Business of Life

Is Having Children Worth It?

Glenn Reynolds says the fun has gone out of parenting even as the costs of raising a middle class child till age 18 is now $200,000 and that doesn't include the costs of college!

The Parent Trap

Parenting was always hard work, of course. But aside from the economic payoffs, parents used to get a lot of social benefits, too. But in recent decades, a collection of parenting "experts" and safety-fascist types have extinguished some of the benefits while raising the costs, to the point where what's amazing isn't that people are having fewer kids, but that people are having kids at all.