‘The kid to save the marriage’
Every now and then I’ve come across this comment. Usually expressed as a joke with the prompts of a large age gap between siblings or divorced parents.
Hypothetically to take this comment as not a joke. To take it seriously as a method to save a marriage and contemplate alternative options I have done some calculations.
Guiding a person from infancy to adulthood costs you 18 years of time, effort, sleep and money to name a few.
If salvaging the marriage is the reason there are cheaper, less exhausting, and potentially more effective options.
For example I have heard that over the course of 18 years it costs approximately €300,000 to raise a child.
For the sake of comparison and to achieve the goal of rescuing a marriage, let’s consider couples counseling.
If it costs €100 per hour and you go once a week, that will cost you €5,200 a year. If for argument sake you do it for 18 years it would cost you €93,600.
It only requires an hour a week of your time, you won’t have to disrupt your sleeping pattern and you are potentially learning effective ways to communicate with your partner.
Having a baby to save your marriage will be adding a huge amount of stress to your already in trouble relationship and you won’t be learning how to fix the problems that got you there in the first place.
The comment ‘a child to save the marriage’ is most likely just a joke but I thought it would make an entertaining example of how the simple act of brainstorming methods for achieving your goal could save you an abundance of stress, time and money.
Thomas Duggan 