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Notes -
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".
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