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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9812 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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Copying over @RenOS's post from the old thread because I want to talk about it:

Let’s assume you’re a car mechanic. You love your job, even though it is dirty, hot and physically straining. You go through a bookshop, and stumble over one book in particular: “Why being a car mechanic is great”. It explains the importance of the job for society, it talks about the perks, and so on. You look up the guy who wrote it and yep, he runs a car shop. You buy the book and recommend it to many of your friends, maybe even some teens who might consider the path.

Fast forward, the writer is on some talkshow. Somebody asks him how he handles all the grease. He reacts, uh no, of course he doesn’t get greasy, that’s his staff. He just really likes talking with customers. Maybe he does one car once in a while, if the work isn’t too hard and the car is really nice.

I can’t help but think this after reading Scott’s latest book review of “Selfish reasons to have more kids”. No, we don’t have nannies and housekeepers. In fact, almost nobody we know has them. Some have a cleaning lady coming … once per week, for an hour or so. Tbh, this significantly lowered my opinion of both Scott and Caplan. If you want a vision of a more fertile, sustainable future for the general population, it should not involve having your own personal staff. Two hours is nothing.

And I find this especially frustrating since I think it’s really not necessary; Yes having small kids is really exhausting - after putting the kids to bed around 8-9, my personal routine is to clean the house for two hours until 10-11 every day, and then directly go to bed with maybe an audiobook on (but often I’m too tired for even that, and enjoy falling to sleep directly) - but it’s doable, and the older the kids are, the less work they are, at least in terms of man-hours. The worst is usually over after around 3 yo. And the time before that in the afternoon can be a lot of fun.

At least for me, one of the biggest draws of kids is that it’s, to use poetic terms, “a glimpse of the infinite” that is available for everyone. Everyone wants to leave something behind, political activism is sold on making a change, careers are sold on becoming a (girl-)boss managing others. Yet, the perceptive (or, less charitably, those capable of basic arithmetic) will notice that only a tiny sliver of the population can ever cause the kind of innovation that really changes culture, or who can come into positions of substantial power over others.

Kids, however, everyone can have them. And they really are their own little person (especially my stubborn little bastards). And they will have kids as well, who will also carry forward some part of yourself. I’m not just talking genetics here, though that is a large part, the same will go for how you raise them. Unless you leave that to the nannies, I guess, but that’s your own fault.

I wouldn’t have written this since it’s mostly venting tbh, but I’ve seen some here mentioning wanting to discuss it, so I thought may as well start. What do you think?

We should start thinking about raising the birth rates as a practical, logistic and technological problem to solve and not a moral commandment to enforce upon society. And I think Caplan's approach to convincing people to have kids is a step in the right direction.

First, some things have to be be acknowledged. Pro-natalists will not get people to have more kids with moral arguments.

For most, having kids is a risk-reward calculation, and, given freedom of choice, at current levels of expected investment in terms of time, money and effort, less and less people are going to have kids, and TFRs will continue to fall. It just seems like a bad deal to many people – they don't want to give up their free time and life's little pleasures for 5-10-15 years (depending on the number of kids) for dubious benefit. The pro-natalist side may reply that "it may seem like a bad deal now, but your whole perspective on life will change once you have kids!". Well, what if it won't? The life described by you and other people down the thread seems downright miserable to non-parents. Once you have a kid, you're stuck spending most of your time and extra income on them at least for the next 10 years. That is a huge downside risk that you're asking people to take as, essentially, a leap of faith.

Trying to convince young people with spiritual arguments (from Christian pro-natalism to vaguely gesturing towards the fate of the West, human race and the infinite) is laughable. Ain't no one actually, truly believes in those things or cares about them, to the point where it influences their actions, and the minority that does already has kids. Every young Catholic I've met uses contraception, and a few have had abortions. The genie is out of the bottle and it's never coming back. Nor is the "lonely cat lady" scaremongering effective, for that matter.

You have to meet people where they are at, and where they're at is a world of hedonism and infinite alternatives. Unless you have a way take away their freedom, which you don't, you have to sweeten the deal. Alter the risk-reward calculus. Make it drastically cheaper to hire help (perhaps by mass-importing Philippina maids, Singapore style, with no path to citizenship). Offer massive tax credit and subsidize childcare. Somehow convince people that they can relax and not care about extracurriculars and mostly let their kids entertain themselves, which is what Caplan writes about. Create artificial wombs. Whatever. Make having kids somehow take less money and, most importantly, less time and effort. People can spare the money. The hand-wringing about kids being too expensive is mostly cope. But they will not surrender their time, and every attempt to take it from them forcefully will be rejected at the ballot box.

The pro-natalists have to do something other than shake their fists at people and tell them to "suck it up and just do hard things like your ancestors did". No one will "just". No one has ever "just". The left had to learn this painful lesson in the recent years, and it's high time for the pro-natalist right to do the same.

(This rant is mostly aimed at the pro-natalist discourse I see day in and day out in my feed, not your post in particular. If it is not obvious, I sincerely wish them luck, it's not a boo outgroup post)

It seems this wasn't my best post. A lot of people concentrate on my negative sentiment towards Scott, which isn't that strong. It's particularly Caplan who comes off poorly, since he literally wrote a book on it. But it's my fault, I clearly wrote as if I judge them equally. And I don't really begrudge either their privilege in particular; That has never much been my thing.

But it's still fine, because it made me think again about what I am unhappy about. And that is the (lack of a) positive vision of a secular, sustainable, fertile future for the general public. I grew up conservative religious, and while it's still among the most fertile regions in germany, even there is now below replacement. And besides - no offense - while I'd love to be capable of believing, pretty much all spirituality strikes me as deeply silly at worst, and obvious motivated reasoning at best. If that is what is needed to get people to have kids, that's how it'll be. But I'd like for us to at least try.

Any social movement needs someone showing the way, not just pointing out the theory, but actually living it. In physics, "you haven't done any experimental verification" is a valid criticism, so it should be the same here.

And Caplan is not that. Yes he at least has kids, but the broader population can't just "hire more nannies". The greater family, or a teenager occasionally, or older siblings or a cleaning lady once a week. But it's striking that this isn't what comes to mind for Caplan; It's nannies, because he can easily afford them. And the family also isn't always regularly available in the modern mobile world. So we need a vision that can make do with the "nuclear family" + occasional minor helpers. Without ruining your work prospects. So who does this leave us with? @ProfQuirrell ? Certainly not Elon, as much as I respect his business sense, he seems like an awful father. Not me, at least not yet, I only have two so far. The Collins don't seem to have official nannies, though renting out an apartment for free in exchange for childcare doesn't strike me as very generalizable, either.

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.

But it's still fine, because it made me think again about what I am unhappy about. And that is the (lack of a) positive vision of a secular, sustainable, fertile future for the general public. I grew up conservative religious, and while it's still among the most fertile regions in germany, even there is now below replacement. And besides - no offense - while I'd love to be capable of believing, pretty much all spirituality strikes me as deeply silly at worst, and obvious motivated reasoning at best. If that is what is needed to get people to have kids, that's how it'll be. But I'd like for us to at least try.

Sorry to hear you feel that way about spirituality. I hate to break it to you, but I highly doubt a secular worldview will ever give you what you want, especially in this lifetime.

