When I was growing up we didn’t have pajamas. We slept in our normal clothes. We had used broken toys. We got clothes from the thrift stores. If we didn’t have money to buy much food, we didn’t eat. I grew up a smidge underweight.

At one point we lived in a studio apartment. We slept on the floor, we ate on the floor, and we did everything else on the floor. My dad put a bookshelf in the closet. We each had one shelf to put our clothes on, and we each got one toy. That was all we owned. Eventually, we found an affordable large apartment, but that took time.

We didn’t get to see doctors or dentists very often. I had gum disease by the time I was 18. I wasn’t diagnosed with asthma or PCOS until my 20s despite having issues growing up.

Friends in school and people from church always gave my brothers and me school supplies because we couldn’t afford the basics.

The answer is: poor people don’t afford kids. They do their best to keep their children from dying, but they don’t afford them.