The social life of money for children

Inspired by Nigel Dodd's The Social Life of Money, this article proposes an analysis of entangled economic lives, that is, how meaning, structures and politics jointly shape the flow of monies within households. The past decades have marked a shift from "childrearing expenditures" to "parenting investments" that align with new visions of both children and parents. The new social life of money for children revolves less around what Viviana Zelizer decades ago famously called "a priceless child," and more in support of human capital development of children and invested parenting identities. The new ideational schemas are scaffolded by financialization, an exploding parenting product industry, and an aloof state offloading provision for children onto individual parents. Leading entangled economic lives, parents engage in relational work in which they match the sacred child-parent bond with not only culturally appropriate but actually affordable monies for children, creating a new political economy of parenting.