How to raise a family on only $380,000 a year



I recently came across a short article in which the female half of an early-30s DINK (dual-income, no kids) couple in Charlotte, North Carolina, outlined their finances.

They make a combined income of about $380,000 per year. They have no debts other than a $450,000 mortgage, which they expect to pay off in the next seven years. They've accumulated $1.1 million in savings, to which they add about $8,000 each month. Other than gym memberships and an occasional dinner out, they rarely splurge.

'People can’t have kids if they can’t afford a house,' they say. Really? Are renters rendered sterile? I was unaware.

Baby bust

"I love our life together," she says. The only thing missing? Children. They definitely want them, but have chosen to wait until they "feel more financially secure."

You read that right. An otherwise financially literate couple thinks $380,000 per year is not enough to have kids.

Prudence is one thing; this is more like paralysis. And it's fairly widespread in 2026, as evidenced by a decline in both birth rates and general happiness.

How did the standards for a good life balloon so far beyond our ancestors’ wildest imaginings? How did people come to believe they cannot start a family without things their grandparents never possessed? And how did this historically anomalous idea come to seem perfectly reasonable?

Feature creep

There is no single explanation, but our inflated expectations seem to track alongside what is sometimes called “feature creep.” This happens when manufacturers continually add conveniences that, in theory, improve a product but eventually raise the baseline — and the price — to a once-unheard-of level.

My sister recently bought a new car. It is amazing. It can do all sorts of things, and despite not being a luxury model, it was quite expensive. She told the salesman, an old-car enthusiast, that she wished she could simply buy a basic car without all the bells and whistles. He agreed.

That is feature creep. The floor has risen so high that heated steering wheels, assisted driving, and iPads embedded in the dashboard are becoming standard equipment. The same thing has happened to houses and apartments, which are now expected to have renovated kitchens, new bathrooms, smart lights, smart thermostats, and every other costly convenience.

Lease on life

As our products have become more elaborate, so have our expectations for what constitutes a good life — and for what having children requires.

People have grown accustomed to so much comfort that they have lost the ability to adapt as their parents and grandparents routinely did in the not-so-distant past.

This is usually the point when someone brings up the housing market.

“People can’t have kids if they can’t afford a house,” they say.

Really? Are renters rendered sterile? I was unaware.

The Root family must have slipped through the cracks, because we have had children while renting and somehow survived. I am obviously sympathetic to the problem of exorbitant housing costs, but I am not going to pretend that home ownership is a prerequisite for having children.

My parents had me while living in an apartment. My father’s parents had their first child in an old Army tent pitched behind the farmhouse where they were staying for the summer. And that is only the 20th century. The farther back you go, the tougher it gets.

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Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

Doom patrol

The belief that renters cannot even contemplate starting a family is closely related to a couple earning $380,000 a year feeling too financially insecure to have children. Both are also distantly related to the depressive claims of online doom-mongers that life is harder than ever, when it so obviously is not.

No one starves in the United States today. It has been a very long time since that was a normal possibility. We have become so thoroughly removed from true want that we have forgotten what the word means.

After the extraordinary material abundance of the 20th century, it is perhaps unsurprising that millions of people developed unreasonable—and ultimately unsatisfiable—expectations for what they need before they can live well or bring children into the world.

The remarkable thing is that they sincerely believe it. Deep down, they really do feel that what they have is not enough, despite having more than their grandparents could have imagined.

Those DINKs in Charlotte really do believe that an income of $380,000 a year is not enough to start a family.

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

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Tradwives, sourdough, and therapy: The biggest myths of Christian womanhood



BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is celebrating a new chapter with the announcement that baby No. 4 is on the way — but alongside the exciting news, she has a message for Christian women who believe they need to live up to certain “myths” in order to fulfill their roles as women.

“One of the biggest myths in Christian womanhood,” she says is the “idea that one, biblical womanhood and so-called traditional womanhood or being a so-called tradwife are completely synonymous.”

The idea of a tradwife has been perpetuated endlessly on social media, where women portray themselves in long floral dresses and baking sourdough loaves.

