Thanks for the comment.

I think that having kids is irrational. I also think that irrationality is very hard to explain and very hard to live without. I guess its the same way with kids.

I will quibble with you about children being only an intangible benefit. What is more tangible than a person?

I’ve only burned money in a fire once at scout camp. If certainly was an intangible joy to watch the thrifty people cringe. I haven’t made a habit of it, but it is liberating. Same goes for bras I hear.

So just what is it that makes childraising more rational than making cash bonfires?

Huh? First, I’m very skeptical of the idea that there has been any dismantling of the welfare state. But beyond that, correlations just don’t work out. Birth rates are lower in Europe than in the US, and Europe has more lavish welfare benefits. And I suspect that in the US it’s the people in the upper income brackets who are having fewer children.

1. I think there is some confusion about what economically rational means. Doesn’t it just mean that you can order your preferences and that you will try to arrange them in ways that to maximize your preferences at the least cost?

No where does that seem to rule out preferring pain over pleasure; that’s folk psychology not economics. If one person prefers children to all other choices and another person prefers not having children to all other choices, that is no statement about economic irrationality, its only a statement about the relative elasticity of the demand for children.

2. I’ve met a few people that I thought should have fewer children, but I’ve never met anyone that didn’t want to have kids, that I thought was making a poor choice. They always seem a little shorted on soul.

3. The degree to which hedonism is asscociated with rationality in most comments here is astounding – doesn’t anybody distrust their body anymore?

4. Its so quaint the social pressure some people here express about class status and job satisfaction. Keep up the hard work!

5. People who think there is no drive for children outside of sex, must explain the big bucks infertile couples shell out for fertility treatment.

6. If the preference for children remains the same among educated women, in the long run the world will be made up of women with an 8th grade education and a per capita GDP of about $5,000.00. Look at the statistics and do the math.

If that doesn’t please you blame mother nature and the math not those in other cultures that it pleases just fine.

7. The best thing about being drunk is that it reminds you that you are a thing.

And I agree that having kids adds a different aspect to one’s life. But it’s not necessarily better. I raised a child. I do wish I’d had more of her earlier years, but I’m very happy that I can focus on being an auntie. Maybe part of it is that people who know they are probably not cut out to be full-time parents for any number of reasons are now able to resist pressure from their friends and families to breed?

Sorry you felt it was a deliberate distortion, I wouldn’t have posted if that’s what I’d anticipated.

In point of fact, the more freely and informedly people (especially women) choose, the fewer kids they have.

I might mention that my target is not childraising, but economic rationality, and economic models which assume a labor supply without accounting for its “production”. Economically rational people need someone else to have the kids, and economically irrational parents make great sacrifices do unrewarded work for the sake of people (their own children, but also their children’s future employers) who pay them nothing.

(1) The childfree are behaving irrationally when they don’t have kids, as they don’t have the opportunity to experience the wonders of love for your children (they’re acting on insufficient information when they make their decision).

(2) Parents are behaving irrationally as the “intangible benefits” of children can’t be worth that much, and are just invented out of thin air to try and make the decision appear sane in retrospect (they’re irrational, but being irrational, just don’t realise it).

Nothing good is going to come of this.

And some may be interested to learn that at least a few researchers believe that the decline in fertility was caused, at least in part, by social security.

And those who think that drunkeness leads to child bearing may want to contemplate the high birth rates in many Muslim countries where, at least formally, alcohol is forbidden.

are you taking what I say a little too seriously? What I’m saying is that I’m not a gossip, and not interested in gossip. Or not much. I may even be exaggerating.

ingrid; the point about the way risk aversion feeds into this is very helpful. I sort-of-agree with the point about close contact not helping very muhc, but it helps a bit, especially if you see a lot of different kinds of people parenting different kinds fo kid (of course, even if you get to know yourself well you don’t know what kind of kid you’ll end up with). Also, the fewer kids there are around the harder it is to raise them (and the harder it looks from the outside) as Laura suggests in her original post.