Children may be our future, but you’d have to be a little insane to actually raise ’em. That, at least, is the conclusion of a study conducted Richard Eibach and Steven Mock (both of whom, we must assume, are childless). According to their research, parents often idealize the concept of parenthood in order to make the whole child-rearing endeavor worthwhile. According to the researchers, whose work is published in Psychological Science, kids are a poor investment: It costs nearly $200,000 to raise a kid to age 18 on the east coast—and there’s no guarantee they’ll even stick around to care for their parents in old age. Just paying someone for long-term care would be far cheaper, Eibach and Mock say. What about all the rewards that come with raising children? The intangible joys of parenthood? Pish, the researchers say. Statistically, parents are generally angrier and more stressed than non-parents—and they get angrier with each additional kid. Moreover, when the children finally do leave the nest, parents seem to get happier. Mock and Eibach conclude that parents live in a haze of delusion, inflating the rewards of parenthood to make the whole exercise seem more worthwhile. In reality (they say), people would be happier, and far more financially secure, if the stork brought them an iPad instead. Kids and teens can indeed be difficult: Any youth worker worth his or her salt knows that. Still, is it possible that Mock and Eibach are just trying to apologize to their own parents for trying to set the cat on fire when they were growing up? (Time)