If there's one person who has made the child/commerce connection, it's Pamela Paul. She's the author of Parenting, Inc. and Babble contributor with a dispatch this week that, and perhaps I'm speaking only for myself here, reassured those of us parents who never managed to follow through on the baby sign language classes, thereby condemning our children to low IQs and drool.
Well, she's digging in deeper to the idea of kids and cost in a recent Washington Post essay, where she's talking about the status of the third child, particularly for those raising their families in expensive cities. Apparently, Baby No. 3 is something of a luxury good. Or, as some would believe, a completely insane, misguided, poorly thought out idea that she and her husband -- New York City dwellers and parents of two -- will nonetheless be adding to their lives.
Kids these days are expensive (private schools! nannies! 70 new toys a year!) and they take up precious real-estate. So no wonder, she argues, there's the perception that a third (or fourth or sixth) child is an achievement bestowed only on the fabulously wealthy. It's also something people of means are largely doing, rather than the recession-sensitive middle-class. The showoffs!
From washingtonpost.com
It's true that, following in the designer maternity clothes of such fecund celebrities as Posh Spice (three kids) and Angelina Jolie (speculatively six), most of the people going for a third baby are well-heeled moms and their high-salaried husbands. A February analysis of Current Population Survey data by the Council on Contemporary Families found that in the past 10 years, the top-earning 1.3 percent of the population has seen an uptick in families with three or more children. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 12 percent of upper-income women had three children or more in 2002, compared with only 3 percent in 1995.
She also cites that breathtaking stat that each child costs on average $204,060 to house, clothe, educate and entertain until the age of 18. (Jeez, my kids are the ones holding THAT number down ...)
So what do you think? Did you trade in financial security and your Birken bag for a third child? Are large families just for crazy ladies like Angelina and that Mormon mom in the RV?
Image: Celebrityhack.com
