RSI and Motherhood

The Mueller readings for this week caught my attention in their attempt to qualify rational self-interest in voting through a taste for voting, voting as game theory, minimax-regret strategy, and the expressive voter hypothesis. Psychic value, regret, and expressive voting as theories appeared to give greater consideration to non-economic and more behavioral variables, which helped me to better understand a question I’ve been struggling with this past week: if women (especially single women) have rational self-interest, why do they have children? And what can we observe about redistribution as a public good through the lens of motherhood? In traditional cost-benefit analysis, the cost of having a child would appear to be extraordinarily high – according to the USDA, the average cost of raising a child in the US is now $233,610 (not including the cost of higher education). Other costs incurred may include damage to the body, nightly sleep, relationships with others, leisure time, and future income.

The benefits of having a child are more difficult to pin down than the costs. Maybe having a child provides financial opportunities in the future (i.e. help on the farm), or maybe having a child is an accident and the costs of getting an abortion are prohibitively high. For some, there is psychic value to having a child, if one has a “taste” for children. For others, maybe having a child is a response to the social shame of not having a child, by parents or peers, or a response to the imagined regret of not having a child. Maybe having a child is a way of expressing a preference for a partner, solidifying a commitment to another or fulfilling their “taste” for children. Maybe having a child is simply a biological tradition for humans that creates an urge to reproduce. In financial terms, however, the cost of having a child would appear to exceed the benefit of having or keeping one, implying that many women and families have an interdependent utility for their child that is greater than 1, or that motherhood is essentially a public good: extreme redistribution from parent to child is inherent to motherhood (especially single motherhood), and is not especially dependent on the mother’s marginal utility of income.