By Marriya Schwarz | Editor-in-Chief
Twentieth Century Fox is lying to you.
The opening voiceover by Kate Baker (Bonnie Hunt) of the 2003 film, Cheaper by the Dozen, is as follows: “Twelve is our number. It’s the number of games my husband, Tom, coaches at Lincoln College every season. It’s the number of times we zero out our bank account each year to make ends meet. And it’s the number of kids we try to keep track of.” The fact that the Baker family needs to zero out their bank account twelve times per year begs the question: is it really cheaper by the dozen?
Our story starts out with Tom Baker (Steve Martin) on a random jog throughout town before he returns home to his wife, Kate. Tom is a father of 12, and he works as a football coach at Lincoln University, which I looked up and that makes around $47,500 per year. Kate Baker was an aspiring sports journalist who somehow got an entry-level job at the Chicago Tribune fresh out of college, but she gave this up to stay at home to look after the family in her early 20s. They live in the country in Midland, Illinois, where houses go for around $91,000 - $271,000. Now, the idea that Tom’s salary is enough to afford this, allowances for the kids, Sarah’s (Alison Stoner) lacrosse practices, Henry’s (Kevin G. Schmidt) clarinet lessons, and so much more is highly unlikely. Towards the beginning of the film, Lorraine (Hillary Duff) announces that it is one of her goals “to indicate to the local community that the Baker family actually owns a bar of soap.” Honey, I don’t think your family can afford that. I mean, their food expenses must be through the roof that Mike (Blake Woodruff) likes to hang off of with a harness.
To investigate this, I did a little extra research that involves a lot of speculation based on the background details we get in the film. Of course, this information is a little more current than the film, since this pertains to the 2019 economy, rather than financial standards from 2003 or the situation in the original 1948 book that is nothing like the movie (Ashton Kutcher is in both).
Throughout Cheaper by the Dozen, we get specific details on what the family does for each meal. Breakfast is known as the most important meal of the day, and this is especially true for the Baker family. A big conflict in the film is that Kate finally has her chance to be a big writer, and she leaves Tom alone with the kids to go to New York to promote her book. Tom has to try to balance his new football coaching job at Illinois Polytechnic University and raising 12 kids. He is told by the president of the university that Tom has to make a choice: is he going to put his career over his wife’s? It is put in these terms: “You have to decide who’s making the bacon and who’s cooking it?” But looking at the Baker financial situation, a more important question is: who is affording it?
For one breakfast, they consume orange juice (Tropicana), eggs, toast, bacon, Marshmallow Alpha Bits, and waffles. Adding that up and presuming that this is their fairly daily spread, this adds up to 319 bottles of orange juice, 426 cartons of eggs, 256 loaves of bread, 341 packages of bacon, 567 boxes of Marshmallow Alpha Bits, and 511 packages of waffles over the course of a year. Now, of course, it’s possible that not everyone in the Baker family is having a full serving of everything each day so these numbers are approximate. However, just the Baker family’s yearly breakfast is around $7,922. This isn’t even counting the Skippy peanut butter, SUPER SAVINGS strawberry preserves, Capris Sun SPORT: Thunder Punch packets, and their Glad cling wrap they use for lunch. Yeah. Pay attention. According to CNBC, the estimated food costs of a family of four in Illinois is $9,012. The Baker family practically blows all of that just on breakfast. The only appeal to having more people would be you could buy a lot of things in bulk on a discount, but the Baker family doesn’t have a lot of non-perishable items involved in their breakfast routine.
And this is not counting other expenditures, like gas money, laundry detergent, toys (we see things like a castle, swings, a kiddie pool, and for some reason, an axe), school supplies, and clothes. The movie talks over and over again about the kids having to wear hand-me-downs, but when you have kids born in consecutive years and twins, it doesn’t feel like you would necessarily have enough clothes to go around.
When Tom gets his new job coaching the Stallions, he gets a major pay raise, which would be around $5 million per year, which definitely helps. But still, it’s a lot of fucking kids. They move to a big new house with a bunch of rich white kids, who try to be hip by wearing their baseball caps literally upside down but then walk around with lattes. But at least at their new house, they’re a little more self-sustainable because we get to see that they have an apple tree in the front lawn – which they don’t eat but use in a baseball-like game, called Appleschmear. Seems like a waste for a family of 12. They aren’t really financially-savvy at all. Another area of conflict is that Charlie (Tom Welling) is constantly being bullied by another student, who is played by Jared Padalecki from Supernatural (uncredited), for being from rural Illinois. At one point, a big prank that this student pulls on Charlie is putting a bunch of corn in his football locker; Charlie is upset by this, but like dude, he just bought dinner for your whole family.
For some reason, everyone thinks that the Baker family is rich when their finances just aren’t adding up. Sure, Tom is making more money now at his new job but he’s also buying more clothes, a new car, and new skates. His new life has led to increased expenditures that will add up. At one point, a prank by the kids leads to dogs scratching up the eldest daughter’s boyfriend’s (Ashton Kutcher) car, messing up the paint job. Nora (Piper Perabo) tells him not to worry because she’s “sure [her] family will pay to repaint it.” Nora, sweetie, your parents are broke. I’m honestly unclear how you’re still alive.
There’s even a point where Tom humorously thinks he can afford a babysitter. However, everyone says no to babysitting 12 kids. WHY WOULD HE SAY HE HAS 12 KIDS? HIS ELDEST DAUGHTER DOESN’T EVEN LIVE WITH HIM. Charlie is constantly driving back to Midland because he’s angry, and Lorraine seems pretty self-sufficient. Why would he say he has 12 kids for someone to look after? Too many footballs to the head, maybe?
In conclusion, Cheaper by the Dozen is a fun film that is made up of basically every child actor the studio could find. I don’t think it necessarily deserves its 24% rating on Rotten Tomatoes; perhaps reviewers were confused because the last name of the family is Baker, and a Baker’s dozen is actually 13 – perhaps we’re counting the dog in this? But mostly, Cheaper by the Dozen is a lie. It is not cheaper by the dozen; I would even argue it’s more expensive by the dozen. In fact, the beginning of the film starts out with Sarah complaining that they have to pose for their Christmas card in May. Tom explains that “the earlier [they] get it done, the bigger discount [they] get at the printer.” It’s cheaper to do things earlier; the amount of people is irrelevant. But that doesn’t make a great title.
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