If your priors are unbreakable here, I won't try to argue with you. But suffice to say I was a hardcore atheist turned Orthodox Christian. It can happen. Psychedelics could help too ;)

I don't really understand your complaint, having a cleaning lady is not some rich person extravagance. Its affordable for pretty much everyone in society. If you have a job, you can afford it.

The bay area is a sufficiently broken-by-cost-disease economy that I don't know if that's actually true. In Texas it definitely would be- I can get a cleaning lady to come and clean my whole house for, like, $80 if I'm willing to pay her directly instead of going through an agency.

Bay Area != East Bay.

He's paying a lot less in Oakland than he would be in SF / South Bay / Berkeley. There is a large undocumented/recently-documented population there, who works at or lower than minimum wage. You can get it down to ~$150/month (4 visits). That's not too bad.

Am in HCOL California. Can confirm the base rate for low skill domestic help is in the low $30s/hr if you’re paying cash.

High skilled nannies run $40 and up, paid above the table, plus bennies and insurances that drive the cost up.

Cleanly lady and full time nanny are VERY different things my friend.

Oh, I thought you were quoting Scott.

I don't have much intelligent to say about childrearing, so I'll steer clear of that, but I find it interesting that people are commenting as though Scott was writing without self-awareness. A lot of the post is Scott trying to figure out if parents are actually devoting more time to childcare than in the past, it's liberally peppered with self-deprecation, and it was published a day after "In Search of r/petfree", which was partly informed by Scott's own experience with misophonia.

Growing up I never thought I would be so rich as to own an automobile, or so poor as to lack a maid. -- Agatha Christie

Rich people should hire more domestic servants, it is the normal course of life that has been derailed by the universal American pretension of being Middle Class.

Wouldn't encouraging rich people to hire more staff to help them raise more kids be one of the most profoundly eugenic changes we could make to culture? Shouldn't we be happy that they are having more smart kids, and spending their money on that instead of whatever weird dumb crap they'd spend it on otherwise? By having more smart rich kids they're raising the IQ of the next generation, by paying child-oriented young women money as nannies and babysitters they are helping those young women accumulate resources that will hopefully lead to their reproductive success.

-- Being raised largely by a succession of nannies, maids, servants, babysitters, boarding school headmasters, and seeing your father as largely a distant Zeus-like figure is pretty normal throughout human history for much of the upper class. Most of the trad upper class of the old European Aristocracy imagined by the reactionary right was raised that way.

-- Domestic service is a clearly positive sum transaction in which people whose skills max out at watching babies or doing laundry or scrubbing floors get paid to do that, while people whose skills are much more highly paid avoid wasting their time on those tasks. An upper class that doesn't hire servants is in a sense failing the lower class by not providing that employment.

-- Related to this: Successive administrations have made Au Pair programs more onerous and difficult. This is the worst administration policy imaginable: Au Pairs are essentially the best immigrants imaginable, employed family oriented young women. There is no number of them you could bring in that would be harmful the country.

-- I just can't see where Nanny-Envy splits from envy for any other material good or marker of upper class status. This seems like a good place for Scott and his wife to put their resources, a better place than most other things rich people do with their resources! It seems odd to say that a rich person can do whatever they want to do with their money, freedom and capitalism and whatnot, but that it's wrong if they use that money to hire people to make their lives easier. Would the people who are jealous of Scott's nanny, which we'll say costs him $100k/yr, be similarly up in pitchforks if he owned an expensive house or car or bought his wife jewelry of the same value?

You look at pro-natalism from the PoV of an aristocrat (edit: not implying whether you yourself are one or not). I'm not an aristocrat; I want a pro-natalist vision for the general public. I'm already trying to live it, to some degree, and plan to carry on. Caplan's book gives off the impression that he does so, too, but in reality, he lives it in a way that is not generally attainable. He is not a good role model for such a vision. That is fine, I don't begrudge him his privilege in itself and I'm not at all against rich people having nannies. But it also means I have to look elsewhere, and I do dislike the wrong impression he gives.

Taxes, regulations, formal employment with fixed/limited hours, reduction of inequality, and Baumol's cost disease have pretty much wiped out any financial advantage for hiring help. It's pure luxury now, and expensive luxury at that. You can't pay someone $30/hr and spend the time saved at your $80/hr job. One, you're probably salaried and the marginal time won't pay at $80/hr. Two, you're paying that $30 out of post-tax money and the $80 will be taxed at your marginal rate, perhaps in the 45% range. Three, you'll have to pay payroll taxes on the $30 too. Four, it won't be $30 on the legal market, it'll be more. So no, you really can't afford help.

You can definitely make it work in the legal market in the UK, and the US has lower taxes and higher inequality, so it should work better in the US. Apart from your maths being off on the wage gap between hired help and the PMC, the crucial point is that in a city professional job the marginal hours are the highest-paying hours in the long run because they are the ones that get you promoted. Professionals who work 50 hour weeks earn a lot more over the length of a career than professionals who work 40 hour weeks, not just 25% more.

In the US, you have to pay for your employee's health insurance. This is cost prohibitive for all but the very wealthy.

We have far fewer servants in part because we have far more labor-saving devices. We have a dishwasher and laundry machines with wrinkle free fabric(my wife doesn't have to spend much time ironing) and a microwave and a refrigerator so we can save leftovers and a vacuum cleaner with attachments that let us get behind furniture instead of moving it and etc etc. Domestic labor used to just take so so much more time.

But we also have much higher returns to specialization. A surgeon that’s invested five years and a residency has much higher relative marginal output than in decades prior.

Oh absolutely- and I’d imagine most surgeons don’t mow their own lawns, scrub their own toilets, etc.

I'm reminded here of Arnold Kling's "Where are the Servants?" from back in 2011:

In an economy where some folks are very rich and many folks are unemployed, why are there not more personal servants? Why don’t Sergey Brin and Bill Gates have hundreds of people on personal retainer?

Both in the comments there, and in responses I remember reading elsewhere, some posit cultural factors (I recall someone elsewhere recounting a passage from a history book talking about the culture clash when a European aristocrat visiting a wealthy American in the mid 19th century tried treating an employee like a European domestic servant). But plenty of people point out that the same services are still available to the rich, just in the form of specialized firms. To quote commenter "mark" on that page:

It’s a definitional issue – what is a “servant” vs “employee” vs “contractor”. Think of administrative assistants, personal trainers, personal chefs, cleaning services, car services, handymen, private plane pilots, personal book keeper, family wealth manager (the “family office”) and so on. Would you call them “servants”? I suspect not. But all they do is provide personal services to higher income people who have specialized their labor towards a lot of income. You can call them “small business owners”, “contractors or “employees”. The differences are modest. Maybe “servant” connotes livery, a small room in one person’s mansion etc. But in the old days “servant” was just another word for employee – “master – servant” relations was another phrase for the employment relationship.

And Bryan Willman:

I’m no billionare, though I have known a few.

But there is a squad of people who maintain my lawn – I don’t call them servants, or retainers, I call them the landscaping company, and I hire them for that specialized task like all the rest of their clients. The “manage the staff” bit that a butler (I think) would have done is dealt with by me hiring the company – that company’s management deals with everybody else.

Likewise the house cleaners (again, a company that specializes in that.)

No so different, the garage I take my cars to for maintence (they give me a ride to my office), my Doctor (who is no retainer but certainly provides personal medical services better than any King of England got until fairly recently.)

I do, in a sense, have “retainers” – but we tend to call them lawyers….

I have an accountant, whom I share with his other clients, but is very much paid to tend to a particular part of my affairs.

