The idea that fighting your friends with foam swords is a much better hobby than drinking is… an unbelievably based idea, and I love the way you’ve put it.
What if – and hear me out – we fight our friends with foam swords WHILE drinking?? Actually, now that I think of it, the local Renaissance fair to which I take my kids every year does get pretty saucy by the end of the day...
I must be the only guy in the world to have had a terrible experience as an outcast kid, bullied by a bunch of ugly, despicable kids, while the adults in the room were turning a blind eye.
Kids are adults in the making. They are just as terrible as the adults they become; their nefariousness is just limited by their size and influence.
I made a conscious decision not to have kids precisely because I did not want my offsprings to experience what I did at the hands of the wonderful and totally mythical creatures described in the piece.
Having kids is one mistake I did not make.
I will go have a glass of tap water now to celebrate this insignificant victory.
I think it's useful to point out that, if you were to have kids, you would then become one of those adults in the room. And therefore you would find yourself in a natural position to reduce the incidence of the sort of bullying you describe.
Also, I enjoyed the assertion "[kids] are just as terrible as the adults they become; their nefariousness is just limited by their size and influence" - maybe the best expression of misanthropy I have ever come across. It's not easy to convey an idea with both thoroughness and pithiness.
The "do you have kids" response seems both completely wrong, and a very good explanation of what's going on. I have kids, and it has improved my life and led me to want more kids. I think people who have kids understand the downsides, but also I do think most parents recognize that on net kids are worth it. But at the same time, there's sort of like a propaganda war that takes kids as self-evidently bad.
I always remember the fake commercial going around with the 4 year old melting down at the grocery and at the end it says "use condoms." You never see a family enjoying a nice picnic and it say "don't get FOMO."
Agree on the merits of kids. Many things in life become magical when you do them with children. Ever go to the zoo by yourself? It's fine. But go with a four year old and it's an amazing wonderland. If you can set your ego aside and remember how to pretend, playing with a young child on a jungle gym is lots of fun too.
I would just add that adults are simply overgrown kids. How do you keep from turning into a sour, boring adult? Interact with kids!
As a (very) new father, so much of the reason people don't want kids has recently become obvious! Sleepless nights, no partner intimacy, more arguments, a big chunk of your freedom taken away, less time for other hobbies, and basically no plus-side except a cute, helpless, soulless little thing that can only communicate through wailing... and perhaps old ladies being a bit nicer to you for a few minutes a day.
Even as someone who: 1) Likes kids more than my median friend (I was a teacher for 5 years, and grew to like even the shittiest of the kids); 2) Is more "meaning-driven" and less hedonic than my median friend, and 3) has more parental/in-law pressure to have kids than my median friend, it still feels... perhaps not foolish, but just an odd choice.
As a choice, it feels less like getting married or deciding to go to do a masters degree, and more like committing to converting 100 acres of Amazonian farmland into jungle over a 15 year period. As in, I'm sure it will be interesting, fun (after a couple of years...) and a new challenge that might make my life more meaningful, but it in no way seems like a normal or obvious choice.
This probably explains why the birth rate will continue to decline. It will just seem like an increasingly strange, unintuitive choice to have kids.
I imagine an economist would analyze kids vs adults via revealed preference. When people have the option to interact with either, who do they choose to interact with?
Having kids & spending time with them was the biggest highlight of my husband’s & my lives. We both separately said we should’ve had another one after our youngest of four went off to college.
Notice a more basic problem with Tyler's comment. As Charley Hooper and I explain in our book, Making Great Decisions in Business and Life, you can't explain a change by pointing to something that's constant.
One thing that has changed, I think, are the expectations for parental time investments in children. If you look at the parenting strategies that many parents adopt (myself included), they simply cannot scale up to a large family. Thus, people seem completely baffled by how parents could possibly raise a family with six children, or more. There's an unstated assumption that some degree of neglect must be occurring. They don't realize that large families employ a different parenting technology. My grandfather was the third of fifteen children (all 15 from the same two parents). He did not spend hours of one-on-one time with his mom or dad doing "enrichment activities." He did spend a lot of time playing with his (many) siblings. And his parents did spend time with the children, though typically in a group setting of some sort (mom reading to all the children together, for instance).
I have seven, and beneath the surface level "are you insane?" and "are you super-religious?" (we're not religious at all) questions, there's always a stigma associated with big families, the idea that they can't control their children as well as people with two. Luckily, there are several other families who have five or six young kids in our town, and we look out for each other. But I always feel judged.
When a parent with 1-2 kids sees such a big family, it's an unsolicited reminder of their own decision against having more kids. And (for many people) that is one of those decisions they prefer to keep walled off from reconsideration, which is easier to do around other small families, and harder to do when your pack of howl-at-the-moon kids is running all over town withholding external validation, lol. Fwiw I think your happiness with those trade-offs will increase over time, cheers.
