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September 24, 2026 
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Hi everyone,
In her new book, “Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty,” Anna Louie Sussman, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, asks a basic question: Who gets to have children and why?
The answer has a lot to do with money — who has it, how much and what it costs to even buy a child in the first place, which is effectively the way that many people think about it when simply conceiving and producing an infant can cost six figures.
“Our reproductive lives have been disfigured by an economic system gone awry,” she writes.
One finding that opened her eyes wide, she said in an email, was just how many people work the hard numbers over with spreadsheets — and how many deliberately avoid the daunting figures.
“Few people expected those neat grids of numbers to tell them ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” she said. “But when one couple updated their spreadsheet after learning they would need in vitro fertilization, or I.V.F., which can cost $15,000 to $25,000, instead of the cheaper intrauterine insemination procedure, for which they had budgeted $1,216.40, the math went from daunting to simply unfeasible.”
“And as one woman who became a solo mom by choice told me, she’s grateful she went ahead without bothering to itemize her costs. The numbers, she said, just ‘don’t add up.’”
Below, you’ll find a selection of New York Times money articles from the past seven days. Have a good week.
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