Are Kids a bad business?
Children aren’t worth very much—that’s why we no longer make many
The economic value of children has decreased, but this is not the most important cause of the fertility decline. The transformation of countries from predominantly agricultural to predominantly urban reduced the value of children, especially where the industrial employment of children was restricted. Each child’s labor contributed positive value to a family farm or cottage industry, but in an urban setting, children began to have negative economic value. Indeed, the fertility decline correlates somewhat—though not perfectly—with the transformation from agrarian to city life.
In the paper Mass education as a determinant of the timing of the fertility decline, John Caldwell argues that the vector of this cultural transformation has been mass education.
Before Mass Education children where an asset. They helped at home, they worked hard, demand little, and respect the authority of the old. When kids start their working life they helped their parents and even their grand parents. They start contributing from the age of 10. Families had lot's of kids.
Under this system, the patriarch, as head of the family, exercises authority. Children are employed from an early age and are valued as an addition to the work force. The flow of wealth is upward from children to parents and even grandparents, and high fertility is profitable, at least in the long run, to the parents
Now with mass education, children are dependent on their parents sometimes until they are into their 30's without helping at home since their " job " is to study.
When they start to work they pay taxes to the state and not to their parents. There is no way parents recover their big investment in their children. And children are more and more demanding these days. They came from school and they want what the other kids have, it's a competition. Parents this days are a bit slaves of the kids and not the other way around.
The greatest impact of education is not direct but through the restructuring of family relationships and, hence, family economies and the direction of the net wealth flow. It is postulated here that education has its impact on fertility through at least five mechanisms: First, it reduces the child's potential for work inside and outside the home. This occurs not merely because certain hours are subtracted from the day by school attendance and homework, but, perhaps more importantly, for two other reasons. The child is frequently alienated from those traditional chores that he feels to be at odds with his new learning and status. .....................Second, education increases the cost of children far beyond the fees, uniforms, and stationery demanded by the school. Schools place indirect demands on families to provide children with better clothing, better appearance (even extending to feeding), and extras that will enable the child to participate equally with other school children. But costs go beyond this. School children demand more of their parents than do their illiterate siblings fully enmeshed in the traditional family system and morality. They ask for food and other things in the house in a way that is unprecedented, and they ask for expenditures outside.
Hell what to do? I try not to be the best dad in the world. I don't spend weekends driving my kids from event to event and from party to party. They don't have everything they want (Although they have a lot). I don't give them money, sometimes they don't have any. However i feel all that this paper highlights, they are a big burden and sometimes they are demanding, asking all my friends have this and that and I don't have.
The way to educate and to keep the things in perspective is to balance a bit the burden, give them love and money but expect a bit back. And always don't compete with the other parents. It's a lost war. Keep things as natural as in the old times. Try to offer them the basic but everything else they have to get from themselves.
Above all it's important that they don't have everything they want. They have to get no's. this is very important in my view.
And never ever think that you are not giving enough. It's always enough as long as there is love and care.
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