Funny thing is, I don't remotely care if you have 0 kids or 10, and neither does anyone in my big family friends. You do you--I'm too busy cleaning up spit up from the youngers and cheering on the olders to worry about someone else's choices.
I don't helicopter parent, but extra kids are extra expense. Especially once we got past two, it becomes hard for both parents to work. Daycare is crazy expensive. After 2020 we simply won't do public school, so that tuition bill keeps going even when they are five. You don't need to be a helicopter parent to want them to play some sports and do other activities growing up. You need an bigger hotel room, a bigger car, a bigger house.
A lot of these problems could be solved by just returning some of my taxes in acknowledgment of all these future social security revenue generators I'm paying to raise.
I worry that for many people, one overriding desire is to be left alone. Obviously there is a balance to be struck here - few or no people want to be really alone permanently. But people guard their alone time. And kids are a serious tax on that -- young kids in particular do not leave their parents be.
I think Bryan is right that there's more joy to be found in relating to other people than most realize. Modern society has swung too far towards atomization and a lack of close personal relationships. But those relationships can indeed be hard.
Oh, and on a different topic -- the fact that we can now have a meaningful option to have sex without having kids is historically anomalous.* Healthy young people generally want sex (the desire manifests differently in men versus women, but both are so feel sexual desire). For most of history, this would naturally lead to kids. Broad access to mostly-effective birth control puts us in uncharted territory.
*I am aware that birth control methods existed historically, but aside from straight abstinence, they were significantly less reliable than modern methods.
In my experience, kids come up with worse movie ideas than adults on average. But they are more likely to come up with movie ideas on the first place, so they probably come up with more good ideas for movies.
Perhaps movie companies should hire a mob of children to come up with movies. Give them some paper so they can draw them.
The idea that fighting your friends with foam swords is a much better hobby than drinking is… an unbelievably based idea, and I love the way you’ve put it.
What if – and hear me out – we fight our friends with foam swords WHILE drinking?? Actually, now that I think of it, the local Renaissance fair to which I take my kids every year does get pretty saucy by the end of the day...
Might I direct your attention to SCA.org
I must be the only guy in the world to have had a terrible experience as an outcast kid, bullied by a bunch of ugly, despicable kids, while the adults in the room were turning a blind eye.
Kids are adults in the making. They are just as terrible as the adults they become; their nefariousness is just limited by their size and influence.
I made a conscious decision not to have kids precisely because I did not want my offsprings to experience what I did at the hands of the wonderful and totally mythical creatures described in the piece.
Having kids is one mistake I did not make.
I will go have a glass of tap water now to celebrate this insignificant victory.
: )
I think it's useful to point out that, if you were to have kids, you would then become one of those adults in the room. And therefore you would find yourself in a natural position to reduce the incidence of the sort of bullying you describe.
Also, I enjoyed the assertion "[kids] are just as terrible as the adults they become; their nefariousness is just limited by their size and influence" - maybe the best expression of misanthropy I have ever come across. It's not easy to convey an idea with both thoroughness and pithiness.
Have you found the valance of your adult social experience to be similar?
I hope you realise that if I describe that as a very childish article, it is a huge compliment.
;-)
The "do you have kids" response seems both completely wrong, and a very good explanation of what's going on. I have kids, and it has improved my life and led me to want more kids. I think people who have kids understand the downsides, but also I do think most parents recognize that on net kids are worth it. But at the same time, there's sort of like a propaganda war that takes kids as self-evidently bad.
I always remember the fake commercial going around with the 4 year old melting down at the grocery and at the end it says "use condoms." You never see a family enjoying a nice picnic and it say "don't get FOMO."
Right - because people have loss aversion, and downsides matter more emotionally and are more salient than upsides.
So people would happily give up 2, or 5, or 10 picnics with kids to avoid one public meltdown.
Agree on the merits of kids. Many things in life become magical when you do them with children. Ever go to the zoo by yourself? It's fine. But go with a four year old and it's an amazing wonderland. If you can set your ego aside and remember how to pretend, playing with a young child on a jungle gym is lots of fun too.
I would just add that adults are simply overgrown kids. How do you keep from turning into a sour, boring adult? Interact with kids!
As a (very) new father, so much of the reason people don't want kids has recently become obvious! Sleepless nights, no partner intimacy, more arguments, a big chunk of your freedom taken away, less time for other hobbies, and basically no plus-side except a cute, helpless, soulless little thing that can only communicate through wailing... and perhaps old ladies being a bit nicer to you for a few minutes a day.
Even as someone who: 1) Likes kids more than my median friend (I was a teacher for 5 years, and grew to like even the shittiest of the kids); 2) Is more "meaning-driven" and less hedonic than my median friend, and 3) has more parental/in-law pressure to have kids than my median friend, it still feels... perhaps not foolish, but just an odd choice.
As a choice, it feels less like getting married or deciding to go to do a masters degree, and more like committing to converting 100 acres of Amazonian farmland into jungle over a 15 year period. As in, I'm sure it will be interesting, fun (after a couple of years...) and a new challenge that might make my life more meaningful, but it in no way seems like a normal or obvious choice.
