I've been reading a lot about ethics lately and have been interested to see how game theory (think A Beautiful Mind and little tic-tac-toe grids with choices for each of the 'players' as column and row headings) affects our choices as parents. It turns out that ethics are taught at home, not at business school (makes you wonder about the early childhood of the CEOs of our favorite financial institutions, don't it?).

When I read today's "Motherlode" column about parenting with bribes, I was, frankly, amazed. Lisa Belkin points us to a story on the New York Moms blog about a lovely little bit of game theory as exercised by a parent who was done with sibling rivalry. A child would get fifty cents at the end of the day if he was better-behaved than his sibling; but if both were perfect, they would each get a dollar (I've illustrated this in game theory-ese, to the right).

According to Amy, her children (four and seven years old) chose the mutually beneficial outcome, even though psychological experiments with young adults typically show that competitive behavior will often void the mutually beneficial outcome. Amy set up what may be a perfect (if minorly expensive at $2 a day) game - the word for a set of choices and outcomes - proving that her children are, indeed, rational.

I've bribed my children very occasionally with mixed results; my best outcomes were with paying my oldest son, who's six, to "babysit" his little brothers while I took a shower, a nap, or worked out in the garden. Have you paid for good behavior? Has it worked?

If you build it, they will come. But not necessarily.

A recent three-part report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reveals that the building spree by Milwaukee Public Schools is a dismal failure.

The $102 million initiative to revamp buildings was supposed to get students into local neighborhood schools and improve education. Instead, newly furnished classrooms are used for storage, and half-empty buildings are sprinkled throughout the district. Many specialty teachers in the fields of science, art and music have been downsized in budget cuts while enrollment has continued to tumble.

Like many urban school districts, Milwaukee Public Schools works with some of the poorest children in the city. Many of the children literally do not have parents. They may be living with a grandparent, uncle, aunt or other relative. At the school where my husband works, more than 20 children are bused to school from a homeless shelter. Even those who are lucky enough to have a biological parent often have only one. At a recent open house at an elementary school of approximately 200 children, only six fathers showed up.

It is clear that what these children need are parents, not just buildings. And if they do not have parents involved in their education, someone else better be available. Instead of facilities and expensive buildings, the money would have been better spent with additional staffing in the classroom, mentors for individual development, and tutors for special help. The $102 million could have purchased a lot of services for these children and their families.

Yesterday on talk radio, a host was discussing the concept of "helicopter parents"... Those parents who are so involved in their young adult children's lives that they literally hover over them. Apparently this is nothing new, although I hadn't heard of it before and was intrigued.

I'd heard stories about parents calling college professors to complain about grades (They better be glad they didn't do that to me when I was teaching undergraduate courses!). Some Contact companies on behalf of the child who just interviewed with them. One writer blamed the cell phone for this phenomenon, calling it the "world's longest umbilical cord."

This comes as no surprise to me, as I see younger generations refusing to grow up and accept responsibility. Refusing to all those "adult" things that are expected of them, like showing up to work on time, dressing like an adult, and being responsible about their finances. How many baby boomer parents do you know who have had to financially bail out one or more of their adult children?

After reading my "Kitty Couture" column this week, BloggingStocks producer Amey Stone asked that I write more about what parents can do to encourage healthy character formation in their children. It's a wonderful question that we don't often articulate. It's right at the center of what good parents are doing. Thank you for asking, Amey. It got me thinking.

In the early 1970's, when I was first working as a clinician with young children, three books combined to form my viewpoint about a parent's job.

The first is Peoplemaking, written by Virginia Satir, one of the founders of the family therapy movement. Satir talks about three parenting styles: authoritarian, permissive and authoritative. The authoritarian parent is the boss and obedience is a high priority. It's the ,"Do it because I said so" school of parenting. The permissive parent places a child's creativity and self-determination high and asserts little leadership. Finally, the authoritative parent leads by example and explanation. She is the boss 100% of the time but 99% of the time her children don't have to know it. Door number 3.

BusinessWeek's Karyn McCormack laments the cost of raising children -- pegged at around $289,000 for the first 18 years of a child's life if you're in the top third of income earners. Are they worth it? Blasphemy!

But in a way. they're not. Kids no longer work on the farm, and so the value they provide is now emotional rather than concrete -- but, of course, still no less real. And that's to say nothing of college and then the increasing likelihood of Junior moving back in when he has trouble finding a job that can cover all his expenses.

So having a kid is a huge financial sacrifice, especially when you figure in fact that caring for them often reduces the amount of time you can generally spend working. I would go so far as to say that a large percent of 20- and 30-something's really can't afford to have kids -- and still be on track for retirement.

With the cost of child-rearing on the rise, it seems likely that a growing number of people will simply elect not to have children. This is, after all, the "me" generation, and lot of us are just too selfish to bother with the responsibility of having a little person to look after.

And with the population already high enough, there's really no compelling altruistic reason to have a child -- which raises questions about why the government provides tax advantages to people who have children.

In the meantime, I'm sticking with my plan not to have children, and I know that lot of my college-age friends feel the same.