Bill Gates has private planes, whose pilots are most likely provided by a service like netjets even if the plane isn’t leased out. So there’s a “family transportation staff” even if none of them see a check signed directly by Bill.

You don't have a gardener, you hire a landscaping service to come by regularly. You don't have maids, you hire a cleaning service. Instead of a "lady's maid" taking care of your hair, you've got a hair dresser. You don't have a coachman, you call up a car service. And instead of nannies, you've got daycare.

From other comments there:

Dan Hill:

As Don Bordreaux points out that they probably buy many of these services in the marketplace, rather than employing people to provide those services as rich people used to do.

That’s a function of two things; how efficient and liquid markets now are at providing these services and the significant fixed costs (and legal risks) in being an employer in a modern regulatory environment.

Bottom line, I’m pretty sure one way or another these guys do not mow their own lawns, wash their own cars or clean their own toilets!

Tracy W:

I’m a bit puzzled by your terminology. The labour market is as much a market as the appliance market. Perhaps the main difference is standardisation – if I buy a dishwasher I can get a pretty good idea of the quality by recommendations and reviews of dishwashers, if I own a good dishwasher and I suddenly lose it (say to a home fire), I can buy another of the same brand with reasonable confidence that I’ll get another good quality one. But people differ more, my neighbour might employ a great maid, but her sister might be hopeless, and if I employ a fantastic maid and she quits for whatever reason, I can’t just go out and hire another version of her. (Not that I employ servants, but I have for example noticed far more quality differences between different waiters than between different dishwashers of the same brand.)

More from Bryan Willman:

“Help” is NEVER CHEAP, unless the help ALREADY KNOWS WHAT TO DO.

It’s not just minimum wage, or government regulations and burdens.

It’s that for very many tasks, I can do it faster than I can explain it. That’s not true of landscaping or house cleaning, but it is of many many other tasks. No matter how I value my time, paying somebody else to listen to me explain it and then do it, all more slowly than I could do it, is a loss. Worse when they have to ask me questions about it.

Now add management of people, the risks and hazards of having people around (being sued for something, having stuff stolen, people quarreling with one another, people forgetting their keys, etc.)

Note that most of these issues apply even if the wage rate is 0. That is, I would refuse to have people come “help me” for free.

The person who had a staff in Thailand (which was a pain) only had to put up with that due to lack of appliances and weirdness of the transport system. Who today would hire a dish washer for their household? Somebody to manually do what the clothes washer does?

…

Two more items to add to the thread.

1. My accoutants and lawyers give me a body of advice which can be summed up as “NO EMPLOYEES EVER”. There is a minimum cost associated with having an employee – a minimum (long) list of things one must do and do right to avoid fines, surprize costs, meddling, and sometimes jail. Hiring all services out to companies side steps all of that.

People who already have companies with employees have a much easier time adding a personal assistant using that same infrastructure.

2. A fair part of the current “rich” are folks who are geeks like me, often from modest backgrounds, who made fortunes in the PC revolution (and to a lesser extent the .com bubble.)

There’s a whole host of “fancy services” some of these new rich just don’t care about. Another set that involve human interactions they are uncomfortable with. (Remember, we’re talking programmer geeks here. We can be way stranger than most people realize.)

In short, hiring somebody directly is legally and financially scary, requires out-of-the-ordinary personal interactions, and may have low perceived effective returns.

The modern way is more efficient, taking advantage of specialization and centralization. (Of course one can make the case, as Yarvin once did, that this is the sort of area where increasing employment might be preferable to raw economic efficiency.) Further, the burden of finding and sorting out quality staff, of dealing with all the tax and regulatory burden of employment, the employer liability, et cetera, is borne by the landscaping/cleaning/daycare/whatever service instead of the rich person.

Thus, as Steve Sailer notes:

Life is better for rich people than ever before. They get all the advantages of being rich, including all the personal services they want when and where they want them, without the old-fashioned disadvantages like having to dress for dinner to set a good example and discussing things “not in front of the servants.”

Edit: here's a follow-up of sorts from Kling on his Substack "Servants to the Rich, 1/18" in 2022:

Some of the components of the twentieth-century middle class are declining . The percentage of the work force that can be called manufacturing production workers is down. Many mom-and-pop retail businesses have been defeated by Wal-Mart and Amazon.

Ten years ago, I wrote Where are the Servants?

In an economy where some folks are very rich and many folks are unemployed, why are there not more personal servants? Why don’t Sergey Brin and Bill Gates have hundreds of people on personal retainer?

Perhaps we are now living in the New Servants economy. Tyler Cowen has a series called “those new service-sector jobs.” My favorites include Coffin Whisperer and Wedding Hashtag Composer. The demand for such services can only come from people with excess wealth, and the supply comes from people who realize that their best source of income is to cater to those with excess wealth. This is very different from the age of mass consumption, when Henry Ford tried to manufacture cars that his workers could afford.

Actually, I think that the biggest engine of the trickle-down economy is the nonprofit sector. I don’t have data on this, but I suspect that if you ask the next 10 young professionals you meet where they work, at least 3 of them will reply that they work for nonprofits.

In the 1970s, the catch-phrase “petro-dollar recycling” became popular among international economic technocrats. The idea was that oil-rich countries accumulated substantial wealth, and this wealth would somehow find its way to poor countries, primarily being channeled as loans.

Today, I think that what we are seeing is “techno-dollar recycling.” Winners in technology and finance have accumulated substantial wealth. This wealth finds its way to young professionals, primarily being channeled through nonprofits.

(One interesting bit — for me — that really dates the piece is from the very end:

And here is Sam Harris interviewing, and slobbering over, young billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. Not once does Harris ask the question of why it is more ethical for Bankman-Fried to donate his money in an unaccountable way than it is for him to invest his money in profit-seeking business. I don’t count on Congress allocating resources wisely, so I don’t favor wealth taxes. But I don’t count on any billionaire allocating resources wisely without any feedback mechanism.

I find Bankman-Fried scary, and my guess is that I would find other billionaires with his approach to altruism just as scary. I don’t think that any one person has as clear a picture of morality as Bankman-Fried and Harris believe that they own.

Yeah, we saw how that turned out, didn't we?)

From "Servants Without Masters" by Harold Lee:

Singapore’s policy on guest workers would make for an interesting essay in its own right. Briefly, though, the government makes it easy for guest workers to come if they can find work in various industries, including domestic service. Once in, you get a visa for a couple years, which does not come with voting rights or many of the perks of citizenship. But because this system is so rigorous in ensuring that would-be guest workers are net economic positives, it’s politically feasible for Singapore to take in a lot of guest workers. Proportionally, Singapore’s guest worker population is equivalent to the US taking in about two-thirds the population of Mexico – with huge net benefits to them and their families.

Which is all well and good from a policy perspective, but did nothing for me when faced with the reality of interacting with my host family’s maid. There, in the flesh, was a middle-aged Filipino woman who was just there to attend to my needs, as a guest of the family. I was expected to ask her to wash my clothes, for example, and prepare whatever I wanted for breakfast. And for all my admiration of the political needle-threading of Singaporean immigration policy, this situation completely freaked me out. It made me intensely uncomfortable to have someone hanging around just to attend to my needs, and tell them to do menial chores for me.

