oh dear

Barbara Corcoran’s Children Came at a Price

Real-estate mogul Barbara Corcoran airs some startling figures in today’s Times: the price of her children. She was making the point, you see, that if she hadn’t been making more than $500,000 a year — the amount that the government decreed this week was the most executives at institutions receiving bailout funds could make — then there’s no way she could have had Tom, 13, or Katie, 3. They just cost too darn much!

Well.

For Tom, Barbara’s first child, she signed up for in vitro fertilization treatments. They cost $12,000 each, and she had seven. $12,000 x 7 means that Tom cost $84,000 for conception alone.

Katie, whom Barbara adopted in 2005, was a comparative bargain, not that it mattered because at that point, Barbara tells the Times, “I was rich enough where I didn’t have to ask.” Her bookkeeper knew, though: Katie cost $62,000.

To be sure, $146,000 is a lot of money, especially considering that some of us were conceived for the price of a few cheap glasses of Chardonnay; and to be sure, this doesn’t factor in hospital stays, or food costs, or private schools, or the snazzy Vans that Tom is wearing in the picture here. But that said, did Barbara really need to make $500,000 a year to have her kids? All we’re saying is, if we were Tom and Katie, we’d be taking a long hard look at those numbers and wondering where we’d be if mom made only $300K a year.

Barbara Corcoran’s Children Came at a Price