o, I don't hate kids. I have three at home myself - two boys, 11 and nine, and a girl, one and a-half.

But they cost. And go on costing, for decades. Exactly how much? Each year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates how much it costs to raise a child, using data from interviews conducted in its Consumer Expenditure Survey.

It is no back-of-the-envelope guesstimate. The survey involves visits to, and interviews with, about 5,000 households, four times a year.

"The people in the survey are asked to keep detailed records and show their bills," says Mark Lino, the author of the government study. "And they're also asked about the small-ticket items that you tend to forget about."

Are you ready for the results? Sit down. The study concludes that American parents earning $60,000 or more spend $11,972 a year on a child up to two years old.

That figure is per child in a two-child household. For three or more children, the per child cost drops slightly; for an only child, it rises slightly.

And, contrary to what the parents of newborns might think, the first years of life aren't the costliest. From age 15 to 17, kids cost their parents $13,253 a year.

Adding up the department's figures for each age brings the total cost of raising a child, from cradle to age 17, to $223,860. Families earning under $60,000 pay less.

That is more than most Americans spend on anything. But the scary part is that for many families, this figure is vastly understated.

Some of the USDA's numbers are straightforward - for housing, transportation, food, clothing and medical costs, for example.

To come up with a dollar figure for how much parents spend on housing a child, the USDA divides the family's costs by the number of household members, coming up with a per capita figure - $4,766.

For transportation, the government subtracts out the amount of transportation expense it figures is work-related (40 percent for families with the youngest child under 6), and then divides the remaining total transportation expense to get a per capita number. In the survey, transportation expenditures account for $1,548.

Food expenses are calculated using USDA information on individual intake. The government estimates that it costs $1,312 to feed a newborn-to-two-year-old.

Spending on your little one's clothing, which includes not only clothes but diapers and dry cleaning bills, amounts to an estimated $595 a year.

Mark Lino reports that many people feel this figure is understated, but also ignores gifts of clothing - especially those from grandparents.

The per-child health-care expenditure of $595 includes medical and dental services not covered by insurance, and the cost of health insurance premiums that aren't paid by your employer.

The final two categories - child-care and education costs - are the real killers. And here is where the USDA's figure can grossly understate the reality.

According to the USDA, child care and education expenses - including day-care tuition and supplies, baby-sitting expenses, private school tuition and supplies - come to $1,671 a year. Anyone with a passing familiarity with full-time day-care costs alone for our hypothetical newborn-to-two-year-old knows it can easily approach $2,000 a month in major metropolitan areas.

Private school tuition ranges anywhere from a few thousand for parochial schools to the $20,000-plus that top prep schools charge.

Why are the USDA figures so low? It turns out that about half of the families in the survey report no child care or education costs at all. That reflects both the number of stay-at-home parents and working parents who rely on unpaid family or friends to provide childcare. And, of course, many kids do attend free public schools.

The last category - the catchall "miscellaneous"- includes entertainment, toys, reading materials and personal care items (non-food items like shampoo and deodorant). The study pegs that number at $1,486 - a figure that can also sound low, particularly since this category would include any sports equipment, lessons or other costs.

The study also doesn't include two other large costs of having children: paying for college and the lost wages of a parent who cuts back on or quits work to be at home with a child. "Recently I had a couple come in for counseling. What happened was the wife decided not to go back to work after the baby was born but the couple was trying to maintain the lifestyle they had before they had children," says Barbara O'Neill, a financial planner and family and consumer science educator. "You see that a lot. This couple was having to charge their groceries."

Parents who hope that a college education is in their child's future may want to stay seated for this one. The College Board reports that in the 1997-98 school year, a resident student at a four-year private college will spend about $21,424 a year; a student at a public college will pay $10,069 a year. Multiply those figures by four to get an idea of the cost of a sheepskin.

How concerned with expenses are prospective parents? Certainly few couples work up a spreadsheet before deciding to have children. "It is an emotional decision and I don't think people feel comfortable putting a price tag on that," O'Neill says.

But money often plays a big part in decisions couples make on how many children to have. Aline Alroy and her husband, Michael Yannai, thought long and hard about money when deciding to have only one child.

The couple, who live in Bergen County, N.J., a suburb of Manhattan, have a seven-year-old daughter, Laura, and like many parents, want to give their daughter the best.

So the first-grader attends a private school at a cost of $13,500 a year. "It's a lot of money but it's a wonderful school. She's already reading at a fifth-grade level," says proud mom Aline.

The family employs a babysitter to take care of Laura after school and during vacation and sick days at a cost of another $12,000 a year. The babysitter also helps out when Aline is traveling on business, which she does as the president of a manufacturing company.

Laura's after-school lessons and activities add up, too. "Piano lessons are $160 a month, karate lessons are $80 a month, and ballet is another $80 a month," Aline says. "She also takes a gymnastics class and a computer class, which are each $25 a week. Summer camp is $3,500 and if we want her to do the horseback riding at camp, that's extra." So, all told, seven-year-old Laura costs the couple more than $30,000 a year - just for school, child-care, camp and after-school activities.

Add in typical costs for transportation, food, housing, and so on, from the Department of Agriculture (which are lower than the couple's real costs) and the grand total, for one year of raising Laura comes to about $45,000. And she is 11 years away from college and cars.

Dual-income couples rapidly find that the more they make, the more they spend on child-rearing and work-related costs.

"An employed mother has different types of clothing, has higher dry cleaning bills, and may use convenience foods more," says Dottie Goss, a University of Oklahoma educator and child-cost expert.

"There are higher transportation costs, and even children who are older and not in day care tend to be in more structured activities. People talk about the tax deduction that comes with kids, but it doesn't come close to covering the cost," she says. In fact, for many dual-income couples, it can pay for the lower-earning spouse not to work at all. Much of the "extra" salary goes for taxes, child-care and work-related expenses.

Having a realistic idea of the costs involved in child-rearing can help parents to plan better. But as any parent will also tell you, it is impossible to quantify the joys and satisfactions of raising children. "I'm from a large family and I know you can do without the extras," says Mary Anne Margiotti, a New Jersey mother of four. "I think it's important to have those sibling relationships. I saw a sign in a store not long ago that sums up how I feel. It said, 'I can imagine a life without children but it wouldn't have as much laughter.' That's absolutely true".