Thank you very much for this offer—I have many questions, but I don’t want to eat away too much of your time, so feel free to answer as few or as many of my questions as you choose. One criterion might be only answering those questions that you believe I would have the longest or most difficult time answering myself. I believe that many of my questions could have fairly complex answers; as such, it might be more efficient to simply point me to the appropriate resources via links. While this may increase your work load, I think that if you crossposted this on LessWrong, its members would also find this post valuable.
Background
My partner and I are both in our early-mid 20′s (we are only 2 months apart in our ages) and are interested in having children. More specifically, we currently believe that our first child, should we have any children together, will likely be born 6.5 to 9.5 years from now. We are thinking about having 2-4 children, but the final number depends on my partner’s experiences with childbirth and on our collective experience of raising the first, second, etc… child. Some members of my partner’s family experience depression and my partner has a mild connective tissue disorder. Members of my family deal with some depression as well. My partner and I are thinking about using embryo selection to address for these things and to potentially optimize the IQ of our children, among other features that might have polygenic scores. We might also consider using gene-editing if it is available, but we definitely have to think more about this. The current health risks to both the host and embryo involved with IVF and egg extraction make my partner nervous, but she thinks she is more likely than not to follow through with the procedure. As for temperament, my partner and I are both relatively calm and inquisitive people and broadly share the same parenting values, though we haven’t, of course, fully scoped these values out. I suspect that I might be more conservative or rigid than her with my future parenting practices, but much of this comes from me having not yet formed beliefs about what works and what doesn’t with parenting and instead making precaution my default mode of operation. Now, onto the questions.
Optimal Timing
How much do my partner and I stand to lose in terms of our children’s health and psychological development if we were to have our first child at age ~28 versus at age ~32. We might have up to 4 children, so assuming each child is 2 years apart in age: “first child at 28” scenario ==> new child at ages 28, 30, 32, and 34; “first child at 33″ scenario ==> new child at ages 33, 35, 37, and 39. While I am unfamiliar with the details of the research, my current belief are “risk of child having health defects due to older father only really begin to increase, on average, when fathers reach around the age of 40” and “risk of child having health defects due to older mother increase, on average, in early 30s”. I think it is important to consider how old my partner and I will when our youngest child is 10 in each scenario: 44 for the first scenario and 49 for the second scenario. I am unaware of how large the difference in physical ability / stamina is for the ages 20 vs. 30, 30 vs. 40, 40 vs. 50, etc… but I feel that 44 vs. 49 constitutes a large difference in stamina.
Embryo Selection and IVF
Do you have any forecasts concerning embryo selection and IVF? Some example questions: How much do you think IVF will cost in 2027? in 2032? How do you think the risks associated with IVF and egg extraction with change in the next 6 years? In what ways do you think polygenic screening will improve in the next 6 years? What are you thoughts on the safety, morality, and practicality of embryo selection today, and how do you think this will change in the next 6 years?
Nature vs. Nurture
Can you provide a concise reflection of the current consensus of the genetics / biology community on this question? Your answer might contribute marginally to my parenting attitudes and behavior.
Naming
There are two primary questions I have on this. (1) In your experience, how much do you believe a person’s name affects their life outcomes? My current belief is for the overwhelming majority of people the effect is marginal. (2) What do you think are the effects of having your children call you by your first name instead of by something like “Mommy” or “Daddy”? My partner and I intend to have our children call us by our first names.
Holidays
Assuming that my partner and I raise our children in a sparsely populated suburb or rural region in the Eastern USA, do you think never celebrating holidays such as Christmas or birthdays would have a strong effect on the psychological development of our children? My partner and I intend to avoid celebrating any conventional holidays, except for Halloween, and to celebrate the Solstices and Equinoxes instead.
Twins
If we had the option to do this, do you think it would be a good idea to have 2 pairs of twins instead of 4 children, i.e. generally speaking, do people who have a twin sibling experience higher levels of well-being, and if so, would recommend this option?
