Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids

[four1298]

I'm going to bold what may be more important. These are quotes from Bryan Caplan's book I read.

Although the longest chapter was on genetics, I'm not going to quote it. I already knew IQ was genetic. Since IQ is genetic, perhaps that's why it's not surprising genetics affects income and education. IQ has an effect on that, I guess. It's also not surprising happiness is genetic because if you're low IQ you'll struggle more in life. That's my opinion. What does seem to be affected by your upbringing is your political and religious label.

Whatever your experiences, suppose for the sake of argument that adoption and twin research is sound. Then in purely selfish terms, parenting is a much better deal than it looks on the surface.

Your kids will grow up. Your workload will lighten.

Babies are very cute, and people are pretty superficial.

To learn whether a consumer really likes a purchase, however, you need to find out whether he’d make the same decision over again.

Some people have large families. That shows they liked their decision of their making their previous children.

When asked, “If you had it to do over again, would you or would you not have children?” 91 percent of parents said they would have children all over again. Only 7 percent said they wouldn’t.

In 2003, Gallup asked childless adults over the age of forty, “If you had to do it over again, how many children would you have, or would you not have any at all?” Over two-thirds of the people without kids confessed regret.

Married people, in contrast, are 18 percentage points more likely to be very happy.

If the [Daniel] Kahneman study has a big social message, it’s not that kids are a disaster for happiness. It’s that women enjoy taking care of their children more than working outside the home.

Today’s mom spends more time taking care of children than she did in the heyday of the stay-at-home mom.

[P]arents often reluctantly admit that their kids don’t even enjoy their activities.

At least in my family, two minutes of mild humiliation was enough to deter nine out of ten toddler tantrums.

In the Newsday survey, only 4 percent of the richest parents regretted having children—compared to 13 percent of the poorest.

Second, most children of criminals don’t become criminals; in the Danish adoption study, over three-fourths of the boys born of and raised by people with criminal convictions weren’t convicted themselves.

There are even waiting lists for domestic adoption of special needs children.

Even though school-age children were already the safest people in the country back in 1950, we managed to make them almost four times as safe.

I think by safe he means less mortality not necessarily less crime.

Last conducted during 1999, this survey found a total of 115 stereotypical kidnappings for the year.

Over 200,000 children were kidnapped in 1999, but the vast majority were nothing like the cases on the news. Kidnappers of pre-teens are almost always relatives who are unhappy with their custody status.

Big families are more affordable than ever, because we’re more than three times richer than we were in 1950.

One careful study of elder care found that each additional child substantially cut the chance of ending up in a nursing home

Whether we’re worrying about poverty or the environment, we’re quick to point fingers at people who still haven’t learned to talk.

Almost everyone—children of flawed parents included—is glad to be alive.

No one asks to be born, but almost everyone would if they could.

In fact, ideas often become more useful when more people use them. The Internet was so-so when only one person in 100 had a modem; now we can’t live without it.

As the population of the island grows from seven to 7,000 or 7 million, the chance that Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Beethoven, or the Professor resides there sharply improves.

If, like the Professor, you have only seven potential customers counting yourself, most innovations won’t pay.

The world of today is better than the world of yesterday for the same reason: We belong to a much larger community than our ancestors did

When there aren’t enough unskilled workers to wash dishes and collect garbage, skilled workers pick up the slack—and their other talents go to waste.

Antisocial New Yorkers presumably know that places like Hays exist. So why do they pay exorbitant rents to live near millions of strangers?“Choices” is the obvious answer—choices about where to work, live, eat, shop, and play.

Children are the taxpayers of tomorrow.

[T]hings like food and fuel, resources have been getting cheaper for the last century and a half.

Contrary to doomsayers, natural resources have been getting more abundant for over a century, and air and water quality have improved for decades.

The main researcher who studied Quebec’s program concluded that Can $1,000 in first-year benefits—just over 700 American dollars at the time—increased the probability of having a child by 16.9 percent.

researchers argue fairly convincingly that “family-friendly” policies—paid parental leave, subsidized child care, and so on—partly explain relatively high birth rates in Sweden and other Nordic countries.

In the United States, one cycle of in vitro fertilization costs about $12,000—and that’s when the mother uses her own egg and carries her own baby.

the out-of-pocket cost [of artificial insemination] dropped from about $1,000 in 1987 to $400 today.

Partly thanks to regulations and lawsuits, the price in the First World remains high, but low-cost IVF clinics are springing up in poorer countries. Doctors in Africa—where 10–30 percent of women are infertile—already offer “no-frills” IVF for about $300 a cycle.

With an egg donor, the [IVF] process allows post-menopausal pregnancy.

The all-inclusive surrogacy package that costs $75,000 in the United States runs you about $20,000 in India. As fertility tourism evolves—and more low-income countries enter the market—deals will probably keep getting better.

Third World poverty is heartbreaking, but use your head: Fertility tourists are part of the solution, not the problem.

If you want a boy, sperm sortation boosts your odds to 75 percent; if you want a girl, to 90 percent. Compared to IVF, it’s cheap—about $3,000 per cycle at top U.S. clinics.

Trade is mutually beneficial. Sperm donors, egg donors, and surrogates are not victims. They are consenting adults who help others for a mixture of meaning and profit.

 

[H8mychudlife]

Why would you want kids as an incel?

 

[Wizardmaxxer]

I don't care about birth rates going down, better for me, less normies less slaves for companies and ceos

 

[Caichan]

i’m an anti natalist

 

[four1298]

i’m an anti natalist

You wouldn't even be able to post here if you weren't born. Antinatalism seems hypocritical - if they really think life is suffering why haven't they requested euthanasia? I don't understand antinatalism.

 

[Caichan]

I don't understand antinatalism.

then stop using baby arguments and study it.

You wouldn't even be able to post here if you weren't born.

wow i didn’t know that