PEDIATRICS Vol. 61 No. 6 June 1978, pp. 927
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COST-BENEFIT RATIO OF RAISING CHILDREN

Martin Harris

"...the motivation to restrict fertility is essentially a question of the balance between the benefits and costs of parenthood. With industrialization, the cost of rearing children increases—especially after the introduction of child labor laws and compulsory education statutes—because the skills which a child must acquire in order to earn a living and be of benefit to its parents take longer to learn. At the same time, the whole context and manner in which people earn their livings becomes transformed. The family ceases to be the locus of any significant form of production activity (other than that of cooking meals and begetting children). Work is no longer something done by family members in or near the family or business. Rather, it is something done at an office, store, or factory in the company of other people's family members. Hence the return flow of benefits from rearing children hinges more and more on their economic success as wage earners and their willingness to help out in the medical and financial crises that parents can expect in their waning years.

The availability of painless contraception and the altered structure of economic tasks—the contraception revolution and the job revolution—provide the key to many puzzling aspects of contemporary social life. Longer life spans and spiraling medical costs make it increasingly unrealistic to expect children to give comfort and security to their aging parents. Thus we are in the process of substituting old-age and medical insurance programs for the preindustrial system in which children took care of their aged parents.