Birth Order
From what I’ve read, it appears that, at least among many current indigenous societies, the demographic that predominantly plays with and cares for children beyond the mother and father are adolescent females. With this in mind, might it make more sense to have the first child be a female? Additionally, I’ve come across the idea that the last child of families with more than 2 children typically has more estrogen than other the children, on average. What are some of the consequences of birth order by sex, assuming that my partner and I have 4 children and that each of these children are born 2 years apart? For example, would you suspect that the well-being of the following group, in order of birth from 1st born to last born, (F, M, M, F) experiences higher well-being than (M, F, F, M), all other things controlled for, hypothetically?
Geographical location
My partner and I are considering forming some establishment in a region with forests, some terrain, a low population density, and low air pollution* that is at most 3 hours away from an urban area. Some regions in the Eastern US comes to mind here. The air pollution part has an asterisk next to it since I highly value this consideration for where to raise children. Generally speaking, what might be some disadvantages to raising children in such an area? I suspect that a potential lack of immediate access to healthcare services might be one.
Education and technology
My partner and I plan to home-school our children until they are college age. We suspect that socialization might be a large issue if we follow through with this plan. I intend to instruct my children in many subjects and would very much like for them to develop strong critical thinking skills, a curiosity and wonder with the universe, and a general mental framework for how the world works. This is all standard though; do you have any recommendations for inculcating these things across the various developmental milestones? For example, it might be the case that I should primarily talk to an X year old in such a way because they have not developed Y capacity yet. Also, I am quite keen on limiting the access of my children when they are young (0-10, but this upper bound is something that I need to think about) to most of YouTube (except for educational channels), most of the Internet (except for educational websites or resources), and all of television. I intend to teach my children at least the basics of electronics and programming, so their engagement with the technology involved with these things would be openly encouraged. What would might be some consequences on the mental development of my children of me taking these actions? Of course, your answer is not the sole consideration for my decision.
Emotions and Discipline
My partner and I are both highly conflict avoidant. We are both quite calm most of the time and are not too affected by anger or frustration, though we do feel such things occasionally. We intend to not display frustration, anger, or intense exasperation in front of our children, but don’t know if this a good idea. Are there some emotions or reactions that should not be shown to children as they may lead to a weakened ability to deal with / tolerate certain aspects of human interaction / the world? Also, my partner and I are both unaware of what the most developmentally beneficial forms of discipline are for children. For one heuristic, we are considering making an effort to enforce disciplinary action immediately in response to some undesirable action, and to always follow throw with what we promise and warn about.
This is a long list of questions, but thank you for reading it if you’ve gotten to the end. It has actually been helpful in eliciting some of the ideas I’ve had about parenting that I’ve not explicitly written out.
My two cents on a couple of these from the perspective of a father of two girls (4 years old and 2 years old, I’m 30). Just my perspective, feel free to disregard if not helpful!
On emotions and discipline, I’m also a very calm person and rarely show anger and frustration. But kids are really good at finding was to frustrate you. I almost never yell at them, but I do get frustrated or exasperated and raise my voice, and it’s genuinely unclear to me how anyone could parent a child without doing that.
In general I think the military wisdom “no plan survives first contact with the enemy” is a good rule of thumb for parenting, except substitute “the enemy” with “these small lunatics I never imagined I could love so much.” My wife and I had bold plans for how we would parent, how we would minimize screen time, how our children would eat healthy foods all the time, and so on. But a lot of that goes out the window when you’re tired and have chores to do and the kids won’t give you an inch of personal space or you need to make a quick dinner or one kid is potty training and needs near constant attention but your other kid is bored and also wants attention or whatever. We also know other parents who had big plans about how they would parent, and in the end made many compromises.
All that is to say that I think it’s good that you’re thinking about how you want to parent. Maybe you’ll have more luck than I did sticking to your original plans. And maybe it’s good to start with ambitious initial plans, that way if you deviate from them you’re still mostly on track, I’m not sure. But I would just advise that I think a key part of parenting is flexibility and prioritizing which values you care about. If you let your three year old watch a TV show a few times a week so you can have some time to get the dishes done or get dinner made, how harmful is that really? If that helps you de-stress a little and leads to less exasperation it may be beneficial on net. Kids differ a lot in personalities and attitudes (it was surprising to me how different my kids can be), so the compromises you need to make may vary depending on what your kid is like, and I think it can help to be mindful of that going in.
