u/Junior_Mud5835

I often see high fertility in poor, agricultural societies explained by saying that children are an economic asset: they can work on the farm, look after animals, help around the house, etc., so having more children makes economic sense.

I understand a related argument: children as old-age security (in situations with a lack of state-ensured pension). This is not what I'm arguing about.

What I don't understand is the much more common argument that having lots of children makes economic sense because of their labour during childhood.

A child produces essentially nothing for the first several years of their life. During that time they have to be fed, clothed, housed and cared for. More importantly, someone (the mother) has to spend a huge amount of time pregnant, recovering from childbirth, breastfeeding and caring for them.

Then at maybe 5–7, a child can begin doing useful household tasks. But their productivity is still presumably far below that of an adult for years. And once compulsory schooling is introduced, even that potential contribution becomes much smaller.

It seems especially strange to me that discussions of the "economic value" of children's work frequently ignore the mother's opportunity cost. If a woman has eight children, she may spend a substantial portion of her productive adult life pregnant, breastfeeding or caring for small children. And of course the economic value of a grown woman by far exceeds the value of even multiple children.

Surely the relevant comparison isn't:

"Family with eight children, none of whom work"
vs.
"Family with eight children, several of whom work."

It's:

"Family with eight children, where the older children contribute labour"
vs.
"Family with three children, where the parents support fewer dependants and the mother spends much less of her life on pregnancy and childcare."

There's another accounting issue. Older children often look after younger children, which gets counted as part of the economic contribution of children. But much of that labour is necessary because the family had additional children in the first place. Having a 12-year-old daughter care for her four younger siblings is useful, but it doesn't demonstrate that having five children instead of two increased the household's net productive capacity.

Interestingly, there was an influential demographic theory that was much closer to the standard economic explanation. John Caldwell's "wealth flows" theory, developed in the 1970s, argued that high fertility could be economically rational in societies where wealth flowed from younger generations toward older ones.

But Caldwell himself revisited the theory after almost 30 years of subsequent research. In his 2005 paper On Net Intergenerational Wealth Flows: An Update, he concluded that immediately before the fertility transition, children's farm labour may not even have fully offset their own consumption. He also described the empirical literature on the productive value of children's work as contradictory. He still considered the insurance value of children in traditional societies enormous — which again makes the old-age-security argument very plausible — but that's a different claim from saying that producing many children was profitable because children worked.

There's also evidence that parents behaved as though children's labour had considerable economic value, but not that there was an actual value.

A study by Yannay Shanan exploited differences in the timing of compulsory-schooling and child-labour laws between U.S. states in the early 20th century. When laws restricted children's ability to work and required them to remain in school, parents subsequently had fewer children. The study therefore provides quite convincing evidence that the expected economic contribution of children affected fertility decisions. I think people misunderstood this study, to mean that "once children couldn't work, the fertility dropped, because people lost the potential economical benefit of having them", but this is not the only logical conclusion.

It establishes:

Children's ability to work affected parents' decisions about how many children to have.

It does not establish:

The additional children's lifetime economic contribution actually exceeded the cost of producing and raising them.

Those are completely different propositions.

In fact, this is one of the things that makes me question the standard explanation. We seem to have substantial evidence that people believed children were economically valuable and adjusted fertility when that perceived value changed. But I can find surprisingly little evidence demonstrating that an additional child actually generated a positive net economic return after accounting for consumption, pregnancy, childcare and the mother's lost productive labour.

I do not claim that people from agricultural societies were less intelligent/unable to calculate it clearly, but it's extremely difficult to create such a calculation even now. There are so many factors working as net negative that are not visible and spread over time, whereas seeing a 10 year old grazing cows is something easy to see.

This also reminds me of something I encountered while reading about Polish peasants in the first half of the 20th century. There were campaigns aimed at teaching rural families that having very large numbers of children was economically unsustainable and encouraging them to have fewer children. What seems to confirm this fact is that many poorer families sent their daughters (from age 12 onwards) to work for richer families in the area, but the girls did not receive payments - instead, they were minimally provided for, i.e. the employer gave them a place to sleep, food, and one set of clothing. This shows that actually getting rid of one of your children was seen as a net benefit for the family who didn't have to feed one of the children anymore. Compulsory schooling made the economic problem even more obvious, as children still had to be supported, while parents simultaneously lost part of the labour they previously obtained from them.

I find this particularly interesting because it suggests that even contemporaries were arguing that rural families could overestimate the economic benefit of additional children. In other words, observing that peasants themselves considered children useful labour doesn't necessarily prove that their assessment was economically correct.

