The Benefit, in Dollars, of Raising a Child Over on the Bucks blog, Nadia Taha has started a fantastic conversational furor with her post "The Cost, in Dollars, of Raising a Child." I love these conversations, and the inevitable responses they provoke: people who have chosen not to have children cheerfully agreeing that they've got lots more disposable income; people who haven't reproduced (and might, or might not, be worrying about it); people talking about how their own parents did or didn't raise a happy family on a shoestring budget; and, of course, lots and lots of people saying that the pleasures of raising children are priceless, like this commenter mother of 3: The kiss good-bye from my sweet 7-year-old, the loving hand of my 2-year-old as we walked down the steps, the secret confession of a crush by my 11-year-old and the extra snuggle from my 9-year-old all happened this morning. I wouldn't trade a single dollar earned, a single vacation, an extra pair of shoes purchased, a nicer house, someone else to do my laundry or a night out to the most gourmet meal in the world for those things; and that was just this morning. As Nadia Taha tallied the costs she expected she and her partner would incur over the lifetime of a child, she also asked whether people really did this kind of calculation before becoming parents, or whether they thought it was "odd" to factor it all. I'd guess that the people who calculate it closely are the people who like running the numbers; the people who give it a more general consideration (waiting to have children until in an established career, for example, but without actually creating a budget) are more common; and people who never think about it at all aren't going to think about it, no matter how many times they discuss it on Marketplace. I fall into that middle group. But as I read Ms. Taha's piece, I found myself looking at it another way. Having children has costs, certainly. Food. Clothing. Maintenance and general care. Even without activities and options, children aren't a cheap hobby. But while most parents point to the non-monetary benefits, like those mother of 3 describes, are there any others? Is there any way at all to offset Ms. Taha's $1.8 million estimated child-rearing cost? Ms. Taha accounts for both the "maternity penalty" (mothers earn less over a lifetime than either men overall or women without children), and the "fatherhood premium" (fathers earn 4 percent more over a lifetime than non-fathers). To those obvious considerations we can add that parents catch cold less often, which must offer a small earnings boost. I'm thinking more about the trade-offs. For example, the several hours my husband and I spent in the emergency room with our son this past Sunday night will surely cost us in medical bills, although fortunately not lost wages. But what else would we have been doing with our night? Dinner and a movie, perhaps, at a minimum of $40? The tasting menu at Per Se at $295 each, to which we would surely need to add wine? Or perhaps enjoying a downloaded "Breaking Bad" marathon ($21.99 for Season 5)? With kids, we need a larger house. Economic studies of the cost of raising children take that into account - and subtract the cost of the housing an adult would need in any case. But how do they account for the different choices? Without children, we might choose to find two-person housing in pricey Manhattan or Paris, or we might spend the year hiking the Appalachian trail and carrying our tents on our backs. I should perhaps say this last is extremely unlikely. How about the different ways we'd spend our time? Without children, I'd have a whole lot more time to think about myself. I might need a career coach to ensure that I'm reaching my full potential, and I'd need a gym membership, and although need isn't the right verb, I imagine I'd have a more extensive wardrobe and better-maintained hair. Those aren't just economic trade-offs, they're things I don't think about nearly as much as I once did, or place the same value on. Having children alters more than just your economic situation. Before I had a family, I was, frankly, a more selfish, less patient, and more difficult person. I'm not saying that's true of everyone, but it's true of me. I'm not sure what services or therapies or experiences I might personally have needed to become the relatively responsible, contributing adult member of society I am today, but surely they would have cost something that should be added to the total. Finally, the time I currently spend watching hockey games or loading the dishwasher an extra four times a week is time I'd spend doing something else - maybe something very expensive. I understand Nascar driving and heli-skiing are both lots of fun. And I understand, too, that those who calculate the costs of raising children try to consider these things. But no matter how many variables they account for, they're necessarily comparing apples and oranges. A life raising children is different from a life in which one doesn't. We like to put a price tag on these things because we are a nation that likes price tags. But consider that the economist John Maynard Keynes once thought that instead of seeking constantly increasing national economic growth, people would naturally reach a point of having "enough" and seek, instead, more agreeable ways to spend our leisure time. Maybe there's an argument to be made that some sort of similar shift occurs in people who choose to have children. Economically, they have a sense of "enough" with regard to material needs. The decision to have children is a decision to look for a different kind of value, which people without children might seek somewhere else. But if we are going to insist on placing an economic cost on this aspect of life, then "the cost of raising children" is short sighted. As a child, that prospective progeny is a financial liability. As an adult, it becomes, presumably, an engine of contribution to the overall economy. It earns money - according to the Census Bureau, an average ranging from $4.4 million over the course of a work-life for the holder of a professional degree, or about $1 million for the non-high-school graduate. Even if those adult gains aren't returned to the original investors (the parents), shouldn't they, too, offset the cost of getting the child to the point of independence, contribution and eventual child-rearing itself? What's odd isn't really our fascination with the annual expense of child-rearing. It's our unwillingness to recognize that as a society, we need children - and what's more, we need educated, healthy children. That's an argument that is obvious, but rarely spoken: every one of us, parent or not, will at some point depend on today's children to provide our medical care, to pick up our trash, or to grow our food. An economic exchange of money, goods and services isn't possible unless there is someone willing to make that exchange and capable of providing the service or goods you seek. "Capitalism," that masterful force, can't function without fresh people on which to exert its incentives. Added together, the cost of raising every child born within the time it took to read this will be enormous, and the economic benefit, in dollars to parents, minimal. Yet the overall economic gain is incalculable, which may be one reason that our brains don't push us harder to do the math. How do you quantify the future? Most of us don't. We just raise the children we've got, writing one check at a time.