaw, a financial advisor in Sydney, N.S.

Shaw also has nine-year-old daughter, Regan, so he knows firsthand about the rising costs.

"The costs for food, clothing, education, kids' activities, everything has gone up - so it (the data) is not surprising,” he said.

Amanda Carroll, a Sydney mother of two, wasn't the least surprised to hear the new numbers. She works three jobs to keep her kids involved with extracurricular activities while making ends meet.

"I have a full-time job that I work, and I also have two part-time jobs that I do remotely from home,” Carroll said.

She noted today's costs could make some people think twice about having multiple children.

"There's no way I'd have another kid with how much it costs to raise one now,” she said. “It's absolutely out of control. I mean, I know they're trying to regulate child care to make that more affordable, but I mean right now child care is nowhere near - it's about a mortgage payment now."

Shaw said some may put off having children until they're older and more financially secure, but added people may not want to pay a different kind of price at the other end.

"What we're seeing now too is people that are taking on having families are putting off their plans for retirement,” Shaw said. "It's also becoming more difficult to plan for their post-secondary education because a lot of people are deferring that or putting that off."

Given the costs of living don't appear to be going down anytime soon, Shaw –- who is a licensed trustee in bankruptcy –- has some advice for how families can cope.

"It's important to not take on too much debt because that's often a pitfall that we see people do,” he said. “If you do take on debt for these years of raising kids, it's important to have a plan to pay it back."

The average costs determined by Statistics Canada reflected families who raised children from birth to age 17. The study showed that costs go up 29 per cent when children continue living at home until age 22.

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