So my current view is:

Children probably had substantial economic value in traditional societies, especially as old-age insurance and later as productive adult members of an extended family. There is also good evidence that parents perceived children's labour as economically valuable and took that into account when deciding how many children to have.

But I haven't seen convincing evidence for the much stronger claim that having many children was actually economically advantageous because of their labour as children**, once the full marginal costs of raising those children are included.**

And I think those two propositions are constantly conflated.

I'm open to having my view changed. But I'm specifically not looking for evidence that:

• children in agricultural societies worked;
• parents considered their children's work valuable;
• families with many children obtained more total child labour;
• restricting child labour or introducing compulsory schooling reduced fertility.

All of those can be true while parents are systematically overestimating the net economic return of an additional child.

What would change my view is evidence from a preindustrial/agricultural society or a present-day low-income country actually comparing the marginal lifetime economic contribution of another child against their consumption, schooling and other expenses, childcare requirements, and crucially, the opportunity cost of pregnancy and the mother's childcare labour.

If such studies show that the fifth, sixth, seventh child genuinely increased household economic welfare through their childhood labour, then my view is wrong.

But if we don't have that evidence, I don't understand why "poor people had lots of children because children were free labour" is repeated so confidently as an established economic explanation.

CMV!

EDIT:
TLDR
I am specifically arguing against the pronatalism/birthrates argument that people in poorer agricultural societies have more children because non-adult children provide useful labour and support the family economically.
Children clearly provided some useful labour and there is evidence that parents believed this made larger families economically beneficial. But I can't find much evidence that an additional child's labour actually outweighed the costs of raising them, especially the mother's lost productivity from pregnancy and childcare. Old-age security and adult children supporting the parents makes sense to me; the common "more children = more workers = economically beneficial" explanation does not. Especially when comparing families with 2-3 and 6-8 children.

As an immigrant I find dentists prices here outrageous and I wonder how Dutch people deal with it. In my home country not only private dentists are much cheaper, we have dentists covered with a basic, mandatory insurance (the same that covers the rest of the healthcare). Granted it has large queues, but it is possible to schedule your checkups and non-emergency treatments.

Every immigrant I know treats their teeth in their home country due to extremely high costs here. Even with insurance, the prices can be extremely high - my extra dental insurance covers only 75% of the treatment costs, and up to 250 eur per year... From what I researched this is a standard in terms of insurances. I recently needed a root canal treatment, which cost me almost 900 eur out of pocket (because I treated another tooth this year, my insurance coverage was almost gone). I was also shocked because the dentist told me the price of root canal treatment is around 350. I unfortunately didn't request a written quote and just trusted him - i know not to do it next time. In the end, together with x-rays, anaesthesia, and all the consultations i paid 850 eur. I then researched a bit more and looked into the prices of implants, bridges, etc. and I cannot imagine how an average dutch person can afford them!

Do dutch people go abroad for treatment? Do you have some much better insurances that I wasn't able to find? Or do you just stomach the costs? Maybe you have much better teeth and don't need these types of interventions?

Edit to add: one more thing that surprises me is that follow up visits in cases when a tooth was treated but needs further fixing are charged again. This is never the case where I'm from, if I pay for a treatment and it doesn't succeed because of the dentist's mistake the follow ups are usually done for free. This doesn't seem to be the case here which adds more to the costs.

Spoilers for the last episode ahead.

>!I do not understand how come everyone was okay with basically throwing Becka's mother under the bus, and blaming her for the murder. I understand that many mothers would sacrifice their live for their child, don't get me wrong. What bothers me is the reaction, or lack of thereof, of every other woman engaged in this plot!!<

>!The girls discuss between each other that they must help Becka. Literally everyone is so motivated to try to help her. Agnes went to Aunt Lydia to ask for help, and she also guilt trips aunt Vidala to do something too. She even engages the commander to help them. So many people are involved, it kind of made me feel they would actually come up with something smart... And the genius solution is to just have another woman killed? !<

>! I just can't comprehend how everyone was okay with it. Literally nobody questions it, no one has any issues with the fact that an *innocent* woman will be hanged! I sympathise with Becka, but it's not like she was innocent... Her father would be convicted of his crimes, what she did was impulsive, unnecessary and honestly, it was also disturbing. And yet everyone keeps treating her as if she *was* innocent and wrongly convicted, and finds it perfectly reasonable to blame everything on her mother and get her hanged! Especially that at that point it was known that Becka wouldn't be sentenced to death, but they would allow her to become a handmaid instead, and her mother would not have such an option. !<

Since I see no one discussing it, I am wondering whether I am the only person who has this opinion? Am I missing something here?

