ProfQuirrell
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User ID: 606
ProfQuirrell
27d ago
This is a conversation The Motte has had before, but I think the real issue is that society just doesn't value being a parent or raising a family. There's no honor or respect in it -- quite the contrary; broader cultural attitudes are frequently hostile to parents (just scroll up a bit to naraburns' top level post about an anti-natalist suicide bombing). This makes it hard to build a community of friends and support since, as you say, a lot of families don't even have the help from their parents any more.
The fertility crisis, such as it is, is not really an economic crisis (although that doesn't help). It's a crisis of soul. Being a good parent (and good spouse) requires sacrifice and gift of self, and nobody really wants that any more, it seems.
ProfQuirrell
27d ago
Good question; just understand that you're getting my estimation of her opinion since she doesn't really spend time on the internet at all.
We talk about this a lot and she'd be in strong agreement with all of those bullet points. I think she'd really emphasize that trying to go it alone as a mother (or any parent, really) is a recipe for disaster -- she's spent a lot of effort cultivating a strong friend group and they have really worked to engineer a system of kid-swaps, playdates, evenings out for the moms (while the dads watch the kids), having expectations that if you need help you can just show up at a friend's house and ask "Hey, can you watch the kids for two hours?" and the friend will make a serious effort to accommodate. That requires a lot of vulnerability! It's difficult to ask for help and you constantly feel like you're being a burden to the people around you; there's probably some embarrassment that you couldn't hack it by yourself. This is something my wife and her friends have had to work on with deliberate effort and I think they've built something really beautiful as a result.
This is a problem with society's broader expectations of parents, in my mind. There is a weird sense in which we both expect too much of parents and too little. You're expected to somehow juggle being a parent with being a careerist -- which is only possible in certain specific settings; there are always tradeoffs. You're held to high expectations for carting kids around to activities, paying for the latest thing, playing with your kids constantly -- all of which, to my mind, are tangential to what actual good parenting looks like. At the same time, I think parents are not held to a high enough standard for loving their spouse, working on their marriage, and fostering a loving household.
The family is the fundamental unit of community -- the best way to help your own kids experience a wonderful and loving life is not to become their friend (you are their parent, do not confuse the two) -- it's to give them siblings. The best way to parent is to make friendships with other families and to give (and receive!) help freely.
My wife does do the majority of the in-person raising -- hard to get around that, since I work and she does not (she's a stay-at-home nurse for our special needs kid, so her situation is kind of unique). But she supplements that with active friendships with other moms and has really built a robust community of support and help. I think she would point approvingly to the way I ensure that I always come home on time, actively help with cleanup, give her breaks in the evenings, handle cooking and cleaning when practical, etc. -- but there's also a sense in which trying to keep score wrt work (at home or otherwise) is a bit of a fool's errand. Once you've started keeping score, your marriage is in serious trouble. Our principle (wisdom passed down from my grandmother), which I have mentioned here before and remains the best advice I have for marriage, is make sacrifices and make them generously.
ProfQuirrell
28d ago
Dad of five kids here -- I had exactly the same reaction you did. I hadn't read Bryan's book, but I had really hoped that he figured out some ways to be a good parent in a way that was sustainable, practical, and life-giving ... but if the answer is "oh I only take care of the kids 1-2 hours a day and hire out the rest" then fuck that, for real.
As someone who is parenting five kids (one of whom has significant special needs) and has done so through some very poor and hard years, consider this a starting place for actual tips:
- You are not your kids' playmate / entertainer; don't take that upon yourself any more than you want to
- Pay less attention to the shenanigans your kids get up to than you think you should; kids need independent play even early on
- Teenage babysitters are a cheat code, should you be able to find any -- we have a 15ish year old neighbor who comes over once or twice a week during the cursed 4 - 5 PM hour just to help my wife out
- Older siblings are amazing but you do have to push through some hard years to get there
- A little bit of cleaning daily goes a long way
- Your marriage is more important than your kids -- focusing on the kids will screw your marriage and the kids, focusing on your spouse will benefit both
- Learn to cook
- If you are the husband, play fewer video games and help your wife out more -- an extra meal or grocery run or massage night every now and again will go a long, long way towards a happy household. Bring her flowers (substitute for your wife's preferences as needed) as often as practical.
