I totally agree with your points on: movements that frown upon having children will repel top talent, and you can have kids and still be an über effective altruist.
I disagree with the idea that having kids makes people care more about the future. I deeply respect Julia Wise, and maybe this is true for her and other people, but I have found being a parent hasn’t really lengthened my philanthropic time horizons. I would change my mind on this if anybody has studied changes in altruistic behaviors before/after people became parents, but after having a child I’ve actually found myself more open to hyper short-termist altruism that I never would have considered pre-having children. (E.g., adopting a child makes more sense to me now. )
I also disagree on the Bryan Caplan stuff on how you can be a good parent with less effort than current USA norms dictate. Like, if you have an infant that needs to eat every 2 hours, 24 hours a day, for 3 months, there’s no way to slack on that. You can hire somebody to do it for you, you can live near helpful family, or you can be a deadbeat parent. But somebody has to do this intense amount of labor or the child will die. Things definitely get easier once kids get older, and you can just choose to let your kid read all day after school instead of driving them around to a million extracurricular activities, but Bryan’s focus on this being the “norm” that you can easily ignore reveals more about the social class of people he feels peer pressure from than what children actually normally do. I still think it’s great to have kids, even though it’s a lot of work. I just don’t like people acting like it’s not a lot of work.
I think one of the main reasons EA people are underrating having kids is because they almost never interact with children? At least in graduate school, very few people have children. I’m the only student in my department with a child. I get the sense that many EAs live in similar age segregated environments. I would encourage more people to babysit their young relatives if they have the opportunity, just so they can see how fun it is :)
My gut-level feelings about the future changed, but it’s not at all surprising to me that other parents like Abby had a different experience. I didn’t mean to make a claim about what other people’s experience was.
I agree with Abby that it’s a mistake to read Caplan as meaning that parenting won’t be hard. It will definitely be hard, especially in the early years. It just doesn’t have to be quite as hard as current upper-middle-class US norms would have you think.
I totally agree with your points on: movements that frown upon having children will repel top talent, and you can have kids and still be an über effective altruist.
I disagree with the idea that having kids makes people care more about the future. I deeply respect Julia Wise, and maybe this is true for her and other people, but I have found being a parent hasn’t really lengthened my philanthropic time horizons. I would change my mind on this if anybody has studied changes in altruistic behaviors before/after people became parents, but after having a child I’ve actually found myself more open to hyper short-termist altruism that I never would have considered pre-having children. (E.g., adopting a child makes more sense to me now. )
I also disagree on the Bryan Caplan stuff on how you can be a good parent with less effort than current USA norms dictate. Like, if you have an infant that needs to eat every 2 hours, 24 hours a day, for 3 months, there’s no way to slack on that. You can hire somebody to do it for you, you can live near helpful family, or you can be a deadbeat parent. But somebody has to do this intense amount of labor or the child will die. Things definitely get easier once kids get older, and you can just choose to let your kid read all day after school instead of driving them around to a million extracurricular activities, but Bryan’s focus on this being the “norm” that you can easily ignore reveals more about the social class of people he feels peer pressure from than what children actually normally do. I still think it’s great to have kids, even though it’s a lot of work. I just don’t like people acting like it’s not a lot of work.
I think one of the main reasons EA people are underrating having kids is because they almost never interact with children? At least in graduate school, very few people have children. I’m the only student in my department with a child. I get the sense that many EAs live in similar age segregated environments. I would encourage more people to babysit their young relatives if they have the opportunity, just so they can see how fun it is :)
My gut-level feelings about the future changed, but it’s not at all surprising to me that other parents like Abby had a different experience. I didn’t mean to make a claim about what other people’s experience was.
I agree with Abby that it’s a mistake to read Caplan as meaning that parenting won’t be hard. It will definitely be hard, especially in the early years. It just doesn’t have to be quite as hard as current upper-middle-class US norms would have you think.