Priceless, maybe. But not without a mega-price tag.
So we're told.
Indeed, each year the government reports and the media duly echo the rising, yea staggering, costs of parenthood.
We are recently informed that a typical middle-income family can expect to spend more than $225,000 to raise a child - born today - from diapers to high school diploma. Dollop on anticipated inflation, and the out-of-your-pocket tab per child rises to just shy of $287,000 in total by 2028.
Those are the latest figures from the annual Department of Agriculture (DoA) report that many government agencies rely upon to set child support guidelines and foster care payments. The government forecasts can also be instructional for newlyweds and other couples who have the foresight to consider their ability to support children before actually bringing them into this world.
Yet the estimates are only that - estimates - and are far from set in stone. Moreover, the government shortchanges the financial benefits of parenting in its annual rundown, Expenditures on Children by Families, which has been issued yearly since 1960.
Average families - including single-parent households - can, and I believe should, adopt ways to both lower the costs of child rearing and stretch the dollars they do expend.
Why the government's logic is flawed...
To see the flaws in the government's reasoning, let's begin with the largest expense pinpointed by the 2011 Expenditures report: Housing.
Of the $226,920 that the DoA says it will cost today's new parents to raise a child, a full 31%, or $69,660, is allocated to the additional costs the government assumes a family will spend to shelter little Jack or Jill.
Read the fine print, and you'll discover the government adopts an "average cost of an additional bedroom approach" to reach this number.
Translated into English, this means that if our young couple lives in a two-bedroom home - where mom and dad sleep in one room - and our gurgling, dimple-faced, poop factory sleeps in his/her own room - baby gets assessed 50% of all housing costs, including mortgage payments, utilities, household appliances, furniture, and even carpeting.
The more bedrooms per household, as DoA calculates, the smaller the percentage of overall household costs baby gets tagged for.
The government assumes, rightly in most cases, that parents feel an obligation to provide a child with his/her own room - and hence, in Uncle Sam's eyes, the proportional costs of that extra room can be considered a cost of child-rearing.
Do parents really have to keep up with the Joneses?
I have two problems with this approach - the second of which should offer particular relief to prospective moms and dads dreading the "taxation" of parenthood.
First, I take issue with the assumption that - as per my example above where mom and dad share their two-bedroom home with an infant - a childless couple would necessarily live in a house with one fewer rooms because the couple won't require a nursery.
More realistically, the childless couple will still buy or rent a two-bedroom space, using the second room for a home-office, guest room or even a so-called "man cave." So why pin the entire second-bedroom expense on baby?
My second issue with the DoA approach is simply this: for cost-strapped families - which, these days, number quite a few - why must we adhere to some "keeping-up-with-the-Joneses" standard that dictates a child, or children, have their own rooms? Where is it written?
Many, many of us grew up sharing rooms with one or more siblings and we turned out just fine. If the DoA is correct and the cost of a single child's room over the next 17 years will be $69,660, then putting two kids in that same room would save the family almost $35,000 per child right off the bat.
Money spent on childcare and tuition, 17% of the parenting pie, and food, a 16% slice, account for another 33% of the DoA's budget, or almost $75,000.
Unlike housing, I find it easier to accept the notion that if you don't have a child - or another child - you won't ever have to feed it or drop it off each morning at daycare or school on the way to work.
Hence, here, the savings potential is not as large as it is when it comes to housing.
But smart food shopping and preparation, and fewer restaurant-prepared meals, can help parents stay well below the national averages on food costs.
As for outlays on child care and education expenses, including baby-sitters and school supplies (which the DoA includes in its estimates), again it is a parental choice - not obligation - to send their kids to private schools or to enroll their toddlers in expensive v. less-expensive daycare.
Other child-related expenses, such as clothing, medical care and entertainment factor into the DoA equation, but are relatively minor financial factors - and like food and childcare, subject to effective savings strategies.
What the Department of Agriculture does not have a good handle on is how childless couples fair financially over the same 18-year period that its Expenditures report covers.
One would think that with the $11,880 to $13,830 dollars that middle-income couples keep each year for every child they do NOT raise, we would - at the end of 18 years - be a country full of wealthy, childless couples and impoverished parents.
I find no facts to support that outcome
In my experience, the majority of parenting households - out of necessity - pay more attention to their future and financial planning than do childless couples. "No trip to Aruba this fall, honey, we've got to think about budgeting for back-to-school clothing and supplies." That's a good financial habit, not a bad one.
Indeed, rather than saving or investing the monies that childless couples would otherwise spend on their kids, most of the childless couples that I know spend it contemporaneously on themselves and their elevated lifestyles.
But whether you spend your funds on diapers or fine dining, the dollars are just as absent.
The DoA estimates fail to factor in many child-rearing intangibles that likely tip the scales back in the direction of parenting as a wealth-generating plus.
With kids aboard, parents are often more anchored in their career choices, have deeper ties and support networks within their communities, and tend to remain in their existing homes longer. Such stability, in general, accrues long-term financial dividends.
Caring for others, in this case children, can be akin to an MBA in life skills. Your parenting muscles, earned on the job, carry over to all of your life's other endeavors.
Finally, the DoA fails to look at our children as the godsend investment that they truly are. In the government's view, we pour nearly $300,000 of our cash into each child by the time he/she reaches 18 years old - and that is where the government ends its accounting.
Let's look at the "asset" side of the parenthood ledger...
To be balanced, the government needs to project farther out and look at the "asset" side of the ledger, not just the "liability" side.
Let's take it as a given that the joy and sense of satisfaction that most parents derive from their children is priceless. Instead, focus strictly on the demonstrable financial returns on the 300K you deposit in your flesh-and-blood progeny bank.
How much will each of your kids earn in their lifetimes thanks to your upfront expenditures on their childhood and adolescence? Those funds come back to your family treasury with abundant growth and interest.
When you are older, or elderly, will your children support you emotionally, logistically and perhaps even financially? What is that worth on the open market? What is the ROI (return on investment) there?
It may be a cliché, but when most of us think back on our child-rearing years, we seldom regret the money we spent bringing up our kids. What we regret is that we can't do it all over again.
As president of www.BankOnYourself.com, Pamela Yellen has helped hundreds of thousands grow their wealth safely and predictably. She's a New York Times bestselling author and is the founder of www.BankOnYourselfNation.com, a website dedicated to helping people achieve lifetime financial security and self-reliance.