{"id":2228781,"date":"2024-04-24T03:11:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T07:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-cost-benefit-analysis-of-having-a-baby\/"},"modified":"2024-04-24T03:19:14","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T07:19:14","slug":"the-cost-benefit-analysis-of-having-a-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-cost-benefit-analysis-of-having-a-baby\/","title":{"rendered":"Analyzing the Pros and Cons of Parenthood"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-cost-benefit-analysis-of-having-a-baby%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2228781&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article delves into the dilemma faced by many in their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bbc-apologizes-to-royal-family-for-explosive-princess-diana-interview\/\" title=\"BBC Apologizes To Royal Family For Explosive Princess Diana Interview\">mid-30s<\/a> regarding the decision to\u2063 have \u2064children,\u200b portraying the contrasting \u200dexperiences of those with and without kids. It highlights the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/breaking-biden-admins-decision-to-pause-jj-vaccine-causes-confidence-in-vaccine-to-plummet\/\" title=\"BREAKING: Biden Admin\u2019s Decision To Pause J&#038;J Vaccine Causes Confidence In Vaccine To Plummet\">cost-benefit analysis<\/a> behind\u200c the choice,\u200d showcasing a study where women\u2064 with larger families share\u200c their \u2062motivations, challenging stereotypes\u2062 and offering a unique perspective \u2064on parenthood.\u200b The piece explores the\u2063 dilemma of individuals in their mid-30s contemplating parenthood. It contrasts the experiences of\u2063 those with and without children, emphasizing the cost-benefit analysis involved. The study\u200c features\u2064 women\u2064 with large families discussing their reasons, challenging stereotypes, and presenting \u2062a fresh outlook \u2064on the journey of motherhood and fatherhood.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>\u201cShould I have a baby?\u201d reads the subject line of a recent newsletter email from Emily Oster, the economist-turned-parent advice expert who rose to fame by telling anxious moms-to-be they can stop freaking out about ingesting sushi or wine while pregnant. I clicked open her email last week to find this disheartening reader question of the week:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>I\u2019m 35 and so is my husband. We love our life, and our dog, and we do not have kids. We have many friends without kids who seem relatively happy, all things considered. We have some friends who have kids, and most seem more depressed than they were before they had kids. It is really, really,\u00a0really\u00a0hard for us to decide if we want to have a baby. It seems like having kids is outwardly presented as the meaning of life but privately experienced as a massive toll on life. No one can really tell you if they regret having kids, either. So I\u2019m unclear on what the experience is really like for my friends who seem so isolated and blah. I\u2019m worried about missing this shrinking window in which we could have a baby. I\u2019m worried about having a baby and being unhappy. How do people who haven\u2019t just always wanted to be parents make this decision.  <\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014Mid-30s with a Dog<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>While there is much to unpack here, from \u201ca massive toll on life\u201d to her \u201cshrinking window,\u201d it sounds like what \u201cMid-30s with a Dog\u201d is really looking for is a proper cost-benefit analysis. And if our nation\u2019s plummeting birthrate is any indication, she\u2019s not alone. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1184945572\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-55e085ee5cda2d394655fe03a52cd16c fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-55e085ee5cda2d394655fe03a52cd16c\"><\/div>\n<p>It\u2019s against this all too prevalent mindset that Harvard Ph.D.\u2013holding economist Catherine Pakaluk set out write <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Hannahs-Children-Quietly-Defying-Dearth\/dp\/1684514576\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=XPSMCYZBJQ99&#038;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.QiEzGZcpRNTBebUi0IPrlQ.xcn-ZwDGRnRfOBrHqy39Uic3Q55nO0ef2ueO1bY0JWU&#038;dib_tag=se&#038;keywords=hannah%27s+children+the+women+quietly+defying+the+birth+dearth&#038;qid=1713889958&#038;sprefix=Hannah%27s+%2Caps%2C124&#038;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hannah\u2019s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Derth<\/a><\/em>. Although much has been said about our country\u2019s declining fertility and what we should do about it, Pakaluk took a different approach to unpacking the baby bust crisis. <\/p>\n<p>Instead of studying the type of women who write to Emily Oster about babies impeding their happiness, Pakaluk traveled across the country to interview their exact opposite: college-educated women with five or more children. Many women she interviewed were also pregnant (with their sixth, seventh, or eighth baby) or were weighing the decision of adding babies to their brood \u2014 and not at the expense of their happiness but for the chance to expand it.<\/p>\n<p>As both a social scientist with an economics degree and the mother of eight children herself, Pakaluk is uniquely positioned to study this question of why in a two-child world, trending to a one-child world, these women would choose to have such ridiculously large families. Pakaluk and her team interviewed women about not just their choices or circumstances but their motives, and the stories she shares in <em>Hannah\u2019s Children<\/em> have a lot more to offer \u201cMid-30s with a Dog\u201d than the aforementioned friends with children \u201cwho seem so isolated and blah.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u2018You Believe It\u2019s Good\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>Pakaluk is quick to debunk the two most prevalent assumptions about women who have higher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/demographers-warn-of-epochal-fall-in-fertility-across-the-globe\/\" title=\"Demographers Warn Of \u2018Epochal Fall In Fertility\u2019 Across The Globe\">fertility rates<\/a> \u2014 they are either \u201cuneducated\u201d or \u201creligious.\u201d Both assumptions are not just dependent on a false confusion between correlation and causation, but imply the chauvinist view that these women either can\u2019t make up their own minds or are \u201cvictims of patriarchal religious beliefs.\u201d Yes, women with big families are usually religious, but not all religious women have lots of kids. In fact, most don\u2019t. Yet all of Pakaluk\u2019s subjects except for one did indeed attach a religious significance to their childbearing, but none said they made the choice because a religious leader instructed them to or because they were against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/anne-rice-novelist-who-breathed-new-life-into-vampires-dies-at-80\/\" title=\"Anne Rice, Novelist Who Breathed New Life into Vampires, Dies at 80\">artificial birth control<\/a>. In fact, many of the women interviewed do use contraceptives such as the pill and IUDs.