According to a study conducted by the researcher of the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, contemporary urban parents tend to exaggerate the rewards of parenthood by idealizing the parenthood to justify the cost of upbringing a child.

The researchers believe that before urbanization and change of labor laws, the relationship between parents and children was not that much affectionate.

This study was published in the journal Psychological Science and recreational and leisure studies expert Steven Mock said that the costs of raising children had grown and so had the parents’ belief in emotionally rewarding parenthood.

In addition, he said, “Our findings help to resolve this paradox by demonstrating that the costs of raising children motivate parents to idealize parenthood. The perceived joys of parenthood may thus be a rationalization of the high costs of having children”.

To conduct this study, parents were divided into two groups where one group was provided with written material focusing on the costs of bringing up kids and the other group was given this information along with information related to the potential emotional benefits of parenting.

After analyzing the answers which parents were supposed give after going through the text, the researchers concluded that the parents, who were told to read only about the costs, tended to idealize parenting as compare to the other group.