Brief New Parenting Advice
It's not as hard as you think it is.
At a wedding this weekend, my wife and I congratulated a younger couple on their upcoming baby. It was a honeymoon baby and they’re the first of their young-30s professional friend group to get pregnant. We effusively told them that kids are the best. They seemed immediately relieved, most of their peers are scared for them. So to follow up I sort of blurted out, “However many kids you think you want, have at least one more.”
The girl’s eyes got big and a little emotional and she said, “Wow, really? Nobody’s said that to us before.”
It’s terrifying to think about how terrified this next generation is to have kids of their own. But it’s not as hard as they think it is. Kids are not only easier than society tells them, they are also more rewarding. More rewarding than nearly anything else in life.
“I don't know what the meaning of life is, but for sure it has something to do with babies.” — Ilya Sutskever
The soon-to-be Mom looked like she wanted to ask more, but in the middle of wedding cheer, there wasn’t time. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this sort of reaction. Have more kids has become uncommon advice to give to young parents. And yet that’s the chief thing I want to shout to them. But there’s a few other things too, because I think the reason so many parents are so scared is because the world is telling them the wrong things.
Here’s some other things I want to tell them:
Read Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids. He makes really strong arguments for why nature beats nurture. Even if you don’t read it, you get the main point from the title: kids will make your life better.
The main point is: remember that 95+% of the job of raising great kids is already done because you picked an amazing spouse. (If I don’t know you, let us assume this to be true!) Modern parenting culture drives people to be very stressed and helicopter-y. In the long run, genetics wins.
In a lot of ways, our job as parents is all via negativa. Our job is to not screw them up and let them become who they can become. This is surprisingly hard!
As my kids have gotten older (13, 10, 8), I’ve amended slightly the Caplan advice to look for very strong positive feedback loops that help form character. Example: positive peer pressure is an incredible thing! We moved our son from the local parochial school where the 4th graders were getting iPhones to a really great boys school where the cool thing to do is memorize the longer poem.
Avoid all screens, practice by example.
Start a library if you don’t have one and keep lots of books. The number of books in a house as a kid has been measured as a fantastic proxy for all sorts of adult successes.
“Never handicap your kids by making their lives easy” -Robert Heinlein
“Having a child is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” -Elizabeth Stone
“We have overprotected children in the real world and underprotected them in the virtual world.” -Jon Haidt
“Your son will follow your example. Your daughter will marry it.” -Jacob Edward
