00:00As we take a moment today to reflect on the moms in our lives, we're also aware of the emotional,
00:05but also the financial investment that parents are putting into their children.
00:09It is a topic of the Bloomberg Weekend Essay, as well as the book, Overinvested, The Emotional Economy of Modern
00:16Parenting.
00:17Joining us now is Nina Bundell. She is professor of sociology at UC Irvine. She is the author and joins
00:23me now.
00:24Nina, thank you and pleasure speaking with you today.
00:27This article itself, let's start there first. It's about how parenting is changing in the 21st century.
00:33There's a lot of things that parents are going through, right? The money, the time, the investment into our children.
00:39The big question is always on our minds, are we doing enough?
00:43My question to you is, is enough exactly? Like, what is that enough? What are we looking for? What is
00:51enough exactly?
00:54Well, thank you so much, Lisa, for asking this question, because lots of parents are so concerned and so exhausted
01:03these days, because we invest emotionally and financially, and we want to do the best for our children.
01:10And I think partly, continuously asking this question is very burdensome.
01:17It creates this low-grade dread in our gut that we think we need to listen to all the time,
01:24and it's hard to quiet it.
01:25So I would say it's important to know that social forces influence how we behave as parents, how we even
01:34feel as parents.
01:35And these days, this exhaustion, listening to all of the advice, is making us really tired and drained.
01:42I feel you. I have to admit, personally, I've invested a lot. Both of my kids are athletes, and so
01:48the private lessons, the hotel stays, the car rentals, the best top equipment, I mean, you name it, we've invested
01:56in it.
01:56But I want to bring you something that you say. You say kids are viewed through the lens of human
02:01capital. So what exactly do you mean by that?
02:05So this investment that you just pointed to, Lisa, in extracurricular activities, in sports, in skills that kids can develop
02:14in addition to going to school, those are the capabilities and skills overall that we call human capital.
02:23And economists have proposed that if we invest in human capital of children, then children could reap returns on this
02:34investment in their adulthood.
02:36So not only do we do this when kids get to school or even higher education to get their occupations,
02:44but parents should be concerned about this earlier and earlier, potentially even in the womb, right?
02:51Make the womb the first classroom by worrying a lot about what we do when we're even pregnant as moms.
02:57Well, let's talk about this parental shift in reasoning and thought. There's a quote you have in the article. I
03:03want to get to it. It says,
03:04A century ago, children labored for families. Today, parents labor for their children, not just financially. We toil at parenting.
03:12So what's driving this shift?
03:17That's an excellent question. A million-dollar question, if I may. And it took me 10 years to write this
03:24book and research this phenomenon over the course of decades.
03:28But to be very brief, we, you know, at the turn of the 20th century saw transformation when children were
03:34useful in the home, they were working, contributing to the family economically, and even in the factories, on the farm,
03:44of course, chores in the home.
03:48And then they became emotionally priceless, mostly seen as vulnerable, and we would start investing into their education.
03:57And this new period is when we as parents think of children as investment projects. We, in a way, bring
04:05the logic from the workplace into the home.
04:08We think about all of the things that we need to do, toil at parenting, as I say in the
04:14book, over-invested, and try to think about what is needed from us so that children could be set up
04:23as well as possible for success.
04:26And it seems like moms are taking a lot of the brunt of this, too. What are the consequences to
04:31what you call actually child-rearing on steroids?
04:35Right. Trying to be a little bit provocative here to note that this is not just run-of-the-mill
04:41child-rearing. This is not natural. This does not have to be the case.
04:47We've seen differences across time and in different countries. And so because it's exhausting us so much, it's time to
04:56ask the question, what do we really owe our children?
05:00Is it this exhausting, draining financially and emotionally parenting? Or is it time to think about how much this impacts
05:09us as parents to the point of parental burnout that U.S. Surgeon General noted in an advisory in 2024,
05:16calling it a public health crisis?
05:19But also the consequences for our children. Are they doing all right with all that over-involved parenting?
05:26Well, Nina, you're a mother yourself. How do you find that right balance? What's the answer?
05:35Very, very hard. I will be the first one to admit that it's so hard to change. It feels impossible
05:41to do differently.
05:42And I live in the same reality as everyone else. But it is social pressures and social norms and the
05:50structures that we have in our society that are not very supportive of families, that influence how we are in
06:00this modern parenting reality, very troubled parenting reality.
06:04So I say to myself from time to time, Nina, your child is not an investment project.
06:13Parenting is not supposed to be grueling labor. It's not supposed to be so stressful.
06:20What can we do differently today? How can I seek other moms to think about this together?
06:26Because only as a society, we can make true change.
06:31Oh, Nina, you make it sound so easy. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the time.
06:36The name of the book, again, is Overinvested, the Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting.
06:42Thank you so much.
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