ProfQuirrell
1mo ago
It's not sad, it is a rational response to the fact that journalists have zero interest in reporting anything honestly and are de-facto hostile in every interaction you have with them. You would be a fool to ever answer their questions in the same way you'd answer a friend's or co-worker's. You treat it as an opportunity to get your talking points and story out -- nothing more.
Source: me, a local politician
ProfQuirrell
3mo ago
It's not internal enemies. What the fuck am I supposed with an email from "hr@opm.gov" that has never emailed me before? Asking clarification from my chain of command is the right and proper thing to do. If I had seen the email prior to all the news discussion, I would have assumed it was a phishing scam. The entire project was amateur hour from Elon.
ProfQuirrell
3mo ago
Just for the record, I work for the federal government and what you are wondering about is exactly what happened. Some of us got the email, others didn't, we all requested clarification from our supervisor, who immediately said "everyone hold up until I figure out what is going on." The commander said the same thing shortly thereafter, and about twenty four hours later we received the directive from very high up in the chain of command to not respond to the email at this time.
ProfQuirrell
3mo ago
Start Lord of the Rings anyway -- I read it after the Hobbit and even my little kids liked it more and were even more engaged.
The Mote In God's Eye is indeed a fantastic book. I don't know how many other books end literally with an around-the-table conference that still delivers an absolute nail-biter of tension for the ending as you're just praying the main characters can piece together the information in time ... while still feeling lots of empathy for the antagonists (of a sort). On the gripping hand, .....
ProfQuirrell
5mo ago
The movie may be fascist, but the book is significantly different, more nuanced, and better.
ProfQuirrell
8mo ago
I like this quote. I'm a (very minor) elected official myself, and I treated the campaign almost like a job interview. I was entirely honest about my opinions under the theory that I was going to be elected to lead and make decisions and the public should know what decisions I was likely to make. If I won the election, that meant that the public wanted people with my specific ideas in the office.
I am intensely frustrated by my fellow representatives who constantly want to circle back to public opinion when deciding issues -- they elected YOU, right? So what the public WANTS is you to make a decision in accordance with the values you ran on. If we're just going to punt on decisions every time then we're just stuffed shirts; there's no need for elected representatives at all, we'll just run Twitter polls every week and we can stay home.
Congratulations!!!! Welcome to the ranks of parenthood; life is good over here. I do have some sobering advice for first time parents:
Do not shake the baby.
Whenever I give this advice to new parents, they look at me like I'm insane. Of course they aren't going to shake the baby -- they aren't monsters.
But they don't understand -- they have not yet had to deal with the sleep deprivation, the overwhelming feeling of being lost and uncertain of how to care for a new baby for the first time, they don't know what it's like at three in the morning when your wife has begged you to get the baby to sleep because she's exhausted beyond words and she can't do it and you haven't slept either and you have work in four hours and the baby won't stop screaming and you JUST FED the baby and you JUST CHANGED the baby and what the HELL is this stupid baby screaming about and
So. Do not shake the baby. Put the baby down on the floor in a different room (you can put on a fan or noisemaker so you don't have to hear the baby cry for a few minutes). Go somewhere else, listen to some music that you like, watch a dumb youtube video, take a quick shower, get yourself a small splash of scotch, take a few minutes to calm down, and then try again. The baby will be okay without you for a few minutes.
Every parent I have ever talked to has gone through this. They are often ashamed to admit it. You're not a bad person for feeling rage and anger at your child in those desperate moments at night. Sleep depravation and the crushing isolation of new parenthood (especially in modern culture!) is a hell of a combination. It happens to all of us. It's going to be okay. You're going to get through it, you'll get better, and if you have more than one kid (which I highly recommend!) by the time #3 rolls around you'll be an expert. You've got this. You're going to be a great dad. Being a parent is wonderful.
Just don't shake the baby.
ProfQuirrell
9mo ago
Part of the problem here is that modern parents absolutely suck at discipline. Most parents never learn or never feel empowered to tell their kid "Go play by yourself and if you interrupt me or pester me you will get a punishment." Modern parents are grudgingly allowed to punish kids for blatant infractions like hitting or stealing. But it has become unthinkable to punish kids for pestering or interrupting. This really needs to change. With proper discipline, most four year olds are perfectly capable of playing by themselves and not interrupting for an hour.
I just want to underscore this -- this is absolutely correct. Modern parenting (or "gentle" parenting, as the meme goes) makes life SO much harder than it needs to be. Kids do not need their parents (or a screen) to be entertained and you are a fool if you cater to their whims in this way.