“We’ve kind of conflated the trad-aesthetic — which is a social media trend for some people, I’m not saying it’s not genuine for many people — with being a biblical woman. And it’s not always the same thing,” Stuckey says.


Another myth of Christian womanhood is that your life does not begin as a woman until you get married and have children.

“My argument is not that those things cannot bring a level of fulfillment because they absolutely do. They’re good and wonderful blessings. The biggest earthly blessings I have in this life are my family, my husband, and my children,” she says.

“However, they are not the pinnacle of your fulfillment and satisfaction. Christ is, which means you can have that right now if you are a Christian, no matter what stage of life you’re in,” she says, pointing out that you can faithfully serve God from anywhere.

Another myth Stuckey sees infiltrating modern Christian women is what she calls “therapy culture,” which is essentially self-help language, self-affirmation messaging, inner-child therapy concepts, and therapeutic frameworks.

“Ultimately, I think all of these psychological ideas elevate the God of self rather than leading us to Christ and encouraging us towards self-denial,” she says.

While this modern therapy messaging encourages looking inward for happiness, Christianity says to look to Christ.

“Of course, that is true,” Stuckey says.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Ignore the media whining — today's dads do more than ever, at work AND at home



The American dad has spent the last 40 years serving as the culture’s favorite punching bag.

From the misanthropic, couch-locked Al Bundy in "Married... with Children" to the bumbling, well-meaning hazard-to-himself Phil Dunphy in "Modern Family," Hollywood conditioned us to view fathers as overgrown teenagers.

The massive domestic imbalance that has inspired a million angry think pieces is virtually nonexistent in the data.

They were the morons who couldn't find the milk in an open fridge even after moving everything except the milk, the slow-witted domestic saboteurs who would accidentally incinerate the kitchen if left unattended for 20 minutes.

For decades, the consensus was clear: Men were biologically, or perhaps pathologically, unfit for adult responsibility.

Different breed

Then came the modern panic over falling birth rates, and the blame was promptly dumped at the feet of these cinematic man-children. Women, the conventional wisdom claimed, were refusing to breed because men refused to grow up. If only dads would stop playing video games, put on pants, and learn how to operate a vacuum, fertility rates would soar.

It's a convenient narrative. The only problem is that it happens to be wrong. A recent report from the Institute for Family Studies dismantles it entirely. The myth of the detached, useless dad is officially dead.

Far from dodging domestic duties, modern American fathers are putting in an enormous amount of time at home.

In the mid-1960s, a married father with young children spent fewer than 10 hours per week on household chores and child care combined. Never mind the all the other hours spent earning the money to put a roof overhead and food on the table — the average dad had a reputation for being terminally checked out, loafing through family life behind the sports pages.

That stereotype is now hopelessly out of date. Today, married fathers spend close to 30 hours per week on household chores and child care. In little more than half a century, paternal involvement has tripled.

Quantity time

Meanwhile, appliances evolved. Washing machines, dishwashers, and robot vacuums eliminated the soul-destroying physical labor of the past, reducing the hours required to maintain a home. But instead of using that freed-up time to drink scotch in a recliner, the modern father rolled up his sleeves and absorbed the extra hours.

Married fathers now spend roughly 45 hours per week directly in the presence of their kids. In other words, dad isn't just providing a paycheck any more. This is a man wearing half a dozen hats: chauffeur, soccer coach, homework warden, amateur therapist, technology troubleshooter, and occasional short-order cook. He is expected to be present for every bedtime routine, school recital, and emotional wobble.

Even Steven

The most shocking revelation from the IFS report comes when you look at the total workload. When researchers tallied up paid employment, unpaid labor, child care, and household obligations, they discovered something remarkable. Today, married mothers and married fathers of young children each average roughly 63 hours per week of combined labor.

The massive domestic imbalance that has inspired a million angry think pieces is virtually nonexistent in the data. Both parents are working long, exhausting hours. Both are making massive personal sacrifices.

