Housing is a demand-based commodity. Urban areas are where the jobs are. Employers are backing away from telecommuting. Hence, people live where their jobs are, or commute long hours, or both, incurring costs either way.
You generally have a choice about where you want to look for work.
For example, back in 2000, I knew that living in the NYC or DC area was probably a bad idea. Yes, I would start at $125K and go up to $200K fairly quickly, but there were better places to work with shorter commutes and less stress.
Those places would have been much more fun to live, but with respect to raising children, you can find plenty of cheaper places in the U.S. to live.
You just generally have to take a pay cut if you want to change locations to a less economically congested area.
Last pay cut I took several years ago (for the purpose of avoiding billable hours) was 40% and I moved to an area with a higher cost of living. Now I did reduce my commute from 30 minutes. My commute is now at 7 to 10 minutes depending if it's a school day or not.
I'm just pointing out that you can generally find extra $$$ for kids if you are willing to adjust your life or lifestyle for that purpose if you want to accomplish that.
