[needacig]

Just to restate this, the author's theory is that the reason parents these days don't let their kids have as much freedom as parents in the past did is because parents these days value their kids more than parents in the past used to.

This is probably wrong. Does anyone really think that parents in the past were more cavalier about their children dying or getting injured, if only slightly so? Also why does the author reach all the way back to 1850 for a comparison to the number of children families have? In the more recent pass, families had comparable numbers of children, but no one was worried about them being overly restrictive parents.

Overall this theory seems likely to be more reflective of the author's own anxieties than reality.

[gavinpc]

Exactly right. The author loses all credibility when suggesting that parents somehow view children in the same way that economists think people view commodities (which by the way is also mostly wrong, but that's another story).