This completely flips the fertility debate on its head. If fathers are already maxed out, increasing paternal participation isn't the magic cure for declining birth rates. More importantly, it tears up the old script that men can't be trusted with a grocery list, let alone a young child.

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Liu Jin/Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Bubble-wrapped childhood

However, this hyper-involved, positive picture of modern fatherhood does come with an important caveat: the rise of over-parenting. In the past, parents let their children wander the neighborhood until the streetlights came on — partly out of trust and partly because they just wanted them out of their sight.

Today, children are rarely left unsupervised. Teenagers spend less time with friends, neighborhoods are less connected than they once were, and parents increasingly feel obliged to schedule every waking minute of their children's lives. What used to be an afternoon of "go outside and be home by dinner" now requires a color-coded calendar.

This total elimination of childhood freedom has created a new kind of claustrophobic family dynamic. By bubble-wrapping their offspring, modern dads are inadvertently raising a generation of anxious, hyper-dependent kids who can't make a decision without a text thread consultation.

Thank a dad

Furthermore, this extreme devotion has exacted a heavy toll on men's mental health. Time is finite. Every hour spent curating a child's resume or driving to a travel-team baseball game in another state is an hour stolen from personal maintenance. There are only so many hours in a day. Increasingly, fathers have paid for their expanded responsibilities with their own leisure, hobbies, and friendships. The modern dad has sacrificed his own social survival network on the altar of family responsibility.

Despite the dangers of helicopter parenting, the overarching reality is shifting toward something undeniably positive. American fathers didn’t shy away from changing social expectations. If anything, they adapted with remarkable speed. If the old model of fatherhood was largely financial, the new model demands presence, participation, and constant engagement. And, as the report shows, millions of fathers have embraced it.

So this Father's Day, if you're lucky enough to still have one, thank your dad. And if you've spent years insisting fathers don't show up, don't care, or don't pull their weight, the evidence suggests you might owe him an apology as well.

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‘The Vanishing Black Family’: Delano Squires discusses the main problem facing the black community



When Delano Squires was growing up, he was surrounded by young black men who were not only getting into trouble, but getting into gangs and going to jail — while he kept his hands clean.

“At a certain point in my teenage years, I said, ‘Well, it’s because of the families we were raised in. All our parents were married, ... we were going to the same church, same values across households, a community of men who were raising us and keeping us in line. And I realized that family structure was the key,” Squires tells BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock on “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”

“So from there, just one of those things that I’ve always thought about, the importance of family, the importance of marriage, importance of my dad in my day-to-day life, his everyday presence. And at a certain point, I wanted to write about it,” he explains.

And Squires did write about it in his new book, “The Vanishing Black Family,” where he argues that the breakdown of the black family is to blame for lack of education and high crime rates.


“Men and women are continuing to have children, particularly in our community, where 70% of kids are born out of wedlock,” Squires tells Whitlock.

“The other thing that we’ve seen over the course of the last 60 years is that as poverty has decreased in the black community, the non-marital birth rate has increased,” he continues, using NBA players as an example.

“In a league that was 70-plus percent black, you had guys who were fathering four, five, six, seven kids out of wedlock, even though they were making millions of dollars a year,” he explains, noting that economics appear to have very little to do with children being born out of wedlock.

“I think economics is a part of it, but the real reason is because marriage is no longer seen as valuable, desirable, accessible, or indispensable for the purpose of forming a family. And the reason for that goes back much further than current economic trends,” he tells Whitlock.

Whitlock has his own theory as to why the black family has broken down.

“If we had more God, we could have a successful marriage, and we could raise up better kids. That’s the missing ingredient,” Whitlock says.

“The cause of the vanishing black family is because we’re not looking for God to be our provider. We’re looking for money to be our provider. And so, whatever makes us the most money is going to fix the most problems,” he continues.

“And to me it’s, you know, we’ve just lost focus on who our real provider is. It’s not man-made money. It’s God,” he adds.

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My new hack for a long, healthy life? Getting married



Admittedly, planning a wedding is a strange time to start reading cancer research. The seating chart had 17 unresolved feuds in it; the oncology journals felt like lighter reading.

Until they didn't.