I'd also gesture at the great work Jonathan Haidt has been doing calling attention to the dual problem of social media + complete lack of independence and freedom in childhood, but that's a whole other (huge) topic.
ProfQuirrell
9mo ago
That's a good read. It's a pretty nifty bit of persuasive writing and a good perspective for men to be thinking about, especially if they haven't seen pregnancy and childbirth firsthand.
Much of the suffering involved in pregnancy / childbirth was known to me already as I "coached" (or whatever the term is) my wife through three deliveries with no painkillers (she wanted a natural birth and got one) and then two more with epidurals ... the latter were strange experiences; going from relaxedly playing a board game to pushing within the span of thirty minutes is a trip.
I've written about parenthood before (1, 2, 3, 4) and about my experience raising a special needs child on DSL so I think I have some credibility on this topic.
The Princess Bride has a great related quote:
Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
Pregnancy is hard. Childbirth is hard, occasionally horrifically so (in a previous century my wife might have bled to death after our second child -- modern medicine is a wonderful thing). Parenting is hard and cramps your style in a major way. Marriage is hard.
But ... damn it, you have to do hard things in life. Living an authentically good and virtuous life requires sacrifice of yourself in the service of greater things. We used to understand this. Hedonism and the pursuit of pleasure and utility above all else are absolutely toxic to the project of building a family, building a community, and building a country.
I realize this is a controversial claim, but I think the "fertility crisis" is ultimately a crisis of spirit. I fully acknowledge that the modern world makes the project of having and raising children difficult in important ways including but not limited to:
- The wasteland of modern dating and dating apps
- The tremendous increase of housing / education / healthcare / childcare costs relative to inflation and income
- Cultures as a whole not conferring status upon mothers and fathers and institutions seemingly going out of their way to discourage parenthood
However, I increasingly feel like the ultimate failure is one of selfishness. Raising a family requires tremendous sacrifice from both mother and father (although as a father of five I will readily admit my wife has it "worse" in many ways and I think as a good husband one of my primary duties is to support and offer assistance in recognition of that fact).
I really think the fundamental problem is that people are increasingly uninterested in anything that requires them to make sacrifices. Shying away from having and raising kids is just one example of this.
ProfQuirrell
9mo ago
Father of five, one of whom has significant special needs. I wrote about him here on DSL) and I think I touch on a number of your questions in that post.
@naraburns nailed it, in particular the discussion of how parenthood is transformative. Those of us on one side of the transition really can't explain it. I will note that it is very easy to imagine all of the ways in which being a parent is a drag and a bore and very difficult to picture how it will radically transform your life for the better.
To your points:
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Our respective families are similarly about 1,000 miles (or 1,400 miles) away. It's definitely hard and we treasure time with family as a result. Invest in babysitting early and often.
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This doesn't matter at all. People used to raise families in single-room cabins. Our first apartment (while I was doing graduate school and my wife was doing nursing school) was 640 sq. ft. Finances matter much, much less than people think. All of the horrifying news articles you see about how expensive it is to raise a family are fundamentally flawed. The financial hit is less important than radical shifts in the way you have to live your life ... which naraburns already spoke eloquently about. I've opined on this topic before.
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Your independence and free time will assuredly be sacrificed as a parent, but you'll be a better person after the tradeoff, I promise.
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Well, you have some influence in whether or not this happens -- Bryan Caplan says (correctly) in Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids that your children are pretty likely to turn out like you and your spouse, so if you want more people like you in the world ....
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See my link above. It is a tremendous ordeal. I cannot overstate how much of an ordeal it is. But it is also a tremendous opportunity to grow in virtue and, dare I say, a blessing and a gift ... although it took me many years to understand why.
I have no regrets. Have kids. Be a parent. The world needs good parents and good families. It's the greatest and most fulfilling adventure you can imagine (with the possible exception of marriage).
ProfQuirrell
9mo ago
I'm not trying to do anything of the kind, I'm well aware of issues with academia.
I have some experience with local politics and I'm telling you one of the biggest challenges is getting good people to run. Anyone who is remotely sane or competent wants nothing to do with politics.
ProfQuirrell
9mo ago
We already have a problem with smart, sane people staying the hell away from politics -- this would make it worse.
ProfQuirrell
10mo ago
But it would be good to hear from people who are satisfied with their romantic life for a change. Are there any Mottezians with happy love lives who want to share their experience?
