Name: Is it worth having kids?
Uploaded: 2025-07-20T15:29:05.000Z
Duration: 16 min 23 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

They may be small bundles of joy, but they can cost a fortune.

As people weigh up the pros and cons of procreating, fewer children are being born, especially in the rich world.

And in the long term, this could mean fewer young workers to support the elderly.

I went back and forth a lot in the beginning.

A lot of thought that went into weighing the options of both having kids and not having kids.

Jessica and her husband, Andre, live in Houston, Texas, with their two-year-old son, Michael.

The day he was born, I was overcome with a lot of emotion, happiness, just joy.

So, having children makes people happy, right?

According to academics, it's likely Jessica was experiencing what's known as a happiness bump.

Mother's happiness levels rise in the years leading up to giving birth.

But that's where they peak, and within a few years have returned to the level they were before the kid was born.

We've been studying men and women in couples, with and without children, and we see that their levels of happiness and life satisfaction, mental health and loneliness are quite similar.

That's quite consistent across a lot of different countries.

Some factors do affect people's happiness, such as their income and whether they are single parents.

Parents in countries with stronger welfare systems also report higher levels of happiness.

But all in all, there isn't much difference between the life satisfaction of parents and people without kids.

While there might be moments during the day that are filled with happiness, the more typical experience is that being together with your children can be quite distressful.

It also takes up much of your time and energy.

Let's do downward facing dog together, ready?

I thought motherhood would be, you know, you see all the stuff in the movies.

I really thought that it would be this beautiful time where you'd have a great relationship with your kids.

But also, you know, a little bit of hard work too that I don't think I understood before we decided to have Michael.

About 80% of parents in America say parenting is enjoyable, but almost 30% also admit it's stressful all or most of the time.

If children won't make you happy, why have them?

For most of history, people had lots of children, which made financial sense because kids could work in the fields and look after their parents in old age.

But as societies have grown richer, there has been a reduction in procreation.

We've seen a change in why people have children and the economic incentives to having children.

So as we have more countries offering pensions, older adults are less reliant on their adult children to provide for them in their older years.

And at the same time, we see more women getting higher levels of education, being employed.

We also see a change in attitudes, a move towards secularization, so less importance of religion, a rise in feminism, a rise in women's rights, and childhood extends because we need to educate our children longer.

Fertility treatment, for those who need it, is expensive.

And in some countries, giving birth in a hospital can cost thousands of dollars.

Then there's food, clothes, nappies, toys, baby carriers and prams.

The Economist has calculated that a typical American family can expect to spend almost $300,000 raising a child to the age of 17.

Factor in college tuition, and it rises to over $400,000.

For Jessica and Andre in Houston, those costs are about to go up even more.

I mean, there's less stuff to buy, you know, just because we already have a car seat and all that stuff from Michael.

We are saving for education and all that stuff for two kids instead of one.

The strain on Jessica's and Andre's budget is not helped by the fact that America is the only rich country that doesn't have nationwide statutory paid parental leave.

Instead, federal policy is just 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

But there are so many restrictions, only 56% of workers are eligible, and many feel they can't afford to sacrifice their salary for this long.

At the time when Michael was born, I was the primary breadwinner for our family.

That definitely played a role in terms of deciding how long of a maternity leave to take.

And after two months, I went back to work full time.

It was definitely hard leaving Michael after two months just because that's around the time when kids start to become a little bit more interactive.

So I almost felt like I was missing out on something by going back to work so soon.

Statutory parental leave in rich countries varies greatly.

In Japan, parents are given about a year of paid parental leave each, of which half is paid at about two thirds of their normal salary.

In Finland, parents are given about 14 months of paid leave to share.

They're also entitled to take further childcare leave up until their child is three.

In Britain, a mother's job is guaranteed for a year, but only six weeks are paid at almost full salary.

A further 33 weeks are paid, but at a much lower level.

It means Britain has one of the least generous leave policies in Europe, which can make it harder for some Brits to balance their budgets.

Faye lives in the south of England with her husband Matt and their three-year-old daughter, Eloise.

I took 12 months maternity leave, so the last three months of maternity leave were unpaid, unfortunately.

But it was something that we sat down and worked out that we could achieve financially with my husband doing extra overtime.

Even before those final three months, there isn't a huge amount of pay for maternity leave.

We just had to be financially very conscious of what we were spending.

Yeah, you can still find all the edge bits first, can't you?

And those challenges don't end when the parent goes back to work.

When we were looking at our finances, we didn't really factor in nursery costs.

When we then she was going two days a week, and some months it was more than our mortgage.

In six OECD countries, couples earning the average wage spend over 20% of their salaries on childcare.

Britain has the joint second most expensive childcare in the world.

We have thought about having another child.

Unfortunately, the cost side of things does have a big impact.

I could give up work, but I don't want to rely on benefits or income support.

If that means not having another child, because of the financial implications, it's upsetting because we would love to have another one.

A survey of young American adults found that of those who said they have or expect to have fewer children than they'd like, 64% cited childcare costs as a reason.

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Is it worth having kids?

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