On developing curiosity and wonder I think just sharing fascinating things with your kids whenever possible seems to work well. Sometimes I share something and I can tell my four year old isn’t really interested or maybe doesn’t understand, and that’s fine. But other times I’ll show her something cool I can tell she’s echoing my excitement and interest in it and asking surprisingly thoughtful questions. I think the big thing is just sharing your excitement about it and trying to include your kid in it. In general making time to share your interests seems to work well, recently I’ve been watching football with my oldest and explaining the rules and how it works, and even though I don’t think she fully understands it she seems to be really enjoying it and picking up a lot of stuff, and I think that’s mainly just because she knows I’m trying to include her in it. The same thing happens when I show her pictures from the James Webb space telescope or show her videos of rocket launches or SpaceX landing their boosters or whatever and make the time to explain why I think it’s so awesome.
Do you think never celebrating holidays such as Christmas or birthdays would have a strong effect on the psychological development of our children? My partner and I intend to avoid celebrating any conventional holidays, except for Halloween, and to celebrate the Solstices and Equinoxes instead.
Would you be up for saying more about why you don’t want to celebrate the conventional holidays? Your kids are likely going to want to celebrate the things their friends and extended family are celebrating, and unless you have a strong reason not to, might as well make them happy?
For example, despite being atheists we celebrate Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah, and Passover. Not in an especially religious way, just things like dying eggs and looking for them are fun.
Jeff—I agree. I think there are lots of design features of these traditional holidays that look irrational, outdated, and silly from an adult’s point of view, but that suddenly make sense when you have kids enjoying them.
Kids seem to have a deep hunger for ‘special times’, holidays, and celebrations, when the normal routines are set aside, and parents make special efforts to interact with extended family, neighbors, and friends, and when there are special foods, feasts, activities, and gift-giving. My speculation is that in hunter-gatherer times, collective feasts and holidays sent kids reliable cues that ‘things are going well with our tribe’, and kids like that. If kids are deprived of these special times, they might implicitly get cues that ‘our tribe is poor, failing, under threat, and not likely to last very long’, which could make them anxious and sad.
Thank you very much for this offer—I have many questions, but I don’t want to eat away too much of your time, so feel free to answer as few or as many of my questions as you choose. One criterion might be only answering those questions that you believe I would have the longest or most difficult time answering myself. I believe that many of my questions could have fairly complex answers; as such, it might be more efficient to simply point me to the appropriate resources via links. While this may increase your work load, I think that if you crossposted this on LessWrong, its members would also find this post valuable.
Background
My partner and I are both in our early-mid 20′s (we are only 2 months apart in our ages) and are interested in having children. More specifically, we currently believe that our first child, should we have any children together, will likely be born 6.5 to 9.5 years from now. We are thinking about having 2-4 children, but the final number depends on my partner’s experiences with childbirth and on our collective experience of raising the first, second, etc… child. Some members of my partner’s family experience depression and my partner has a mild connective tissue disorder. Members of my family deal with some depression as well. My partner and I are thinking about using embryo selection to address for these things and to potentially optimize the IQ of our children, among other features that might have polygenic scores. We might also consider using gene-editing if it is available, but we definitely have to think more about this. The current health risks to both the host and embryo involved with IVF and egg extraction make my partner nervous, but she thinks she is more likely than not to follow through with the procedure. As for temperament, my partner and I are both relatively calm and inquisitive people and broadly share the same parenting values, though we haven’t, of course, fully scoped these values out. I suspect that I might be more conservative or rigid than her with my future parenting practices, but much of this comes from me having not yet formed beliefs about what works and what doesn’t with parenting and instead making precaution my default mode of operation. Now, onto the questions.
