New Books Network Nina Bandelj, "Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Feb 5, 2026
Nina Bandelj, Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at UC Irvine and author of Overinvested, explores how parenting became an all-consuming emotional and financial project. She traces shifts from working children to intensive investment, the rise of tutoring and extracurricular industries, growing parental debt, unequal spending by income, and the social costs of privatized childrearing.
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A Decade Of Mixed-Methods Research
- Bandelj's team conducted 119 interviews across diverse family backgrounds over ten years.
- She combined interviews with national datasets and parenting-book content analysis to build the argument.
Three Historical Stages Of Parenting
- Parenting shifted from children as economic labor to children as emotionally priceless over the early 20th century.
- Nina Bandelj argues we've now entered a third phase treating children as investment projects.
The Emotional Economy Concept
- Emotional life and economic decisions are deeply entangled in modern parenting practices.
- Bandelj calls this the "emotional economy," where love and investment logic jointly shape parental choices.
