other hand, young people
with steady incomes should not postpone having children merely because
those incomes are not high. Three can live almost as cheaply as two,
especially in the child's first years. It is the expense of
hospitalization and doctor's care, during pregnancy and throughout the
first year or two following the birth, that sometimes threatens to
unbalance the family budget. This additional expense must be provided
for. It need not be great--a matter of a few hundred dollars, often less
in various parts of the country. The doctor's fee for pre-natal care and
delivery will correspond roughly, unless he is a senior specialist of
great reputation (by no means a necessity for healthy people), to the
expense for hospitalization. The latter can frequently be obtained for a
hundred dollars or less--though rarely, if ever, in a big city--making
the total cost of getting the baby about two hundred dollars. In many
parts of the country hospital schemes, into which you make a monthly or
yearly payment, make it possible to get two weeks' hospitalization for
mother and baby, with semi-private room, use of delivery room, and
nursing care, for about ten dollars. This effects an obvious saving, and
has done a great deal to bring children within the reach of all. During
the first year or so the mother needs to be quite free to call on her
doctor for service or advice whenever she wishes. Sometimes the doctor
will be glad to arrange a flat charge for a year's attention, say a
hundred dollars, or more or less, depending on the family income. Such
an arrangement often does the parents a great deal of good, putting
their minds at rest, for they feel they can call on the doctor in all
reasonable emergencies, ask him all necessary questions, expect periodic
visits to their baby, and receive all necessary vaccinations and
immunizations for a fee they can afford. The sum may be paid in monthly
or quarterly installments.

Money for the child may be saved out of monthly earnings. This
well-known phenomenon is called saving for children. Very often the
parents of the married couple are glad to help them with the extra
expense involved in having their first child. I do not mean by
loans--for it is not good for young people to be in debt, even to loving
creditors--but by actually undertaking to pay the hospital and the
physician. If people are ready for a baby in all other ways and only
money keeps them from parenthood, the prospectiv