And yet, when I thought about it, I realized that I had no problem with janitors or baristas doing dirty work for me. My emotional reaction was not really about being an American with sturdy frontier values of self-sufficiency. I was perfectly happy to farm out menial work – as long as it was done by a faceless worker in a uniform, rather than a single person I was expected to have a relationship with. This incongruence was one of the major lessons I took from my trip to Singapore. Even after I returned to the Land of the Free, I kept being struck by the ease with which I blithely accepted the service of servants as long as they were framed as business transactions with dehumanized service workers.

And I noticed that the same blind spot applied in the other direction, in people’s attitudes towards submission towards superiors. The very word “submissiveness” tends to raise people’s hackles in our culture, but in fact we are happy to accept it – if and only if it’s submission to a faceless institution, rather than to someone’s personal authority. In an old-school apprenticeship, the master essentially runs your life for seven years and can bring you back if you run away, possibly with a flogging for good measure. This seems incredibly coercive today, and is probably one of the reasons apprenticeship and other forms of demanding mentorship are in short supply. But at the same time, it’s considered completely unremarkable for someone to go into nondischargeable debt to go to grad school and work hard to satisfy every whim of their professors. For a more barbed example, it’s considered entirely unremarkable for a woman to be submissive to her boss, but sounds terribly suspect to expect her to be equivalently submissive to her husband.

The very rich do still have servants, though the job titles may be different. It's just that you need to be (a) extremely rich and (b) accustomed to the notion of having servants (or staff). Gates may be extremely rich, but he did not grow up with servants in the house.

Employment agencies aren't a new thing, they were around in the 19th century where people looking for domestic and service positions would hand in their details and clients would seek servants from such, because the idea was (pace that comment about dishwashers versus maids) they would be pre-vetted and a reputable agency would provide good servants.

Thanks for putting this together!

A fair part of the current “rich” are folks who are geeks like me, often from modest backgrounds, who made fortunes in the PC revolution (and to a lesser extent the .com bubble.) There’s a whole host of “fancy services” some of these new rich just don’t care about.

This is the part that I'm really pointing at and asking why. I think a lot of the cost, trust, complication, regulation, and availability would become soluble if there were more desire. If my entire law school graduating class (sub med school, MBA, or first years at McKinsey as you prefer) were looking for nannies, word would get around, there would be a roster of trustworthy women to do that kind of work that my peers would be able to pass to me in the same way they once passed me lists of classes and outlines and apartments to rent.

If there were a desire on the part of the upper-PMC to hire large numbers of domestics, then we would see the market and regulations alter to accommodate their desires.

But I posit that there is a market-irrational lack of desire to hire domestics, or even a desire to avoid doing so that feeds into the cost disease and lack of choice and poor options all around.

Zooming back in to childcare in particular: annual cost of daycare can run north of $25,000 per child per year. Multiply that by 2-3 kids, and you quickly get close to the cost of a $20/hr full time employee!

So there should be more of a market than there is. This is a soluble problem.

But I look around at my peers in Dual-High-Income/Prestige households, young couples that met at a T10 law school and both work high end jobs, and what I'm seeing isn't that they don't want or don't "care about" the "fancy services" of domestic help. What I'm seeing is a weird cultural tendency to lean towards services and daycares regardless of cost, by equating daycare to "school" (regardless of cost); while an antipathy exists towards having a nanny, something like having a desire to have a slave.

To some extent I do think that the managers and pimps of service providers largely act as very profitable sin-eaters of the PMC, taking on the cost of hiring and firing and disciplining employees. But we see that really break down with child care, where providers are paying employees peanuts and charging families gold, and there doesn't seem to be a will or opportunity to cut out the middlemen.

For hiring an FTE, keep in mind that you are typically on the hook for all the fun things like healthcare and retirement plans that you never see the costs of as an employee. Those can run hideously expensive. It’s possible to hire someone under the table, but there are risks associated because it is quite literally illegal.

I looked into nanny costs, and in my state, it really isn’t $20/hr. And this is true for most affluent states, to the best of my knowledge. A good daycare built around a tight-knit and inherently somewhat exclusive community will almost always run you cheaper, like the church-associated ones that others have mentioned. (I saved significant cash going from 3/wk to 5/wk from a downmarket nanny to one such daycare.) I think the arbitrage is way less than your instincts are telling you.

I think the obvious answer is that it smacks of slavery.

I looked hard into starting a daycare a couple years ago precisely because the economics were so insane that it seemed like an obvious opportunity. Demand is high and supply is low. The rates are unbelievable.

My findings: The regulations suck but are manageable. The problem is finding any women to do the job. Very few seem willing. The success stories I found leveraged hiring from within a church and so on.

Recruiting for childcare services, if the service is reputable, means that there are basic qualifications the staff must have. If it's not reputable, they'll hire any warm body. The pitfall for workers in both cases is cost-cutting. Labour is a big cost, so trying to keep wages costs down is important in order to be affordable for parents. But if the wages are too low, it's not worth working there. And if it's a shady operation, it'll pay even worse, have higher child-to-staff ratios (even than legal), and the money goes into the pockets of the owners rather than on the premises and equipment for the kids.

People legitimately complain about the high price of childcare, but it's a job and you have to pay employees a reasonable wage. And just brushing it off as "anyone can do it" - well, there's Scott's entire piece about how he can only handle a couple of hours a day taking care of his own kids.

Men are just not generally suited to caring for small children. Last I checked, the highest rate of antidepressant usage by sex and profession was men working with small children, and it was more than twice the next item on the list.

I don't know why people have such a hard time believing that women are psychologically better-suited than men for caring for small children.

Last I checked, the highest rate of antidepressant usage by sex and profession was men working with small children, and it was more than twice the next item on the list.

I mean, have you ever tried throwing a toddler over your shoulder and spinning him around while he giggles? It's pretty great.

I can totally see how childcare at daycare scale with daycare constraints would grind me down. I also wonder how much the current rules are the way they are because they're written by and for women. And I'm also curious how much the depression you refer to is increased or decreased by selection effects.

To play devil's advocate, how much of that antidepressant use is the combination of 1) everyone assuming they're deviants and 2) tail effects from an extremely small population?

I'd be interested in seeing the difference(if it's been measured) between male elementary school teachers and little league coaches.

Devil's advocacy is fair, but this is one of those things where it occurs to me as terminally reddit-brained to ask for a source (not that you did). Someone would have to be so incredibly propagandized and blind to what's right in front of his face to doubt the matter.

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I don't know why people have such a hard time believing that women are psychologically better-suited than men for caring for small children.

Because the follow-up question is "are men better-suited psychologically to certain tasks?", and the answer, "yes", strikes at the heart of how Western society's nobles (women as class) justify their current position as nobility.

Last I checked, the highest rate of antidepressant usage by sex and profession was men working with small children, and it was more than twice the next item on the list.

Possible source (tables 3 and 4)

ProfessionIncrease to chance of
taking antidepressant (%)
for men		…for women
Not human services+0+0
Human services+22+0
Human services:
Education professionals		+9−8
Human services:
Education professionals:
Secondary-school teachers		+8−7
Human services:
Education professionals:
Preschool teachers		+20−2
Human services:
Education professionals:
Childcare workers		+72+7
Human services:
Social workers		+62+19
Human services:
Social workers:
Not benefit administrators
or social care workers		+111+27

Domestic labor is broadly unaffordable. When I was looking for a nanny the going rate was $30-40/hour. Between unemployment and demand I'd expect the market to sort this out, but the underclass is apparently comfortable enough, and regulation enough of a hindrance, that it doesn't happen. The only people I know with full-time nannies are single moms who make hundreds of thousands per year.

