Parents are exhausted. When did raising children become such all-consuming, never-ending, incredibly expensive, and emotionally absorbing effort? In this eye-opening book, Nina Bandelj explains how we got to this point—how we turned children into financial and emotional investments and child-rearing into laborious work. At the turn of the twentieth century, children went from being economically useful, often working to support families, to being seen by their parents as vulnerable and emotionally priceless. In the new millennium, however, parents have become overinvested in the emotional economy of parenting.
Analyzing in-depth interviews with parents, national financial datasets, and decades of child-rearing books, Bandelj reveals how parents today spend, save, and even go into debt for the sake of children. They take on parenting as the hardest but most important job, and commit their entire selves to being a good parent.
The economization and emotionalization of society work together to drive parental overinvestment, offering a dizzying array of products and platforms to turn children into human capital—from financial instruments to extracurricular programs to therapeutic parenting advice. And yet, Bandelj warns, the privatization of child-rearing and devotion of parents’ monies, emotions, and souls ultimately hurt the well-being of children, parents, and society. Overinvested offers a compelling argument that we should reimagine children and what it means to raise them.
Nina Bandelj is Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and past president of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. Her most recent book is Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works (91ÌÒÉ«).
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“This work is monumental! Bandelj forcefully shows that the way we value children has changed over time, and that American society implicitly and explicitly sees children as little investments in ‘human capital.’”—Daniel Fridman, author of Freedom from Work: Embracing Financial Self-Help in the United States and Argentina
“Overinvested is a brilliant analysis of twenty-first-century parenting. Blending deep insight with captivating evidence, Bandelj explains how our unremitting emotional involvement has turned kids into time-consuming financial investments. This vividly written, pathbreaking book will shape future research but also engage policymakers and a wide audience eager to understand the challenges faced by families today.”—Viviana A. Zelizer, author of Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children
“Why does contemporary American childrearing seem to require such total sacrifice from parents? Bandelj explores how the experience of parenting today calls on both emotional and economic ingredients, in a potent brew of must-dos and shoulds that contemporary parents feel they cannot ignore. Bringing together multiple sources of evidence, she explains why parents feel they owe their kids everything—all their money, time, attention, and love—until they are exhausted, depleted and yet still troubled by self-doubt. Overinvested is a persuasive cautionary tale for parents and nonparents alike.”—Allison Pugh, author of The Last Human Job: Seeing Each Other in an Age of Automation
“Why has parenting, and especially mothering, become so fraught? To answer this question, Bandelj uncovers an unexpected marriage between conservative economic ideas and a turn to emotions that has trapped parents in an ever-tightening vise. Drawing on an impressive array of research, from financial data to in-depth interviews, this rigorously argued and accessibly written contribution is likely to become the definitive account of contemporary parenting. A must-read, not just for social scientists and policymakers, but parents themselves.”—Juliet Schor, author of Four Days a Week: The Life-Changing Solution for Reducing Employee Stress, Improving Well-Being, and Working Smarter
