A house in a place where your kids will grow up with -- and, in particular, go to school with -- kids from respectable middle-class families is very expensive.

This may be true in suburbs, but not everywhere. My mother grew up in a small college town in Kentucky. Her parents, and the parents of her friends, were mostly college educated but below national median income. They lived in small, inexpensive houses. Local kids had access neither to ballet and karate lessons nor drugs and gangs. Her social life focused around church and folk dancing. From what I understand, it was a high-quality, low-cost childhood.