Nina Bandelj

Nina Bandelj, UC Irvine sociology professor and author of Overinvested, examines how modern parenting became emotionally and financially intense. She explores why devotion to children feels inevitable. She discusses policy effects on parental well being, the ratchet of competitive parenting, privatized caregiving, and ways communities can reclaim shared care and let kids be bored and independent.

Nina Bandelj, sociology professor at UC Irvine and author of Overinvested, studies how parenting has been economized and emotionalized. She explores children as human capital, privatized parenting, rising costs and inequality. The conversation examines parental sacrifice, burnout, and how cultural norms shape what we do for kids.

Nina Bandelj, Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at UC Irvine and author of Overinvested, studies how parenting became emotionally and financially all-consuming. She traces the historical shift to treating children as investments. The conversation covers rising childcare and tutoring costs, parental debt, gendered emotional labor, industry pressures to spend, and proposals to rebalance parenting toward shared responsibility.

Nina Bandelj, Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at UC Irvine and author of Overinvested, studies how parenting became an emotional and financial project. She traces the historical shift to treating children as priceless investments. The conversation covers skyrocketing tutoring and education costs, parental debt, burnout and gendered emotional labor, the parenting industry, inequality reproduction, and proposals to share responsibility more broadly.

Nina Bandelj, Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at UC Irvine and author of Overinvested, explores how parenting became an emotional and financial investment. She traces historical shifts, the rise of the parenting industry, parental debt and burnout, inequality via cultural capital, and calls for collective supports over privatized, competitive child-rearing.