Kids as Status Symbols
So, you've got the beach
house compound on Nantucket, the 63-foot Hinckley sailboat, the corporate jet,
the nanny, and the gardener; and your stay-at-home spouse with the advanced
academic degree heads up the local United Way campaign. What other acquisition
might serve your high economic and social status? How about having some more
kids?
It has
long been a demographic truism that richer means fewer, not more, kids. And as
far as it goes, census data seem to bear this out. As the average incomes of
Americans have increased, the smaller their families have become. Since the
height of the baby boom in the 1950s, the number of children born to an
American woman has dropped from an average of 3.76 to only 1.98 today. And this
phenomenon is not confined to the United States. The average number of children
born to women in Western Europe has fallen from 2.5 in 1960 to 1.6 today.
People have lots of reasons for choosing to have fewer
children, including the expansion of opportunities for women in the workplace,
but it is an undeniable fact that rearing children in the modern world is an
expensive activity. Throughout most of history children were net assets--they
toiled in the fields, mucked out the barn, and cared for their parents in old
age. But modern parents don't really expect much of a return from the resources
they spend on their children. Sure, Johnny may mow the lawn and Jenny might run
the dishwasher, but in general kids today do little to contribute directly to a
family's bottom line.
The U.S. Census Bureau
confirms that women in households with the lowest average annual incomes--those
under $10,000--have had the most children; 2.3 on average. By contrast,
upper-middle-class households--those making more than $75,000--have an average
of only 1.8 kids. One interpretation of these numbers is that poor parents
still think that children are a reasonable investment. In a poor rural family,
children still do chores on the farm. And before welfare reform, at least, an
additional child usually meant an increase in a poor urban family's
benefits.
Meanwhile,
for the upper-middle class, providing for progeny is expensive. Parents try to
pay for private-school educations, soccer club and pool memberships, and
French, piano, and dance lessons. Of course, these parents are spending this
money in an attempt to assure the future success of their children. But even
with an income of $75,000 per year, they can afford only so much for Skip and
Buffy's tutoring, so they limit their family size in order to bestow more on
fewer kids.
But recently I have noticed that many of my
wealthier acquaintances, people who live in tonier suburbs like Potomac, Md.,
or Darien, Conn., are bucking the trend toward smaller families. Many have
three or four kids. Some intriguing, if sketchy, data suggest that at the
highest levels of wealth and income, the trend is toward larger, not smaller,
families.
For
example, Mendelsohn Research--a company that supplies consumer research to
advertisers, advertising agencies, and publishing companies--offers some
suggestive data. Mendelsohn's most recent annual survey shows that those
households with children where the annual family income exceeds $250,000 are
blessed with an average of 2.3 children currently at home. That is 0.5 kids
more than the upper-middle-class average and the same number as the lowest
census income category. And because the Mendelsohn data don't include kids who
have left home--while the census data do--the number of children born in these
very wealthy families could be even higher.
One other interesting figure comes from the very tiptop of
the wealth scale. The households that compose the Forbes 400 richest Americans
average 2.88 children. That's 1.08 kids more than the upper-middle class can
afford.
These added kids provide many
opportunities for status signaling. Wealthy parents can talk endlessly at the
country club about the costs of Maine summer camps, high-school semesters
abroad, little Andrew's sailing trophies, and what hunt Sarah rides with
regularly. And of course, there are schools and universities. Did they prep at
St. Albans or Choate? How well are they doing at Harvard, Yale, or Middlebury?
Being able to provide lavishly for a large number of children shows that you've
really got it made.
This is not to say that rich
people don't love their kids. Rather, kids today are not only little bundles of
joy but also are perhaps the ultimate symbols of worldly success and status.
Perhaps we are now seeing a new social phenomenon--trophy kids.
