Good morning. Back-to-school season is upon us and raising kids is getting even more expensive. Beyond the mounting costs, parents are often expected to be everything, everywhere all at once. Globe reporters have been digging into the growing challenges – and sticker shock – of modern parenthood. And the numbers back up their concerns.

Defence: Ottawa is encouraging Canada’s financial sector to help finance defence companies – a risky industry that lenders have typically shunned.

Buy Canadian: Grocery magnate Galen Weston is committing $100-million to making it easier for shoppers to buy local.

Big Tech: The federal Privacy Commissioner says individuals have the right to be forgotten but Google is refusing to comply.

De Minimis: Bracing for higher operational costs, small businesses are scrambling to keep their American customers, as the United States eliminates the de minimis exemption on Aug. 29.

• Nvidia reported second-quarter earnings on Wednesday and forecast third-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates, even as shares fell 5 per cent in extended trading.
• Canada’s big banks are releasing third-quarter earnings this week. CIBC and TD reported higher profits today.
• Alberta Investment Management Corp earned a 2-per-cent return in the first half of the year, rebounding from a volatile first quarter.

Hi, I’m Mariya Postelnyak, The Globe and Mail’s consumer affairs reporter.

When we write about the challenges of modern parenthood, readers often point out that raising kids has always been tough. This is true, but today the cost of parenting is also climbing at a staggering pace.

A survey released last week by Capital One Canada polling more than 1,000 parents showed that it costs over $8,800 to support a child throughout the year while they are at school – a 14-per-cent jump from the average of $7,709 in 2024 and a 29-per-cent spike since 2023.

Year over year, average weekly earnings were up 3.3 per cent in May, according to Statistics Canada.

One analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that the average cost of raising a child spiked by US$31,000 in real dollars between 1960 and 2015.

While it has always been expensive to raise kids, inflation in basic areas such as food, clothing and housing, as well as tariffs and compounding economic pressures have made things harder in recent years, said Jodie Stauffer, a certified financial planner with Money Coaches Canada.

“The cost of food and grocery has just skyrocketed – feeding the family has become a big concern," she told me.

(There are whole Reddit threads dedicated to the stress of berry budgets, often spurred by their rising popularity on kid-food Instagram.)

For parents with younger kids, a lot of the financial burden is concentrated around daycare costs. In Vaughan, Ont., daycare for a toddler averaged $1,285 a month before the introduction of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system, writes Danielle Kubes.

Introduced by the federal government in 2022, the program subsidizes participating daycares with taxpayer dollars.

Now for some, those same costs hover closer to $480 – a savings of more than $9,600 annually.

With the CWELCC program significantly easing the economic burden for parents, it no longer pays to drop out of the work force if you can get a subsidized daycare spot, Kubes found.

But the uncertain future of CWELCC beyond 2026, combined with the soaring cost of living, is leaving many families stressed and stretched, writes Rosel Kim.

Meanwhile, parents with older kids expect to spend more on back-to-school shopping this year in the face of U.S. tariffs and their aftershocks across the economy.

Parents are also facing new pressures around heightened expectations that kids need tablets or Chromebooks for school. That’s alongside the stress of keeping up with the Joneses amplified by social media, which pushes children toward higher-priced items, Stauffer said.

We haven’t even touched on the idea of helping children save for tuition costs at the same time as trying to save for retirement.