Nina Bandelj
  • May 18, 2026

  • Nina Bandelj, sociology, weighs in via Newsday

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Experts say the pressure is not simply about giving children an advantage. It is also about what parents feel they must provide to be seen — by others and by themselves — as good parents. “Not everything is simply about the future or even the present of our children. It’s also about this performance of good parenting,” said Nina Bandelj, an economic sociologist and author of the 2026 book “Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting.” … Why do so many parents feel the pressure to overspend on their children, even if it’s to their own financial detriment? It’s not necessarily because they see it as an investment. “People’s emotions, people’s relationships — that all gets expressed through what we do with money,” Bandelj said. In surveys conducted during her research, parents "talked about love and commitment to their kids, and also, they talked about what they felt, or moral pressures on them to be good parents,” she said. In Bandelj’s book, she describes a parent who felt compelled to spend $3,000 on SAT prep over a summer, even though it didn’t ultimately do much to boost her daughter’s score. But because other parents were paying for tutors, she felt pressured to do the same.

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