I think that everyone is missing the point of the broken window fallacy.<p>It's not that something is destructive. It's also not that something involves monetary transactions or not.<p>The point is that some external agent forces someone to change their plans, foregoing what they originally intended. (Economics deals with making choices between the available alternatives; money is only the tip of that iceberg)<p>In the parable as I outlined it, the employment of the glazier is presented as a positive outcome, while ignoring that the homeowner is now unable to buy his new tires, and thus the homeowner has lost the tires <i>and</i> the garage has lost that business.<p>In the stay-at-home-parent scenario, there's a visible gain of a parent giving the child a close bond and (presumably) good upbringing. But the fallacy hides the fact that had someone else not meddled, that parent would be doing something else that also has a positive outcome (else an employer wouldn't be willing to pay for it).<p>We can see that in both examples, the person whose behavior was forced now must be satisfied with a plan that is inferior to their initial intent. And assuming that all are rational actors (as economists generally do), then we can conclude that the total utility thus delivered (over the entire economy) is lower than that of the initial intent.