I've just always been of the opinion that if you're not surviving on your current job income, you need to change your job, or do something to increase your own standard of life. Surviving on minimum wage is difficult, and if you're mid 20's still making minimum wage, you've got a bigger problem and should be looking at your life and the choices you've made. If you've got a kid and can't get better than a minimum wage job, maybe that decision to have a kid was not the right decision.
A child costs an average of $200,000 to raise up to age 18, probably more if you want to factor in college, a car, and other luxury items to get their kid doing something more than just surviving (family vacations, going out with friends, buying them the new PS84397593847593874598 when it comes out + games, etc). Look at your yearly expenses, and do the math (saving $100 a month like the link listed), you're talking about $1200 a year, it would take you 200 years to make the money required to raise a child from 0-18. You can't afford to do it, period. Don't have a kid until you can afford to save $1000-2000 a month, it's really simple.
Contraceptives have gotten quite good over the years, to the point that there should be very little "oops" babies. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I'm typically sleeping with multiple women every week (no, I'm not bragging), and I have no accidental children, and no STD's. Your average man sleeps with 8 different women in his entire life, and only has one sexual partner at a time. I refuse to accept that a person can't remember to use a contraceptive of some kind given those numbers.
It's a sore topic for me because it's just an example of bad parenting, and you're not just affecting your life by having a kid, you're introducing a kid to a less-than-sufficient environment for them to have any chance at a successful life. Do you hate your kid that much that you want to deprive them of any chance of being happy?