Optimal Timing
How much do my partner and I stand to lose in terms of our children’s health and psychological development if we were to have our first child at age ~28 versus at age ~32. We might have up to 4 children, so assuming each child is 2 years apart in age: “first child at 28” scenario ==> new child at ages 28, 30, 32, and 34; “first child at 33″ scenario ==> new child at ages 33, 35, 37, and 39. While I am unfamiliar with the details of the research, my current belief are “risk of child having health defects due to older father only really begin to increase, on average, when fathers reach around the age of 40” and “risk of child having health defects due to older mother increase, on average, in early 30s”. I think it is important to consider how old my partner and I will when our youngest child is 10 in each scenario: 44 for the first scenario and 49 for the second scenario. I am unaware of how large the difference in physical ability / stamina is for the ages 20 vs. 30, 30 vs. 40, 40 vs. 50, etc… but I feel that 44 vs. 49 constitutes a large difference in stamina.
Embryo Selection and IVF
Do you have any forecasts concerning embryo selection and IVF? Some example questions: How much do you think IVF will cost in 2027? in 2032? How do you think the risks associated with IVF and egg extraction with change in the next 6 years? In what ways do you think polygenic screening will improve in the next 6 years? What are you thoughts on the safety, morality, and practicality of embryo selection today, and how do you think this will change in the next 6 years?
Nature vs. Nurture
Can you provide a concise reflection of the current consensus of the genetics / biology community on this question? Your answer might contribute marginally to my parenting attitudes and behavior.
Naming
There are two primary questions I have on this. (1) In your experience, how much do you believe a person’s name affects their life outcomes? My current belief is for the overwhelming majority of people the effect is marginal. (2) What do you think are the effects of having your children call you by your first name instead of by something like “Mommy” or “Daddy”? My partner and I intend to have our children call us by our first names.
Holidays
Assuming that my partner and I raise our children in a sparsely populated suburb or rural region in the Eastern USA, do you think never celebrating holidays such as Christmas or birthdays would have a strong effect on the psychological development of our children? My partner and I intend to avoid celebrating any conventional holidays, except for Halloween, and to celebrate the Solstices and Equinoxes instead.
Twins
If we had the option to do this, do you think it would be a good idea to have 2 pairs of twins instead of 4 children, i.e. generally speaking, do people who have a twin sibling experience higher levels of well-being, and if so, would recommend this option?
Birth Order
From what I’ve read, it appears that, at least among many current indigenous societies, the demographic that predominantly plays with and cares for children beyond the mother and father are adolescent females. With this in mind, might it make more sense to have the first child be a female? Additionally, I’ve come across the idea that the last child of families with more than 2 children typically has more estrogen than other the children, on average. What are some of the consequences of birth order by sex, assuming that my partner and I have 4 children and that each of these children are born 2 years apart? For example, would you suspect that the well-being of the following group, in order of birth from 1st born to last born, (F, M, M, F) experiences higher well-being than (M, F, F, M), all other things controlled for, hypothetically?
Geographical location
My partner and I are considering forming some establishment in a region with forests, some terrain, a low population density, and low air pollution* that is at most 3 hours away from an urban area. Some regions in the Eastern US comes to mind here. The air pollution part has an asterisk next to it since I highly value this consideration for where to raise children. Generally speaking, what might be some disadvantages to raising children in such an area? I suspect that a potential lack of immediate access to healthcare services might be one.
Education and technology
My partner and I plan to home-school our children until they are college age. We suspect that socialization might be a large issue if we follow through with this plan. I intend to instruct my children in many subjects and would very much like for them to develop strong critical thinking skills, a curiosity and wonder with the universe, and a general mental framework for how the world works. This is all standard though; do you have any recommendations for inculcating these things across the various developmental milestones? For example, it might be the case that I should primarily talk to an X year old in such a way because they have not developed Y capacity yet. Also, I am quite keen on limiting the access of my children when they are young (0-10, but this upper bound is something that I need to think about) to most of YouTube (except for educational channels), most of the Internet (except for educational websites or resources), and all of television. I intend to teach my children at least the basics of electronics and programming, so their engagement with the technology involved with these things would be openly encouraged. What would might be some consequences on the mental development of my children of me taking these actions? Of course, your answer is not the sole consideration for my decision.
