SEATTLE—A study released Thursday by the Pacific Parenting Institute found that owning a seriously cool leather jacket is significantly more fulfilling than raising a child to adulthood. "Our research suggests that the feeling of purchasing a really amazing leather jacket and then proudly watching over time as it gradually becomes broken in and forms perfectly to your body is, by a very wide margin, more rewarding than conceiving a child and then raising it from birth to 18 years of age," said lead researcher Dr. Marcus Aiello, adding that it was on average 63 percent more gratifying to regularly condition a leather jacket that had awesome vertical zippers on the sleeves than it was to read nightly bedtime stories to a son or daughter. “When study participants also obtained just the right pair of faded jeans and some vintage harness motorcycle boots to go with their badass leather jacket, these enormous feelings of pride and satisfaction reached levels that caused similar feelings stemming from attending a child's college graduation to become statistically irrelevant.” Aiello also noted that the average cost of raising a child is estimated to be $400,000, an amount researchers pointed out was much higher than the price of a mint-condition 1971 supercharged Plymouth Barracuda.

Advertisement