Having children can be a fantastic experience for parents on so many levels, with kids offering love, laughter and memories for a lifetime.

Just don't expect them to take care of you.

Years ago, children were viewed as a practical necessity, needed for their labor in agricultural households, their ability to carry on the family name, and for their help in taking care of family elders. But as times have changed and priorities have shifted, the culturally ingrained idea of having children has, for some, become a little less palatable, and fewer couples are having children. 

Kids are an expensive proposition, an investment not for the frugal. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the national marriage project at the University of Virginia, said one reason the number of couples having children has fallen is because children are no longer looked at as the caretakers of their elderly parents.