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Notes -
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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