Love, Money, and Parenting

“A Fatherly Top Ten Best Parenting Book of the Decade”“A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year”“Psychologists, sociologists and journalists have spent more than a decade diagnosing and critiquing the habits of ‘helicopter parents’ and their school obsessions… . But new research shows that in our unequal era, this kind of parenting is essential. That’s the message of the book Love, Money and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids, by the economists Matthias Doepke of Northwestern University and Fabrizio Zilibotti of Yale. It’s true that high-octane, hardworking child-rearing has some pointless excesses, and it doesn’t spark joy for parents. But done right, it works for kids, not just in the United States but in rich countries around the world.”—Pamela Druckerman, New York Times“An incisive look at parenting and economic inequality.”—Carolyn Dever, Public Books“Why do so many seemingly sane people get over-involved with their kids? The answer is not that parents have collectively come unhinged, according to the new book Love, Money and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids. Rather, parents today are rational economic actors responding to an increasingly unhinged environment.”—Jenny Anderson, Quartz“An earnest tilt at a genuinely hard question: To what degree are parental choices informed by economic realities? Reducing his answer to a single line is reductive, but let’s do it anyway. When it comes to raising Americans kids, it’s the economy, stupid.”—Patrick A. Coleman, Fatherly.com“As economists Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti reveal in their recent book Love, Money, and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids, today’s American parents are not so crazy after all. For better and worse, their parenting style is perfectly rational.”—Kay Hymowitz, Institute for Family Studies“All in all, a highly informative read.”—David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer“The book introduces stimulating ideas in an accessible manner.”—John Ermisch, Journal of Economic Inequality

Matthias Doepke is professor of economics at Northwestern University. He lives in Evanston, Illinois. Fabrizio Zilibotti is the Tuntex Professor of International and Development Economics at Yale University. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.