Is Having a Baby a Good Investment?

Good value or waste of money?

Since we live in economic times, I thought I should do what money minded women all over Australia are doing: an economic analysis on the potential Return on Investment of Children.

Because we are basically the first generation to carefully control our reproduction. Women from 1970 - 2000 do not count as they, the Gen X-er's, basically forgot to have kids. In other words, women up to 1970 did not have access to reliable contraception so had to deal with any pregnancies as and when they came. Abortion in Australia only became accessible in the late 60s, so it has been a very short time indeed that women have had any control over if they have children.

Women who took up the Pill enthusiastically post invention regarded it with, understandably, such open admiration and gratitude that they forgot to stop taking it and suddenly, woops, 40th birthday and bye bye baby.

These Xers regarded babies with open suspicion, and were too chuffed with their corporate and career success to stop and smell the roses. Their next Beemer and Dior suit were more tantalising than screaming babies. What WERE they thinking?

So I am in the vanguard of Women Actually Choosing To Breed, Just For The Hell Of It. And FYI, I'm a Gen X / Y "straddler" - born in 1978. Being a straddler is quite fun.

While we, who actually chose to have a baby rather than having it thrust upon us, don't (yet) have an army of nannies to do the job for us, there are still plenty of resources in our toolkit.

Television is the first and most obvious. There are kids my age who grew up on Sesame Street, and this gave them a world class education complemented by expert skills in reading texts and critical thought. Most of them, unsurprisingly, work in high level media positions and their factory-working mums and dads are breathing sighs of relief that not being around for their kids' early years didn't seem to harm them.

Today we have not only the traditional TV shows like Sesame Street and Playschool, we have CeeBeebies on all day with delights such as In The Night Garden, and we have unlimited shows to download. Dora and The Wiggles get the most airplay at our house.

Dora has taught my daughter Spanish words and how to share. When my four year old niece met kids on holiday in Spain she understood that not only did they not speak English, but she could have a basic conversation in Spanish - thanks to Dora. Dora has better language lessons than Sesame Street according to a recent Harvard study - challenging my old-school mum in her assumptions that modern animations are a load of junk (her words not mine).

I credit the excellent Brainy Baby series with teaching my daughter the alphabet before 18 months, and saving me many trips to playgroup, because she's surrounded by friends and animals all day (when she's not at daycare). Our big screen TV makes it look like the kids are life size, so that saves mummy an awful lot of time and expense in silly excursions she'll never remember.

Before I wax lyrical too much about TV, I will point out there are other great tools for raising your kids cheaply by other people - the park, the beach and childcare are also excellent options.

We'll revisit this topic further down the track because it deserves an extensive and thorough analysis. I just wanted to introduce the concept by pointing out that while babies seem a terrible investment at face value, you can easily increase their ROI by using TV to raise them and training them to work from an early age.