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-0776af2a437b0adacd72e5900f7d9c72 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-0776af2a437b0adacd72e5900f7d9c72\"><\/div>\n<p>As one of Pakaluk\u2019s interviewees said, there\u2019s a distinction between \u201csaying you [have kids] because you\u2019re Catholic, which implies \u2026 blind adherence,\u201d and having children because you have \u201cactually considered something \u2026 because you believe it\u2019s good.\u201d So, yes,<em> Hannah\u2019s Children<\/em> is full of biblical exegesis, but it doesn\u2019t provide the answer to the questions she set out to ask. As an economist, she\u2019s more focused on using economic theories of choice to understand what kind of calculus these women use in planning their large families. She ditches the lazy answer of, \u201cOh they\u2019re Catholic,\u201d or \u201cThey\u2019re Morman,\u201d and instead considers gains, losses, and the value of adding (or not adding) a child.<\/p>\n<p>Whether she is religious or not, this is where \u201cMid-30s with a Dog\u201d might protest that she\u2019s not debating having her fifth or sixth kid, but just the idea of having even a single kid. And I would suggest that if you are the type of woman surrounded by the all-too-prevalent (and too online) archetype of the stretched-too-thin and anxious working mom that seems to dominate Instagram Reels and New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/02\/04\/parenting\/working-moms-mental-health-coronavirus.html\">headlines<\/a>, then taking a charitable dive into the stories of women with seemingly supernatural strength who take child rearing to the extreme and <em>still<\/em> remain irrationally happy is only fair. And no, none of the women featured is of the influencer trad-wife variety. As far as I can tell, they keep having babies because they legitimately love babies, not because they\u2019re looking to attract followers or a brand sponsorship.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Different Kind of  Valuation   <\/h2>\n<p>Women make choices about having children based on \u201ccost and benefits,\u201d although not in the financial sense we usually associate with that term. \u201cWomen compare the subjective personal value of having another child with the subjective personal value of what they will miss out on if they have one,\u201d she writes, while also acknowledging that these values won\u2019t usually be quantifiable or even comparable across all women.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, you don\u2019t need to be an economist to make that observation. Any mother, of any number of children, has a crystal clear understanding of these economic theories, namely opportunity cost. As Danielle, one of the book\u2019s interviewees and a former doctor-turned-full-time mother of six, pregnant with her seventh, succinctly put it, \u201cOther things die.\u201d Not only did her career die when she chose mothering full-time, but so did other things like eating at restaurants and going to museums alone on the weekend. Even the most basic goods such as sleep, comfort, and income are sacrificed. Those are all goods she valued but not \u201cthe goods that had the highest value for her and her family.\u201d  <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-c9c7b72d51d6eb3500acbfecb041a200 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-c9c7b72d51d6eb3500acbfecb041a200\"><\/div>\n<p>This is the crux of Mid-30s with a Dog\u2019s struggle, but if the women in <em>Hannah\u2019s Children<\/em> could speak to the root of her problem, they would not likely say it\u2019s her selfish desires that are fully to blame here. Plenty of these women testified to their own selfish nature impeding at some point in their decisions. Instead, Pakaluk found that these testimonies pointed to a larger societal shift in family-planning incentives, and she spills much ink arguing why the government\u2019s cash incentives are unlikely to make a dent in fertility rates. <\/p>\n<p>Sure, there was the initial shift in value that children once held for families, from a time when you needed to maximize the number of children to help on the farm or run the family business. But now with a decreased economic value of children, there are sinister shifts at play. Such as decreased religious formation and an increase in careers diminishing time at home with young children and the emotional rewards that come with that. <\/p>\n<p>As Kyra, a mother of five, pointed out, \u201cIt\u2019s hard to say what\u2019s destroying families. But it\u2019s not women doing more. It\u2019s not women working. It\u2019s not women being empowered. It\u2019s taking all that and just putting so much on a woman and pulling away from the important things she was doing, acting like she wasn\u2019t doing anything before.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>There is a common thread among Pakaluk\u2019s subjects of entrusting their family size to God and his providence, but more than that was a different scale of values. Not just determining if they valued a career or their \u201cidentity\u201d more, as the popular narrative goes, but attaching a different type of worth to a child \u2014 \u201cthat something was the kind of thing typically worth dying for: love for a beloved, love of God, love of eternal life, and the pursuit of happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Until women understand that kind of value a child holds for themselves and our nation at large, of course they will only consider a child\u2019s value \u201ca massive toll on life.\u201d <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-8a1965e7c7ea64c1fcf442b16fa4aee2 fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-8a1965e7c7ea64c1fcf442b16fa4aee2\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent newsletter, Emily Oster, the economist and parenting guru, posed the question &#8220;Should I have a baby?&#8221; &#8211; a topic she&#8217;s renowned for addressing. Her insightful email tackles the concerns of anxious moms-to-be, providing reassurance on pregnancy do&#8217;s and don&#8217;ts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":590,"featured_media":2228782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/hollie-santos-aUtvHsu8Uzk-unsplash.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2228781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/hollie-santos-aUtvHsu8Uzk-unsplash.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/590"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2228781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2228782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2228781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2228781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2228781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}