In a December appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Maye Musk, the 77-year-old mother of the world’s richest man, doubled down on a message she first posted on X. Her take? Being broke shouldn’t stop anyone from having children.
“You don’t have to go to the movies, you don’t have to go out for dinner,” she told Fox. “Just spend time with the most wonderful gifts you can ever have—children.”
That line echoed a post she shared a month earlier in response to a comedian lamenting that having kids had become unaffordable. In her post, Musk recounted how she raised Elon, Kimbal, and Tosca in a series of modest two-bedroom homes—starting in a tiny apartment overlooking a garage. She said she didn’t feel deprived, just resourceful. “We didn’t go out for dinner nor to the movies,” she wrote. “As soon as I could afford some help in the house, I opened my dietetics practice in my home… Have children, add value to your life.”
Her intent was to be inspiring. But for many, the message hit like a luxury-brand coupon in a dollar store.
Critics on social media were quick to call it tone deaf, arguing that skipping dinner isn’t exactly a workable strategy in an economy where basic child care costs can rival a mortgage. “It’s not the movie tickets that are breaking us,” one commenter wrote. “It’s $400 a week for daycare and $5 strawberries.”
And they’re not wrong. According to a LendingTree study released in March, the cost of raising a child to age 18 has jumped to $297,674—up 25.3% from 2023. The average annual cost to raise a small child is now $29,419, up nearly 36% in just two years. Daycare alone rose 51.8%, with food and insurance premiums not far behind.
That number doesn’t even include college, emergencies, or all the ways parents go broke trying to keep their kids from eating chalk or licking the dog.
Even the Child Tax Credit has dropped sharply, now worth only $2,000 per child, down from $3,600 in the pandemic era. Meanwhile, families are spending nearly a quarter of their income just on child-related expenses. In Hawaii, it’s 25.4%. In Mississippi, where costs are lowest, it’s still 16 grand a year.
To be fair, Maye Musk wasn’t always living the glam life. She was a single mom who built a career in nutrition and modeling, and clearly hustled through tough times. But critics argue that current economic stress—sky-high housing, disappearing benefits, shrinking aid—isn’t quite the same terrain she navigated in the 1970s.
And then there’s Elon—a vocal advocate for boosting birth rates, even suggesting the future of civilization depends on it. It’s no surprise his mom shares that mindset. But telling struggling families to skip date night and populate the Earth is…a choice.
Kids are wonderful. No argument there. But for millions of Americans, they’re also an investment they simply can’t afford right now—no matter how many movie nights they cancel.
Maye Musk may see children as “the greatest gift.” But in 2025, that gift comes with a receipt that looks more like a 30-year mortgage—and no, dinner’s not included.