Catholic, married twelve years, five kids (one of whom has significant special needs, I typed up a long post about him on DSL). I don't know what experiences you'd want to hear about, but the most useful approach I've learned over the years is this: you need to re-frame every problem as something external to the relationship and view your spouse as a teammate in fixing the problem. Do this even if the problem seems to be your spouse.
On a related note, at a certain point the relationship needs to become more important than your individual success or happiness. This works great in a Catholic marriage where divorce is explicitly off the table; not nearly as actionable in other contexts.
Make sacrifices, and make them generously.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
Right, so the expression comes from that fact -- the mutually agreed upon statement points in two directions. One person can say "Aha, so we know that B is true." and the other person can say "Aha, so we know that A is false."
Let's say you have a statement:
If A, then B.
There are two syllogisms that can be derived from this statement, one of which is referred to as Modus Ponens and the other of which is Modus Tollens.
Modus Ponens:
- If A, then B
- A
- Therefore, B
Modus Tollens:
- If A, then B
- Not B
- Therefore, not A
Where the statement / joke comes in is when you start making an actual argument where the two people agree on the conditional, but one is arguing that A is true and the other is arguing that B is false. Let's say something like:
If morality is objective, there is a God.
The first person takes the objectivity of morality as proof that God exists, but the second person takes the non-existence of God as proof that morality can't be objective. Despite both parties accepting the conditional, they still believe different things.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
Only the heir to the kingdom of idiots fights a war on 13 fronts.
Great reference.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
As one of the (mostly) silent majority who got a few ACQs back when we were on Reddit, you summed it up well.
I also share your frustration that media seems completely uninterested in citing any primary source, particularly court documents. It's not hard at all to find the .pdfs, so I can only assume they don't want readers to come to their own conclusions; just trust whatever we tell you!
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
Test passed, no doubt.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
Epistemic status: Uncertain
My lifting plan is centered around barbell work with some dumbbell accessory movements. I don't use machines at all. The reason to use free weights rather than machines is that you activate all kinds of smaller stabilizing muscles that aren't hit when using a machine because the machine guides the path of the weight for you. The advantage to using a machine would be to target your larger muscles in a very specific way.
My guess would be that gym owners invest in machines because:
- They are safer; you can seriously hurt yourself on a bench press if you don't have a spotter and don't have safety rails set up. You can't hurt yourself with a chest press machine.
- They're more user friendly; any schmuck can walk into a gym and immediately start using a machine rather than having to futz around with getting the settings right on a power rack and making sure they have good form etc.
- They're more sexy; newbies love using machines
But no, you don't actually need them and in my opinion you're better off not using them ... but really as long as you're getting in the gym consistently and pushing yourself hard you will progress (especially at first); the specifics aren't really that important.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
She was mostly determined to take posed photos of the kids, culminating a very staged attempt at getting a video of her reading a book to all the kids, keeping two of them up past their bed times. I don't think she learned anything from the experience, though the video is hard to watch with all the crying from the younger two.
As someone with five kids (one special needs) and a mother in law who is similarly useless / kind of narcissistic, I was filled with second-hand rage reading this. Hang in there, that's really hard.
ProfQuirrell
1yr ago
I do a fitness test with my students where I can crank out a little over 20 in a row. The thing that helped me the most was adding weight for training using a dip belt. I mixed pullups into my normal lifting routine with two variations depending on what else I was doing:
Pullups at 3x6 with a low amount of additional weight (normally I do this with about 25 lbs, but start lower)
Pullups at 5x3 with a high amount of additional weight (now it's something like 80 lbs, but start lower)
Do linear progression for the above.
Throw in some 3x8 or 3x10 normal pullups or chinups from time to time too.
I think just additional volume on the same motion won't really help you; the big thing is to make it harder. So add weight, same as you do for any other lift!
I agree with you about spending time with kids -- I love playing with them, reading to them, doing crazy games with them, etc. As my kids get older, I'm taking them out to hike or climb or teaching them board games etc. But I also don't hesitate to tell them "no" if they want me to play a game with them and I'm working on dinner and I think modern parenting has this failure mode where you actually spend too much time with your kids and not enough time letting them develop independently ... and then you can actually use that time to help with housework or reading a book you enjoy or what have you.
(and, of course, there's some "should you reverse any advice you hear" stuff going on where some parents need to be told "do not give kids a fucking phone, put yours away, and actually be present for your kid")
This, 100%.
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