Capstone Proposal

The cost of raising a child

The issue I would like to address is the amount of money a new mother has to spend on their first child. In a society many parents see buying a house as an important part of starting a family, the cost of housing in cities is rising, pushing double-income households to the brink. Also in Australia the younger generation is starting their earning years later in life after earning a degree, paying of their study debt, the costs of raising children is a key part of the discussion couples are having when thinking about starting a family. So looking at those issues how much does a parent really spend on raising a baby? The cost of raising just one child from a baby to parental independence which is the age of 24 in Australia is $597, 949. Generally, second and third children cost less due to economies of scale resulting from hand-me-downs and shared infrastructure, such as bedrooms and furniture.  Here is the cost of raising one child in comparison to raising 2.7 children in Australia.

Table 1: Updates from June 2010 to June 2012 based on ABS Cat 6401.0 - Consumer Price Index, Australia, Jun 2012 by category. Based on NATSEM figures.

Categories	One child: June 2012	2.7 children: June 2012
Food	$             105,774	$             285,590
Housing and Utilities	$             118,592	$             178,456
Recreation and Entertainment	$               77,245	$             154,488
Health and other services	$               92,881	$             164,848
Clothing and Equipment	$             64,508	$             131,202
Transport	$               100,002	$             129,978
Education and Childcare	$               38,947	$             106,742
Totals:	$             597,949	$         1,151,304

Looking at this issue I would like to help parents feel ­­­comfortable financially and also able to buy the stuff they want for their new born baby. I believe that designing a product that can grow with the child would be financially beneficial for parents today and having it durable for as long as possible or look at the product having many uses rather than just the one. So that parents don’t have to buy so many individual things for their baby.

  

The reasons I am interested in this area for my final work is because I am pretty close to this as my sister is getting married and wants to start a family soon. Talking to her about her wedding and buying a house I realised that starting up a family needs a lot of money. Also talking to her friends which have new born babies I realised that it’s very hard to find what they need that’s affordable.  I would like to help all new mothers be able to afford not just their needs but also their wants. Also another reason that this subject area interests me is because recently working at an ice cream store I get to see more children and families. It’s an area of design where you can make things much more fun and vibrant. So it has a huge area of aesthetic and technical promise.

My approach to ensure I deeply understand the problem topic and my user is to accompany a mother for a day to see all the things she uses and needs to raise her baby. Also looking at product interaction with the products the mother has purchased and what other products she uses that may not be originally for the baby but she finds it useful to use for the baby. I will record my observations and then accompany another mother for another day. So I can see different mothers and their techniques of looking after their baby.

Another approach would be to look deeply into research done by researchers and their views on what parents are spending in today’s world. Looking at statistics is important to get a rough idea of numbers of how much parents are spending on their children in comparison of what they earn.