Yes, and your mother took care of you when you were sick. But if you are sick and go to a hospital and have nurses looking after you, they don't do it on the same basis as "well my mom gave me chicken soup and aspirin when I was ill, anyone can do this, why pay the big bucks to have someone just give me soup and aspirin?"

But people go to the hospital for a different set of problems than they're fed chicken soup by their mothers, as evidenced by the fact that children with mothers still end up in the hospital at times.

With childcare it does seem like we're looking for simple skills: I'm sure some people would want nannies that are teaching their kids algebra, but there's clearly a demand for "keep them fed and clean and away from electrical sockets" level of childcare.

The bigger issue is I think trust: the actual tasks are simple but having someone reliable enough to do them every time, not cut corners, and not take opportunities to enrich themselves with access to the family home is a little more difficult when we're trying to bring costs down.

You don't want the type of people who are unemployed to take care of your kids though.

The people you want taking care of your kids are unaffordable since they've better options. The market can't really solve this for the middle class. The best you can do is usually hiring teenage girls from middle class+ families, but they can't do that full time for obvious reasons.

There's a lot of middle ground between "unaffordable except for the hyper rich" and "just skip your starbucks sometimes and you too can have it."

E.g. once a week for four hours is ~50*4*35 = $3500 7000/yr - considerably less than many people spend on vacation or dining out. I think Scott's point is more that he was failing to acknowledge that even that level was possible for him. Even if you drop that to once a month, it's still a real quality of life change to be able to recharge somehow without the kid as needed.

Of course there's something to be said for living near family and not needing to pay for this, but that's a harder option to make possible for many people than budgeting for occasional help.

E.g. once a week for four hours is ~50 * 4 * 35=$3500/yr

I'm getting $7000, which is almost 10% of the median household income. (Also how the heck can people be making that little?)

Also how the heck can people be making that little?

By having less and lower quality stuff than you.

It's more that I pay something like $70k in rent and my house is... acceptable, in an acceptable neighborhood. Granted this is a very nice town to live in and commutable to Silicon Valley, but still.

Shitboxes in the ghetto are, by world standards- to say nothing of historical standards- perfectly livable, and most towns are far cheaper than yours even for nice houses in nice neighborhoods.

I'm getting $7000, which is almost 10% of the median household income. (Also how the heck can people be making that little?)

I don't understand the question? I make $16/hr plus commissions which amount to about $1/hr, so approximately $17/hr, and work 4 days a week in eight hour shifts for a total of 32 hours. That works out to $2,176 a month or $28,288 a year. My yearly expenses are mostly room and board, for which I pay $1,300 a month or $15,600 a year. Let's add a few more thousand for things like gas (about half a tank at Costco twice a month), car insurance (legal minimum), etc. and round up my budget to $20,000 a year. That still leaves me with a healthy surplus to add to my bank account every year.

I don't know what a "household" is, but if I was married to a woman who made a similar amount as me, that'd bring us up to about $60,000/yr, and of course we could share the same room.

I make less. But then, my annual expenses, including housing, come to around $20,000 per year. It helps living in a low cost of living area.

Oops, corrected. 10% is a harder sell, but the general point stands. Knock it back to every-other-week for 5% then.

(Also how the heck can people be making that little?)

Yeah. Slightly less crazy if you look at HCoL, e.g. 95k for California or 141k for San Francisco, but of course then your nanny cost would go up. I suspect $35/hr will do nicely in most of California, but haven't looked into it.

I mean this is fine and all, but the angle that frames this as aw-shucksy, give yourself permission to spend on hired-help advice for the masses

e.g.

Instead it had a vibe: stop beating yourself up over your parenting decisions. So I put out a classified ad for babysitters and got two people I really like. Things are a little better now. I can even write research-filled book reviews again!

He is calling 'being wealthy enough to outsource parenting' a vibe

I mean, if you can afford it, go for it. I get the impression that the new babysitters do different times to fill out the childminding over the entire week, not that he has his wife and a nanny and two babysitters all minding the kids at the same time.

It's definitely "yeah this only applies to a few people" but I think the important thing for him and his wife was "we can afford this, so why not? we are not failing as parents if we pay for help" encouragement that Caplan gave him.

I liked the cute twins pics. That alone is enough of a reason for him to have more kids by my book.

I give more credit to Scott than to Caplan, who just rubs me up the wrong way. Scott has twins as the first children, which is a big increase in labour all by itself. And I'm old-fashioned enough that I think the majority of child-rearing at that early age will fall on the mother. They have a nanny so that is something a lot of people don't have because they can't afford, but I'm not going to comment too hard on Scott's circumstances.

It does tickle me that the discovery is yes, child rearing is hard and intensive. But Caplan's airy dismissive "oh just hire more nannies" aggravates me way worse. He really is not walking the walk after talking the talk. "Yes, you too can have four kids (if you can afford to hire four nannies so I never have to do more than drop in for ten minutes per day to amuse myself with their little foibles then I can walk away and leave the actual raising to the staff)".

Note: I don't know how many kids Caplan has. But this is the same guy who did the whole "Don't be a feminist" book for his daughter, which even at the time I thought was very dumb advice from a man to a female child, and that was before I found out his version of child raising was "get women in poorer economic circumstances to do it for me".

I think it goes underrated how helpful it is, when it comes to raising kids, to:

A) Come from a mostly intact family, and

B) LIVE NEAR that family.

Some of my best/earliest memories are being dropped off at my grandparents house. My dad's parents had a really cool pool and waterfall and a boat. My mom's parents had... well they had some cool birds who could sort of talk to you. And my step-grandfather taught me chess at an early age. Either way, they were more than happy to pitch in with caring for and raising us, which is to say taking massive cognitive, physical, and financial load off my parents.

My brother has a <1 year old child now, and both his parents and his wife's parents are <20 minute drive away from them. My mother is ECSTATIC to look after the kid regularly, and that kid will have a large extended family (myself included) looking out for her as she grows. My brother has had to make some sizeable sacrifices, but even if he lost his job and home there's several fallbacks because someone would absolutely take his family in on a moment's notice.

Also, he's not going to lose his job since he works for my dad's (the child's grandfather) company, so there's another layer of security.

I think this general arrangement of "living very close to parents who are actively supportive of you raising kids" was extremely common just a generation ago and before, and any advice around raising kids aimed at someone who is not independently wealthy should specify "live near your parents, and lean on them to the extent appropriate" to reduce the stresses that come with it.

Anyway, I think Bryan and Scott suffer from the glaring weakness many elites/intelligentsia have and don't even notice. They aren't exposed to the direct impacts of their own policy ideas or the ACTUAL outcomes of their thinking. Sure, they're aware of it on an intellectual level, but they're far enough removed that they don't feel the impacts enough to truly account for them.

I note the same thing about Bryan's stance on open borders.

Bryan does not live around or interact much with the modal immigrant to the U.S., he pretty much solely gets to reap the benefits of immigrants and doesn't have to, e.g. endure the friction of language barriers, the competition for housing, the notable decrease in social cohesion, and often the increased crime that comes with being 'forced' to live in such communities.

He's a college professor, and he admits happily to staying inside his carefully maintained bubble. That's fine! Indeed, he's an anarcho-capitalist, so he can readily point out that under his preferred system the world would look very different, so his internal consistency is maintained even if it wouldn't interact well with the existing (sub-par) system.