Emotions and Discipline
My partner and I are both highly conflict avoidant. We are both quite calm most of the time and are not too affected by anger or frustration, though we do feel such things occasionally. We intend to not display frustration, anger, or intense exasperation in front of our children, but don’t know if this a good idea. Are there some emotions or reactions that should not be shown to children as they may lead to a weakened ability to deal with / tolerate certain aspects of human interaction / the world? Also, my partner and I are both unaware of what the most developmentally beneficial forms of discipline are for children. For one heuristic, we are considering making an effort to enforce disciplinary action immediately in response to some undesirable action, and to always follow throw with what we promise and warn about.
This is a long list of questions, but thank you for reading it if you’ve gotten to the end. It has actually been helpful in eliciting some of the ideas I’ve had about parenting that I’ve not explicitly written out.
Have a nice day!
My two cents on a couple of these from the perspective of a father of two girls (4 years old and 2 years old, I’m 30). Just my perspective, feel free to disregard if not helpful!
On emotions and discipline, I’m also a very calm person and rarely show anger and frustration. But kids are really good at finding was to frustrate you. I almost never yell at them, but I do get frustrated or exasperated and raise my voice, and it’s genuinely unclear to me how anyone could parent a child without doing that.
In general I think the military wisdom “no plan survives first contact with the enemy” is a good rule of thumb for parenting, except substitute “the enemy” with “these small lunatics I never imagined I could love so much.” My wife and I had bold plans for how we would parent, how we would minimize screen time, how our children would eat healthy foods all the time, and so on. But a lot of that goes out the window when you’re tired and have chores to do and the kids won’t give you an inch of personal space or you need to make a quick dinner or one kid is potty training and needs near constant attention but your other kid is bored and also wants attention or whatever. We also know other parents who had big plans about how they would parent, and in the end made many compromises.
All that is to say that I think it’s good that you’re thinking about how you want to parent. Maybe you’ll have more luck than I did sticking to your original plans. And maybe it’s good to start with ambitious initial plans, that way if you deviate from them you’re still mostly on track, I’m not sure. But I would just advise that I think a key part of parenting is flexibility and prioritizing which values you care about. If you let your three year old watch a TV show a few times a week so you can have some time to get the dishes done or get dinner made, how harmful is that really? If that helps you de-stress a little and leads to less exasperation it may be beneficial on net. Kids differ a lot in personalities and attitudes (it was surprising to me how different my kids can be), so the compromises you need to make may vary depending on what your kid is like, and I think it can help to be mindful of that going in.
On developing curiosity and wonder I think just sharing fascinating things with your kids whenever possible seems to work well. Sometimes I share something and I can tell my four year old isn’t really interested or maybe doesn’t understand, and that’s fine. But other times I’ll show her something cool I can tell she’s echoing my excitement and interest in it and asking surprisingly thoughtful questions. I think the big thing is just sharing your excitement about it and trying to include your kid in it. In general making time to share your interests seems to work well, recently I’ve been watching football with my oldest and explaining the rules and how it works, and even though I don’t think she fully understands it she seems to be really enjoying it and picking up a lot of stuff, and I think that’s mainly just because she knows I’m trying to include her in it. The same thing happens when I show her pictures from the James Webb space telescope or show her videos of rocket launches or SpaceX landing their boosters or whatever and make the time to explain why I think it’s so awesome.
Would you be up for saying more about why you don’t want to celebrate the conventional holidays? Your kids are likely going to want to celebrate the things their friends and extended family are celebrating, and unless you have a strong reason not to, might as well make them happy?
For example, despite being atheists we celebrate Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah, and Passover. Not in an especially religious way, just things like dying eggs and looking for them are fun.
Jeff—I agree. I think there are lots of design features of these traditional holidays that look irrational, outdated, and silly from an adult’s point of view, but that suddenly make sense when you have kids enjoying them.
Kids seem to have a deep hunger for ‘special times’, holidays, and celebrations, when the normal routines are set aside, and parents make special efforts to interact with extended family, neighbors, and friends, and when there are special foods, feasts, activities, and gift-giving. My speculation is that in hunter-gatherer times, collective feasts and holidays sent kids reliable cues that ‘things are going well with our tribe’, and kids like that. If kids are deprived of these special times, they might implicitly get cues that ‘our tribe is poor, failing, under threat, and not likely to last very long’, which could make them anxious and sad.