Public health researchers call this 'social monitoring.' In practice, it means someone loving you enough to be annoying about your symptoms.

A recent American study, drawing on more than 4 million cancer cases, found that adults who never married face considerably higher cancer rates than those who did. Never-married women saw rates dramatically elevated. Never-married men weren't far behind.

The gap widens after age 55, which is when a lifetime of accumulated habits, poor decisions, and missed appointments begins sending invoices.

Settling for less?

Marriage rates in America have fallen steadily for decades. What was once expected is now optional — and sometimes viewed with suspicion. The language around "settling down" carries a faint odor of defeat, as though building a life with someone else were a concession rather than a choice.

The cultural conversation, meanwhile, circles endlessly around diet, exercise, and whatever superfood is currently being flown in from a distant rainforest. Billions flow into wellness industries. Podcasts dedicate entire seasons to optimizing sleep. And yet the data keeps returning to something far less marketable: whether you have someone in the next room who gives a damn.

The researchers are careful to avoid claiming that a wedding ring makes tumors vanish. But the pattern holds and appears across most major cancer types. Cancers linked to smoking, alcohol, and infections showed the biggest gaps between married and never-married adults. That concentration is telling. It points at behavior, environment, and the kind of low-level interference that only someone who genuinely cares about you will bother to sustain.

Buddy system

A man living alone can ignore a cough for months. A wife will drag him to a doctor. A woman juggling everything on her own might postpone a checkup indefinitely. A husband will plead, push, insist, and escalate if necessary. Public health researchers call this "social monitoring." In practice, it means someone loving you enough to be annoying about your symptoms.

Then there's the physiological cost of chronic loneliness. Without someone else setting the rhythm, sleep suffers, meals become erratic, and the basic architecture of self-maintenance gradually gives way. A person alone sets his own standards, and standards, without a witness, tend to decline. Freedom looks like a luxury until it tips into neglect.

The research on loneliness as a health risk has been mounting for years. Chronic isolation produces measurable changes in stress hormones, inflammatory markers, and immune function. The body registers abandonment, and it responds accordingly.

Previous generations were hardly models of healthy living. They smoked heavily, drank liberally, and regarded dietary advice as a personal affront. The average mid-century American male was not tracking his resting heart rate. Yet many of them were embedded in something we have spent decades dismantling: long marriages, tight families, a reliable social unit that caught problems early and addressed them without being asked. The neighbor who checked in. The sibling who showed up uninvited. The spouse who had the kettle on before the door had closed behind you.

Noticing matters enormously.

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The author with his mother and grandmother. Photo courtesy of John Mac Ghlionn

The cure of community

Cancer rates in younger Americans have been climbing. The old assumption — that serious disease waits its turn at the end of a long life — has expired. It is arriving earlier, frequently without warning, and the reflexive response has been to scrutinize diet, sleep, and screen time. All valid. All insufficient on their own.

There are complications worth acknowledging. Marriage has its limits as a medical intervention. As Tina Turner and Johnny Depp demonstrated at considerable personal cost, not all marriages are protective. Some are so destructive that they make solitude look like sensible doctor's orders.

Nevertheless, the directional evidence holds.

Knee-deep in wedding planning, I keep returning to what this whole undertaking actually represents. Families reactivate. Old friendships resurface. Obligations form. The ceremony is a public declaration that someone will be watching, intervening, and on occasion refusing to let you get away with things.

The vows carry legal and emotional weight. They're also a mutual surveillance agreement, entered into willingly, which turns out to be rather good for your health.

We've built an entire cultural vocabulary around independence. Self-optimization. Personal growth. The solo journey. These are not entirely worthless ideas, but they have crowded out an older and more durable understanding. Humans aren’t built for sustained isolation. The people around us, intrusive and imperfect as they are, perform functions that no app, no routine, and no amount of cold-plunge evangelism can replicate.

A culture that treats relationships as provisional and commitment as one lifestyle choice among many is making a collective wager. The evidence suggests the odds aren't favorable. In ways we're only beginning to quantify, permanence appears to be protective.