Overinvested

What happens when children become human capital and childrearing becomes exhausting labor 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 pointhow we turned children into financial and emotional investments and childrearing 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 economy of parenting. Analyzing in-depth interviews with parents, national financial datasets, and decades of childrearing 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 parenting work together to drive parental overinvestment: a dizzying array of products and platforms to turn children into human capitalfrom financial instruments to extracurricular programs to therapeutic parenting advice. And yet, Bandelj warns, the privatization of childrearing 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.