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