This probably explains why the birth rate will continue to decline. It will just seem like an increasingly strange, unintuitive choice to have kids.
You are in the midst of the hardest part of the journey. It will get better
And if you create a sibling (or more) for your kid, it gets even easier
And sometimes you get lucky and get a newborn who sleeps through the night at 4 weeks. Good luck!
I expect your kids are far from representative.
I imagine an economist would analyze kids vs adults via revealed preference. When people have the option to interact with either, who do they choose to interact with?
Besides, he's going to be extremely viased to his own kids.
Having kids & spending time with them was the biggest highlight of my husband’s & my lives. We both separately said we should’ve had another one after our youngest of four went off to college.
An adult gets an automatic status boost among children. We can lose it quickly and permanently, but it’s not difficult to keep.
Notice a more basic problem with Tyler's comment. As Charley Hooper and I explain in our book, Making Great Decisions in Business and Life, you can't explain a change by pointing to something that's constant.
One thing that has changed, I think, are the expectations for parental time investments in children. If you look at the parenting strategies that many parents adopt (myself included), they simply cannot scale up to a large family. Thus, people seem completely baffled by how parents could possibly raise a family with six children, or more. There's an unstated assumption that some degree of neglect must be occurring. They don't realize that large families employ a different parenting technology. My grandfather was the third of fifteen children (all 15 from the same two parents). He did not spend hours of one-on-one time with his mom or dad doing "enrichment activities." He did spend a lot of time playing with his (many) siblings. And his parents did spend time with the children, though typically in a group setting of some sort (mom reading to all the children together, for instance).
I have seven, and beneath the surface level "are you insane?" and "are you super-religious?" (we're not religious at all) questions, there's always a stigma associated with big families, the idea that they can't control their children as well as people with two. Luckily, there are several other families who have five or six young kids in our town, and we look out for each other. But I always feel judged.
I'm always fascinated by people without a religious community who have a lot of kids. How do you do it without social support?
With a massive chip on my shoulder and an acknowledgment that most days I'm pretty happy with the trade-offs I've made.
When a parent with 1-2 kids sees such a big family, it's an unsolicited reminder of their own decision against having more kids. And (for many people) that is one of those decisions they prefer to keep walled off from reconsideration, which is easier to do around other small families, and harder to do when your pack of howl-at-the-moon kids is running all over town withholding external validation, lol. Fwiw I think your happiness with those trade-offs will increase over time, cheers.
Funny thing is, I don't remotely care if you have 0 kids or 10, and neither does anyone in my big family friends. You do you--I'm too busy cleaning up spit up from the youngers and cheering on the olders to worry about someone else's choices.
I don't helicopter parent, but extra kids are extra expense. Especially once we got past two, it becomes hard for both parents to work. Daycare is crazy expensive. After 2020 we simply won't do public school, so that tuition bill keeps going even when they are five. You don't need to be a helicopter parent to want them to play some sports and do other activities growing up. You need an bigger hotel room, a bigger car, a bigger house.
A lot of these problems could be solved by just returning some of my taxes in acknowledgment of all these future social security revenue generators I'm paying to raise.
Good point.
Bryan seemed to be alluding to that when he asked why it took so long.
I agree. I just like seeing the point made explicitly as well as obliquely.
Good piece; there is a lot to think about here.
I worry that for many people, one overriding desire is to be left alone. Obviously there is a balance to be struck here - few or no people want to be really alone permanently. But people guard their alone time. And kids are a serious tax on that -- young kids in particular do not leave their parents be.
I think Bryan is right that there's more joy to be found in relating to other people than most realize. Modern society has swung too far towards atomization and a lack of close personal relationships. But those relationships can indeed be hard.
Oh, and on a different topic -- the fact that we can now have a meaningful option to have sex without having kids is historically anomalous.* Healthy young people generally want sex (the desire manifests differently in men versus women, but both are so feel sexual desire). For most of history, this would naturally lead to kids. Broad access to mostly-effective birth control puts us in uncharted territory.
*I am aware that birth control methods existed historically, but aside from straight abstinence, they were significantly less reliable than modern methods.
The idea that they were less reliable in practice is false. It was spread by sex educators trying to scare kids away from sex.
Observe the TFR in France starting in the late 1800s
Pre-moderns knew how to not conceive
If you want a mouth, you need an anus. One admittedly more glamorous than the other but only a fool would try and evaluate them separately.
100% true story
In my experience, kids come up with worse movie ideas than adults on average. But they are more likely to come up with movie ideas on the first place, so they probably come up with more good ideas for movies.
Perhaps movie companies should hire a mob of children to come up with movies. Give them some paper so they can draw them.
I agree with every word of this essay to the deepest core of my being.
"friendship are what makes life living"
WHAT? We're really getting the raw replays. And paying for it?