How to raise a child on less than $1000 per year

When the Fraser Institute report on the cost of raising a child came out proclaiming you can raise a child on $4000 a year, the proverbial shit hit the fan.  How can you raise a child on 4k a year when the cost of daycare alone is upwards of 8k, and that's if you are lucky.  Many parents pay 2 to 3 times that much.

The reality is, the Fraser Institute has no interest in analyzing the cost to raise a child.  They just want to push their conservative agenda, and it's astonishingly easy to doctor the numbers.  To prove it, I decided to show you can raise a child on less than one thousand.  Here is how:

Food:  live in the country and grow most of your own food.  Junior better not have any diary restrictions,

Diapers:  you will be using cloth diapers, and washing them by hand since you can't afford a washing machine.  The cloth diapers will be made of your old t-shirts.

Clothing:  you see those curtains above your kitchen sink?  You don't need them since you live in the middle of nowhere.  Cut and sew.

Furniture:  the LCBO gives away free cardboard boxes

Daycare:  that will be performed by your mother and mother-in-law, who live with you

Healthcare:  you only need the bare minimum, so your child will not have what you can suckle from the government

Alcohol: you will be drinking heavily, so half of the $1000 goes here.  See Daycare as to why you will need so much booze

After-School enrichment:  none - your child don't need no school to work at a minimum wage job

Vacations:  the child will be working for his or her keep so, yeah, no vacations

After school programs : see vacations

Books and school supplies:  this is where he other $500 will go, since you can't really get away from it

Toys, gifts, miscellaneous : hand crafted by grandpa from the finest driftwood

Now, throw in another $3000 and you can actually feed your child.  Progress!

The question is not whether you can raise your child on $4000 a year.  You can do a lot of things if you are hard pressed to do so.

The question is, do you want to raise your child that way?  And do we want to build a society that presupposes hat this kind of childhood is a perfectly acceptable norm?

I for one would like to see every member of the Fraser Institute put their money where their mouth is and have their children live on $4000 a year.  I'd bet that amount wouldn't even cover their shoe allowance.

If you can show me how to raise an average Canadian child on $4000 a year, AND you'd be willing to raise yor own child that way, please drop me a line - I would love to hear all about it.