“Find a woman, marry her, provide, have more kids than you can afford. That’s my advice for young men. Don’t play the victim. Even though you legitimately can play the victim card on everything we’ve said, the mindset of a victim is parasitic to your soul.”

This was the surprisingly controversial advice of slain political activist Charlie Kirk to the thousands of young people who flocked to him for advice.

Detractors argue such advice is reckless and mindless. Who in their right mind would encourage someone to have children they don’t have the money to raise? It sounds like a recipe for a bunch of impoverished, malnourished, uneducated children raised by rosy-eyed parents who think having a family is nothing but a numbers game.

And it’s an expensive numbers game according to some sources. A study from the loan company Lending Tree suggests that families should expect to spend $237,482 over 18 years to raise a child. With numbers like these, most couples are going to decide that one child is likely more than they can afford. Forget about having children above the replacement rate!

Yet these numbers are misleading because they assume that each additional child is costing over $200,000 which, I would venture, is not true, unless perhaps if you live in a couple of extremely high-cost states. The study that came up with this number analyzed several factors, including rent and transportation. But these costs don’t really go up with each child. In fact, they don’t really go up much at all once you go from a childless couple to parents – that is, if you are willing to live frugally. Rent only goes up exponentially when adding a child if you are either a) living in a shed that you absolutely cannot raise another child in or b) falling for the lie that each child needs a private bedroom, possibly their own bathroom, an upgraded playroom, and a fancy car upgrade.

My calculations of course don’t consider families with children suffering from chronic illness or with special needs. But this exception is not where the birth rate crisis lies. The fact that we are having children well below replacement rate is not because of families in hard situations, but families that fancy themselves in hard situations because they believe in statistics meant to scare them away from the most fruitful mission they will have in life.

Another study using data from MIT suggests that for a couple to have three children (above replacement rate) with both parents working, they must make, at minimum, $98,626. These numbers are daunting, especially when we consider that the average household income nationally is only $83,730, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Not to be too vulgar or give away too many personal details, but according to “the statistics” for our state, my family should be downright impoverished living on one fulltime income with a child and another on the way. Instead, we live comfortably and simply. We want for no necessities. And although the rising cost of household items is a frustration, it is not a debilitating problem.

Given these misleading statistics, it is sound advice to encourage young people to have more children than they could afford. It is very unlikely, outside of a few fringe circumstances, that they would have to go hungry or homeless. They may, however, have to completely give up eating out for years, or skip vacations.

If missing out on restaurants and vacations is what’s keeping you from having children, allow me to be the first to tell you that you will survive losing these things. But when you grow too old to even consider children in the future, your friends who are spending their declining years with their grandchildren won’t seem all that poor compared to your own affluent existence.

Don’t believe the statistics. Have more children than you can afford.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image Credit: NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive