No, it’s not easy raising a gaggle of kids these days. The cost of bringing up just one kid is estimated to be more than $200,000 for a middle-class family. But what’s surprising about having more than one kid, outside of paying for early child care, is how the expenses don’t double with two or triple with three. When we had our fourth child just a month ago, we couldn’t think of what to add to our baby registry outside of a car seat, because we didn’t need much.

It’s a hard fact to accept, especially in our overachieving, helicopter society, but kids don’t need all that much. Kids can, and should, share clothes, rooms, toys, supplies and more, and forcing them to do so doesn’t just help your bottom line, it teaches important life lessons as well. What’s important in life? More stuff or more family?

Still, millennials — like Prince Harry, who recently declared he’d have “two, maximum” — are concerned about too much procreation amid fears of climate change. Every generation has had their reasons not to have kids (imagine bringing a baby into the world during WWII), but with every child there comes the promise of who they might turn out to be and the positive impact they could have on society. We cannot have hope for the future without a future generation.