But the reality on the ground is relevant, and those of us making decisions while in contact with that reality probably possess some important information that alters the calculus. You can argue that makes decisions 'more biased' than when you do it from the 10,000 foot level, looking at raw numbers without an emotional connection. Sure.

But as I say often, there needs to be SOME cost for being wrong, especially in ways that harm other people.

Love his clarity of thought when it comes to the world of pure theory, but decades inside your bubble is going to leave you without the tangible tie to 'the real world' that helps you viscerally understand the impact of a given policy.

Anyway, I think Bryan and Scott suffer from the glaring weakness many elites/intelligentsia have and don't even notice. They aren't exposed to the direct impacts of their own policy ideas or the ACTUAL outcomes of their thinking... I note the same thing about Bryan's stance on open borders.

Are you gonna explain how they are insulated wrt their parenting ideas?

Money.

Their experience with the actual act of parenting is probably good.

Their experience with the difficulties this adds to every other aspect of life is probably not representative.

Same reason we get those articles about "how I bought a million dollar property at age 24!"

The secret sauce is the parents gave them a ton of money, which is not replicable by 90%+ of people in their situation.

Anyway, I think Bryan and Scott suffer from the glaring many elites/intelligentsia have and don't even notice

The glaring what?

And yes, this seems correct but is making me sad. My own mom waited until she was 42 to give birth to me, which means she's already aged out of the phase where she can easily look after any kids we have on her own. Sucks.

That being said the lady's family is a little more spry but... have their own problems. Man this whole thing is scaring me off of having kids not gonna lie.

Sorry, edited it after posting.

That being said the lady's family is a little more spry but... have their own problems. Man this whole thing is scaring me off of having kids not gonna lie.

It really shouldn't if you have a worthwhile community to draw on.

My roommate from college and his wife have popped out 5, and while he makes enough money to support them all, easily, he puts in his fair share of effort, and he and his wife are VERY CATHOLIC so there's a deep well of local experience to draw on.

I think the fear of having kids is really just the projection of having to raise kids all by yourself. In an atomized society that's terrifying. If you have the support network, its very doable. Every single generation before us was able to do so, to varying levels of competence.

Yeah I’m freshly Orthodox so still integrating into the community. I think it will come with time but not sure how much we have before kids becomes a bit harder. We’ll see.

Parenting was never meant to be done as "first time dad and mom, mostly mom, handle it all by themselves". The idea was you're grow up around younger siblings/cousins so you saw how it was done, then when you had kids yourself the grandparents, older married sisters with kids, aunts, cousins, etc. would be living not too far away and would give you advice and help. Those kids would grow up around siblings, cousins, and in neighbourhoods where there were plenty of other kids, and it was socially acceptable for any adult to step in and discipline any shenanigans.

That's a long way from the modern state of affairs.

Yes, the decline of alloparenting and loss of opportunity to develop child-minding and child-rearing skills shouldn't be underestimated. I made a similar point here 5 months ago (along with discussing children's toys and sex ed classes fighting teen pregnancy).

As the oldest child, I was often put 'in charge' of the house with the younger ones for most of a day if needed.

I was given instructions and restrictions by dad (sometimes mom), and I just had to make sure nothing really caught fire, and know what to do if some emergency DID happen. I took a class centered around first aid and CPR for children when I was, I think, about 13 years old? Had a kit and everything.

My younger cousins lived around the corner from us for a while, so I also helped out there sometimes.

Helps that we lived in a safe neighborhood, with neighbors who would have helped out if something went very wrong.

The daughters of the family across the street were also available for babysitting regularly. Tragically, I'm pretty sure neither of them married.

When I got my driver's license and had about a year of experience under my belt, they would trust me to shepherd the younger sibs around too.

In short, I'm certain that I'd make an excellent father.

I've got a 1 year old now. I did the first 6 months in Australia in essentially the standard Western mold of 2 parents and 1 newborn and then moved to Malaysia to live 5 mins walk from about 50 extended family members.

The quality of life improvement for the baby, my wife and I has been immense. I do recognize the privilege of my wife coming from an upper middle class educated subclade so I'm not worrying about any meth addict cousins, but it's hard to overstate how much smoother parenting is in this setup than as a nuclear family.

I did not have this reaction of begrudging Scott. I was, I suppose, bemused- by problems with child rearing in a very progressive bubble.

There is a tendency to write off blue tribe helicopter parenting as mostly tiger parenting optimization for selective school admissions- and like, yes, these people do need to hear ‘you don’t have to do that. Major state schools are fine and your kid probably is not getting into Harvard anyways’. But it goes deeper than that. Having a teenager babysit is verboten to these people(I’ve had a ten year old do it- although not for more than a couple of hours). Putting the kids in the backyard to amuse themselves is verboten to these people. Spanking the kids when you catch them doing something bad is verboten- you have to just keep a constant watch to prevent the behavior instead. And they intentionally had twins?

I’ve talked before about how the core red tribe looks forwards to having elementary school sons(and they do- T-ball and children’s soccer are not seen as tedious in my circles). I think the blues vision of parenting is having 16 year olds instead and the relentlessly unpleasant nature of it all is by trying to make it more like tiger parenting a late teenager(disclaimer- do not have a teenager, don’t plan on tiger parenting when I do).

And they intentionally had twins?

What makes you say that? The babies weren't IVF-conceived according to Scott.

I think the blues vision of parenting is having 16 year olds instead and the relentlessly unpleasant nature of it all is by trying to make it more like tiger parenting a late teenager

Interesting point. Perhaps for the blue tribe the portion of the kid's life where they're 'useless' and have to learn all the basic stuff just to function at all is very tedious (and distracts from more 'important' pursuits) and feels like a pure cost center, then their post-adolescence of finding a passion, learning 'real' ideas, and finally being able to have an impact on the world seems like an 'investment!' Under that model, they would 'tiger parent' their young child solely to ensure they're prepared to launch as early as possible, then pull every string they can to get their kid into the elite circles and to boost their status since the parents are acutely aware of how 'important' that status is to outcomes. Which is why they don't like to hear:

‘you don’t have to do that. Major state schools are fine and your kid probably is not getting into Harvard anyways’.

Oy, yeah. Funny enough I did in fact get an interview for Harvard, but did not get in, and went to a State School and had a fine time.

But I was brought up not being certain I would go to college at all so this was not a major disappointment for me!

It wasn't until years later that I finally realized that the Ivy league is just the "budding elite factory" and that if I had optimized harder for getting in, and I managed to attend, my life trajectory would have been MASSIVELY different. And not in all positive ways, I think.

Power laws rule everything around me, and Blue Tribe is probably HEAVILY aware of that, whereas Red tribe may sort of understand it but to them it at best seems a fact of nature, rather than a game to be played.

I mean, for Scott I empathize that he’s dealing with toddlers right now. They’re the perfect mix of capacities and incapacities for demanding hands-on intervention. They climb on things, get into things, scream for attention… obviously they spend some time playing quietly by themselves or napping, and you can get some things done with them around, but it’s a sharp curve when they graduate from immobility to crawling to walking to climbing!

Overall it’s not bad, but it would be worse without other people to help around. I don’t really know what his full circumstances are like, but caring for a toddler more or less solo for a full day, no friends or family around to hang out with, is pretty rough. It’s always best when you can be communal, and for deracinated Bay Area sorts, that’s what you get all the time.