EDIT to add:

>!A Lot of people are saying the same thing so I will address it here: "Becka’s mother chooses to sacrifice herself to give her daughter a new life" - No she didn't. There was no guarantee what will happen to Becca after her mother is sentenced. She is alone in the world and at the mercy of Gilead. They could have sentenced her anyway for giving a false testimony. They could have prevented her from marrying Garth, or even getting married in general - as a child of a rapist and a murderess. They could have married her off to someone cruel, or someone from the colonies. They could have made her a handmaid anyway. This was more of a bet than a genius plant to save her.!<

Does anyone know where I can find audio flashcards for levantine arabic? I'm on B1 level. I found some in lingualism but they don't have a big selection.

Also, are there are any apps that can reliably create audio flashcards in dialects from text?

Hi All, my partner and I applied for the family visa (unmarried partner of an EU citizen) in april 2025. We still haven't got any reply (the deadline was in september 2025 and we did file the default notice).

I was wondering if anyone who applied for the same type of visa around the same period got any reply? We would like to understand what's the possible delay.

I just finished this book and I have no idea if I hate it or just misunderstood it; I wanted to share my general thoughts here and see if I got the book correctly.

Spoilers about the book ahead!

>!My feeling, right from the beginning, was that the MC was not an interesting person at all. I found it hard to sympathise with her, and I almost DNFed after a couple of chapters because I genuinely didn’t care about her. Her way of thinking about the world felt unnatural and cringey to me. I don’t know if this is just the writer’s style, but I kept rolling my eyes at the over-the-top comparisons and unnecessary descriptions. !<

>!The journal timeline: I immediately thought the journal could not possibly have been written by the MC. The personalities of the two characters felt too different, and since the character from the journal is 10 years old and does not have a sibling yet, I knew there would be some sort of twist hidden there. But in the end, do we actually know who wrote the journal? Amber claims it was Claire, but do we ever get confirmation?!<

>!The “Then” timeline: I found it hard to understand how this timeline added to the story, especially the conflict with Madeleine. Again, it made me feel like the MC does not have a consistent personality. She has OCD, she is extremely passive in her relationships with her husband, sister, and brother-in-law, but she is also apparently an evil mastermind who can get a much more established coworker kicked out of her job? She plans and executes the fake Twitter account and fake letters, even remembering to wear gloves while writing them, but she is not able to catch her husband cheating or see that her sister is awful? Was it actually Claire who somehow manipulated Amber into going through with this plan?!<

>!When did Claire start to hate Amber? From the journal, it seems like Claire was deeply infatuated with Amber from the very beginning, even when Amber started to pull away. But in the coma timeline and the “Then” timeline, it seems like Claire does not like Amber anymore. Was it ever specified when that change happened?!<

>!Claire admitted that she wrote the threatening letters to Edward. This is consistent with her previous urge to protect Amber. But why did she tell Edward that Amber was the one writing the letters? That is the opposite of protecting Amber and puts her in terrible danger.!<

>!Another thing: Claire knows Jo is an imaginary friend, but when Amber is in a coma, she actually suggests to Paul that he should call Jo and ask for help. Did she do that to put Amber down? My interpretation is that Paul and Claire really did have an affair, which makes Claire seem more like a villain.!<

>!Is it possible that, at the end, Claire swapped places with Amber and killed her in the fire, along with her own husband and children, in order to steal Amber’s life again? If she and Paul had an affair before, it does not seem impossible.!<

>!Did anyone actually send the bracelet? If yes, who? Or was that a lie Amber, or Claire, tells herself?!<

>!In the end, I feel like this book was too complicated to be enjoyable. I was bored for half the story, only to be extremely confused in the second half. I love unreliable narrator stories, but I feel like the story still has to be “solvable” in order to be satisfying. There are good books with open endings, but in my opinion the open ending should still be well defined. For example, in *The Handmaid’s Tale*, we do not know exactly what happens at the end, but we at least understand the world and there is a fixed range of possibilities.!<

>!In this book, it feels like literally everything can be true, false, or presented from a different point of view than the one we think we are reading. It just felt overdone to me, and a bit too try-hard.!<

>!Since I have not read other books by this author, I do not know which parts are intentional stylistic choices and which parts are just her usual writing style. I also do not know whether some parts are illogical mistakes or whether they are intentional and have a rational explanation.!<

I'm curious to hear other opinions!