 You have a whole, there are expenses that come up obviously as a parent that you have no control over, but on a day-to-day basis, you have a whole lot of leeway in how expensive this is going to be. Just like you have a leeway in how expensive your own life is going to be. So it's not that you can't afford children, it's that you can't afford your current lifestyle once you have added children into the bargain. So it's a matter of priority, not raw cost per se. But all of life is a series of trade-offs, and this is no exception. In this case,