So I have a little more pity. There are things money can’t buy.

They're one year old now and heading into the Terrible Twos. That is going to be the fun experience!

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.

If you have time for an addendum, I’d be interested in hearing what your wife has to say, since it sounds like she was doing the lion’s (lioness’s?) share of the in-person raising. Or not! Might be wrong on my read.

For instance, mine gets a lot of mileage out of the library, playgrounds, stroller walks with friends, pretty much anything where she can chat with other women and let children be children.

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.

Well elaborated. Thank you!

I agree with most of what you’ve said, so I’ll just riff on a few of the differences or gaps.

In my mind, part of what’s great about kids is spending time with them. That loving, intimate relationship is hard to get outside of family, and it’s built up through closeness and time, just like in a marriage. And while some of that time is spent in obligations, like the family dinner (not always thrilling, always very important), it’s good to spend time together doing something you both enjoy. Playing, in short. Much of my closeness with my own father - and we are very close, I have sought and followed his guidance on some of the most important decisions of my life, and I’ve independently directed myself at considerable expense to bring me physically close to him so that he can stay in my own life and so I can care for him as he ages - comes from the time we spent together in my youth, playing in all kinds of ways, and talking about the world, and learning all number of things. That time was deeply worthwhile, and I’m trying to raise my daughter (more on the way, God willing) the same way.

At the same time, the parent is obviously not responsible for the child’s entertainment, but instead their wellbeing. (My dad: “If someone complains that they’re bored, I can’t help but think: you really have no imagination, do you?”) And what’s best for the child is that they have plenty of places to find whatever they want and need outside of you, such as from themselves. The love of a parent doesn’t need to be smothering and all-encompassing to be felt. It just needs to be warm and present.

And I have a great time with my toddler, and play with her plenty, and leave her to others plenty, or to her own devices, and by the measures I value she seems to be growing up well indeed. Couldn’t be happier.

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")

At the same time, the parent is obviously not responsible for the child’s entertainment, but instead their wellbeing.

This, 100%.

That's some high-powered advice distilled down to a single page. Makes you wonder why writing a full on book was really needed.

I thought Scott's point is that he finds child-rearing hard and exhausting despite his privileges of wealth (to hire nannies / babysitters) or time (stay-at-home wife, his work-from-home). I haven't read Caplan's book, but the impression I got from reviews is that his audience are striver / PMC parents who tend to stress way to much over their children.

It's more like: Caplan: "Bicycling is great! I do two miles of leisurely bicycling on a dedicated bicycle path each day, and I feel terrific and my pants fit better!"; Scott: "Darn, I try to use a cycling machine for 20 minutes a day, but I get all winded and sweaty, and I find it hard to stick to a schedule."; TheDag: "Ya know, some of us regularly bike to work in the snow through rush-hour traffic, ya dilettantes!"

The anti-Enlightenment polemics write themselves.

18th century Enlightenment: Rousseau writes books on so-called "social contract" and education of children, criticizing practices of handing out their infants to wetnurses and tutor burdened by (what we call today) principal agent problems.

Since mothers despise their primary duty and do not wish to nurse their own children, they have had to entrust them to mercenary women. These women thus become mothers to a stranger's children, who by nature mean so little to them that they seek only to spare themselves trouble. A child unswaddled would need constant watching; well swaddled it is cast into a corner and its cries are ignored. As long as the nurse's negligence escapes notice, as long as the nursling does not break its arms or legs, what matter if it dies or becomes a weakling for life? Its limbs are kept safe at the expense of its body, and if anything goes wrong it is not the nurse's fault. These gentle mothers, having gotten rid of their babies, devote themselves gaily to the pleasures of the town. Do they know how their children are being treated in the villages? ...

Once motherhood becomes a burden means are found to avoid it. They will make their work useless in order to begin it over again, and they thus distort, to the prejudice of the species, the charm which was given them for its increase. This practice, along with other causes of depopulation, forebodes the coming fate of Europe. The sciences, arts, philosophy and customs that are generated will not be long in reducing Europe to a desert. It will be the home of wild beasts, and its inhabitants will hardly have changed for the worse. ...

Do you wish, then, that he keep his original form? Watch over him from the moment he comes into the world. As soon as he is born take possession of him and do not leave him till he is a man; you will never succeed otherwise. Just as the real nurse is the mother, the real teacher is the father. Let them agree in the ordering of their functions as well as in their system; let the child pass from one to the other. He will be better educated by a sensible though limited father than by the cleverest teacher in the world. For zeal will make up for lack of knowledge better than knowledge for lack of zeal.

(Emile, Book 1) Very lofty educational ideals! Also written by a man who abandoned his own kids in an orphanage.

21st century rationalist enlightenment: Galaxy-brained, they hire help (as aristocrats of 18th century did). Presumably kids are left unswaddled and better off than 18th century orphanage. Better than Rousseau, but that is damning with faint praise.

Yes, it's generally better not to broadcast complaints, especially as a man (like being cold on a second date). The exception is when you are seeking advice or building empathy credibility to provide advice or comfort.

Obviously Scott thinks he's doing just this, but the problem is common where the empathetic credibility attempt comes off as tone deaf and out of touch.

Generally if your audience is poorer than you, attempted 'down with the struggle' will have the opposite effect. Poorer in money, time, romantic success, whatever.

Dave Ramsay is at his worst when he tries to analogize some speaker problem to something in his own life (post-success) or parenting experience. His daughter, who's mostly taken over the show is basically a meme of this, constantly thinking her gilded life experiences are relatable.

Due to human variation and hedonic treadmill effects, everyone's feelings of hardship are generally real, but are not objectively comparable.

If you want a vision of a more fertile, sustainable future for the general population, it should not involve having your own personal staff.

It's mutually beneficial for the teenager down the street to spend some time with a toddler. They spend their whole lives cloistered into a world with no one outside their age group. Spending time with a small child is (usually) a source of immense joy, by talking down on it you're impoverishing everyone here. It's also mutually beneficial for the auntie whose kids are all older as well -- they remember fondly that time and can recreate it for a few hours.

A sustainable future for generations is absolutely not one in which the entire childrearing time for 9 years is spent by two people. That's part of the parent burnout problem and part of why so many stop at 2 -- because we don't have informal systems for dispersing the load. We used to do extended families, but that doesn't work terribly well any more.

To be sure, maybe this is a "right message for the listener" kind of thing.

This is why some of us look back into the past and conclude "your late teens and early twenties are the objectively correct time to raise children; you can go into the higher-education tracks after that, college is free if you've replaced yourselves".

But mass immigration is cheaper than paying the youth of the country to do anything so that's what most of the West picks; much as the upper class is derelict in their duties by failing to hire lower classes to labor for them, so are the old.

Nah, I used those high energy years to grind a solid degree & career that’s got me set for life.

You can’t go back to that — you only have your 20s once. But you can raise kids with a bit of low skill labor help.

It's mutually beneficial for the teenager down the street to spend some time with a toddler.

Wouldn't this also have an unexpected knock-on effect of female teenagers having an elevated desire to have children?

I'm very not certain, but I seem to recall a study they did on female teenagers back when they attempted to educate them on the benefits of abstinence by making them carry around a toddler-like doll for the entire day. IIRC, the result backfired, as the teenagers reported wanting to have children more afterwards, not less.

I could be completely off on this. I'll have to research it later.

