Thx for dropping by and sharing your thoughts @culgin
I am not sure what you meant by "investment" in this context. Are you referring to potential future monetary returns?
In general as "investment" I mean that we use our resources (time, money, energy) to raise kids hoping that one day they can help us to survive once we're old.
Perhaps I'm seeing children being "an investment" because I've spent to many years living around Chinese people (either chinese-malaysians or chinese-singaporians) and that's how they seem to "work". They raise kids so in the future kids would take care of them (parents usually move to live with their own kids, even if they are married and have families). Level of independence in those communities is very ... I would say "low".
Yours
Piotr
I think that's a mindset of the older generations. I believe that it is everyone's own responsibility to plan for your own finance. So I don't think we should treat raising kids as an investment. By treating you kids as investment, you are putting unnecessary stress on them and at the same time risks on yourself. That's my 2 cents :)