What Is the Price of Parenting?

Understanding the true price of parenting is impossible without considering its short- and long-term payoffs. Indeed, it’s hard to evaluate whether the cost of any given good is “high” or “low” without considering the full context of what the money is paying for. An example: when my husband and I were searching for our first house, our real estate agent urged us to think about whether we could see ourselves eating Thanksgiving dinner there. We didn’t decide solely based on cost; after all, a house is also a home.