Absolutely. Culture makes parenthood seem so daunting, this fixes it doubly

I'm very not certain, but I seem to recall a study they did on female teenagers back when they attempted to educate them on the benefits of abstinence by making them carry around a toddler-like doll for the entire day. IIRC, the result backfired, as the teenagers reported wanting to have children more afterwards, not less.

It was a 2016 Australian study; this piece discusses it. (I previously brought this up on the Motte here)

Ah, thank you for this. This looks to be the exact article I recall reading, as well.

The ideal number of kids women and men want is already higher than the TFR needed for replacement, so desire for children might not be the main issue with falling fertility rates. But if people spend more time with children as teenagers, then it would certainly make it easier for them to have their own children when they are grown up as it wouldn't be as unfamiliar.

Yes! Make teenage babysitting great again!

I think the fact that the modern school system gives teenagers a lot less free time in than in the past hurts this.

This is ok imo. Competition elevates everyone by driving everyone to work for the thing they are competing for at their maximum capacity. If teenagers spend more of their time learning, they will learn more things than if they spend less.

Or more precisely, colleges don't count childcare as 'extracurricular activity.'

In general, colleges don't count paid work as "extracurricular activity", and apparently nor (as of 2025) do selective employers when rating new graduates. I think you could make an impressive "hardship story" application essay if your high school education had been disrupted by raising your own kids. (Although you would still be behind the kids who founded nonprofits whose only donors were dad's employees.)

I can't speak for selective US universities because I was dealing with Oxbridge which (as of 2000 and 2025) mostly ignored extra-curriculars, but in 2000 selective employers absolutely expected to see paid work on a new graduate CV - and my interview coach said "an example of an achievement from paid work is always more impressive than an extracurricular even if it doesn't sound like it."

I also lost a lot of respect for Scott! It sucks. I definitely have some ressentiment for him and Caplan because they're both rich famous writers, and while I don't put a TON of effort in my blog, it would be nice to be rich and famous hah.

Ultimately though I think this is the classic problem with a lot of rationalists, that we were talking about with the poly stuff earlier last week. They are extremely privileged in all sorts of ways, and go on to assume that everyone else is just as privileged or idiosyncratic. They basically just have a very poor theory of mind for even other rationalists a standard deviation closer to normal than they are, let alone an actually "normal" person.

I didn't know you had a blog. Where can we read it?

Ahh it is not tied to this account, yet. I was trying to keep them separate but idk.

If you DM me I’ll give you the link.

Ah, dammit. Alright, third time's the charm:

What do you think?

Same as you: https://www.themotte.org/post/1913/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/327871?context=8#context

I read it [Scott's post] and my reaction was pretty much the same kind of loss-for-words exasperation I feel when my wife tells me that I cannot possibly have expectations of her, don't I know she has excuses? Why, Scott, you have a stay-at-home wife, two kids, a nanny, several friendly families living in the same block, and then you feel a need to also hire two babysitters on top of all that? Yeah, taking care of kids is exhausting. No shit, Scott - did you think getting kids at age 40 wouldn't be taxing? Two of them at the same time to boot. And still, his complaints in the face of that many resources thrown at the problem smells of...I don't know what to call it without throwing out schoolyard insults like "sissy" or "pussy". Methinks Scott complaineth overmuch. Or maybe I'm just jealous of his "privilege", be that wealth or whatnot, regardless of whether it's earned or otherwise.

Man, I work full-time and then I parent all the rest of the time except for maybe about two hours after getting my daughter to sleep. If Scott's numbers are correct, then I put in more parenting time than his stay-at-home wife. Which isn't to say that I'm the better man; far from it, my life is a mess. But seriously. They're doing something very wrong if the two of them can't hack it without hiring an entire fireteam of helpers.

And still, his complaints in the face of that many resources thrown at the problem smells of...I don't know what to call it without throwing out schoolyard insults like "sissy" or "pussy". Methinks Scott complaineth overmuch

I am of the opinion that a reasonable society has some expectations of behavior and will self-police. Verbal judgement and sneering is not pleasant, but is also shockingly mild method for self-policing. Insults? It is raison d'être of political cartoons.

Only problem with schoolyard insults is the schoolyard part. Kids pick targets unjustly, and sometimes kids get too nasty about it -- either it doesn't stop at insults or it becomes a self-reinforcing rumor mill. Sometimes slight sneering is entirely deserved and proportional, but becomes unfair when the target has not the ability to either self-correct or cope.

Man, I work full-time and then I parent all the rest of the time except for maybe about two hours after getting my daughter to sleep. If Scott's numbers are correct, then I put in more parenting time than his stay-at-home wife. Which isn't to say that I'm the better man; far from it, my life is a mess. But seriously. They're doing something very wrong if the two of them can't hack it without hiring an entire fireteam of helpers.

Amen to that. Your schedule sounds much like my own and it makes his sound completely absurd.

Ahaha much appreciated. And yeah, as I said in my own comment I very much agree:

I also lost a lot of respect for Scott! It sucks. I definitely have some ressentiment for him and Caplan because they're both rich famous writers, and while I don't put a TON of effort in my blog, it would be nice to be rich and famous hah.

Ultimately though I think this is the classic problem with a lot of rationalists, that we were talking about with the poly stuff earlier last week. They are extremely privileged in all sorts of ways, and go on to assume that everyone else is just as privileged or idiosyncratic. They basically just have a very poor theory of mind for even other rationalists a standard deviation closer to normal than they are, let alone an actually "normal" person.

I hate to be bitter and negative about this sort of thing, but man I'm starting to understand the progressive urge to scream "EAT THE RICH!" This sort of complaining despite being EXTREMELY, like top .15% privileged, makes me quite angry.

Well, FWIW, I don't begrudge Scott his privilege. May he enjoy it thoroughly and for a long time yet. But it is very "good times create weak men", in a way.

it is very "good times create weak men", in a way.

I don't think this is true. Scott is just spending his time specializing in a different skillset. That's why he is earning exceptionally well in the first place and why he is an exceptionally good writer.

Agreed - Scott is not a weak man (and nor are his formative experiences a central example of "good times"), unless you define "weak" in an exclusively martial way that causes your society to lose everything, including wars (which are won with logistics, which means they are won by REMFs). If you believe in the cycle, Scott is, personally, at the "strong men make good times" stage.

Will being raised with this much privilege make Scott's kids weak? Too early to tell, but the men who built the British Empire are not a point in favour of "too many nannies and tutors makes weak men."

Too early to tell, but the men who built the British Empire are not a point in favour of "too many nannies and tutors makes weak men.”

That’s because if you were in the English upper class, you turned eight and got packed off to an incredibly hard-ass boarding school for 10 years that would make modern military basic training look like daycare. “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eaton”

That’s because if you were in the English upper class, you turned eight and got packed off to an incredibly hard-ass boarding school for 10 years that would make modern military basic training look like daycare. “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eaton”

The Victorian public school becomes sufficiently effective to attract actual aristos somewhere between Arnold's reforms at Rugby (1830's) and the implementation of the reforms under the Public Schools Act (1860's). Before that the part of the British upper class which was a functioning warrior elite were raised by tutors and governesses, or sent to sea around age 12 if they were going into a naval career.

The point I am trying to make here is that the thing that (may - this is disputed) make rich kids soft is excessive pampering, whereas the thing that we are discussing in the thread is excessive attention by hired professionals. You can hire someone to pamper a kid, but you can also hire someone to stretch them.

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