Of Dollars and Data essay frames parenting as long-term investing

A new essay from Of Dollars and Data turns a personal childbirth scare into a broader point for investors: not every meaningful investment shows up in a brokerage account. The writer argues that time, care and sacrifice for children can be understood as a form of long-term investing, even if it never appears on a balance sheet.

The piece opens with the writer describing a tense moment during his wife’s labor at 1:30 a.m. A nurse warned that an alarm would sound and hospital staff would enter the room. According to the writer, the baby’s heart rate had fallen, prompting doctors and nurses to change his wife’s position while they watched the monitor.

The writer says he understood from pregnancy books that a sustained drop in the baby’s heart rate could lead to an emergency C-section. The situation eased when staff saw the heart rate rise, and a physician then said his wife had reached 9 centimeters of dilation. Less than three hours later, the writer says, his wife gave birth to their daughter.

Pregnancy risk becomes the frame

The essay uses that moment to discuss how many points of failure can exist during pregnancy and childbirth, even in a pregnancy the writer describes as positive. He says the couple initially saw no heartbeat at the first ultrasound, later learning they had looked too early. After that, the concerns shifted to genetic risks, Down syndrome, organ development, a glucose test, the baby’s position and other issues.

The writer says each individual risk may be small, but the combined chance that something could go wrong can feel larger once experienced firsthand. He contrasts his family’s outcome with friends who faced more serious situations, including one diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy and treated with chemotherapy, another hospitalized for severe morning sickness, and others who spent tens of thousands of dollars on IVF without a successful embryo transfer.

To broaden the point beyond one family, the essay cites Our World in Data, which estimates that before modern medicine, the likelihood of a child dying before age 15 was close to 50%. The writer uses that historical context to describe life as a “great filter,” meaning a series of risks that people must survive before adulthood.

A wider definition of investing

The financial angle comes through in the writer’s definition of investing. After nearly a decade writing about investing, he says becoming a parent changed how he understands the word. In the essay, money remains part of investing, but so does the way people use their time.

He points to parents losing sleep to feed children or working jobs to provide for them as examples of investment. Those efforts do not appear in financial statements, he writes, but he presents them as essential to future generations.

The writer also connects that idea to ancestry. He says he does not know what financial assets his great-grandparents owned, if any, but he knows they invested effort in raising his grandparents, who then did the same for later generations.

The essay closes by saying the author no longer thinks of investing as something he does only for himself. He now sees it as work done for his daughter and future generations, and he thanks mothers for the investments they make in their children.

This story draws on original reporting from Of Dollars and Data.