I would caution against leaning to heavily on only productivity impacts when deciding whether to have a child or not. I do not think this post intends to say this, but I worry this could be the takeaway for some readers and therefore thought it worthwhile to expand on. Something the material in this post leaves out is the effect of wanting to have children but deciding not to due to concerns about productivity. While this has not been studied to my knowledge, I would be concerned about studies on involuntary childlessness—my precursory understanding is that people who want children but do not have them are more likely to suffer mentally. Moreover, if you have kids and obsess about productivity, they will likely pick up on it—I have 2 examples of that (i.e. my own kids and how they very easily pick up on “daddy has to work”)! I therefore think that issues around parenting and productivity should be navigated with a lot of care and deliberation. If nothing else—if you worry about productivity and decide against having kids I think you should strongly consider freezing some eggs and sperm to increase the chance that you can have kids later on if you regret your decision—treat your future self with compassion! One further idea might be to survey current EA parents if anyone regrets having children due to the impact on productivity.
That said, I think this article can be helpful for those of us that have children but are wondering about healthy ways to increase productivity. One tip from my side is to set a fixed number of hours to work each week that feels achievable. I do this and feel good about the work I completed while I can after than dedicate time to my family “productivity guilt free”.
Thank you for bringing up other important considerations and limitations of these studies. You are right that, with this post, I don’t intend to make any claims about the extent to which anyone should let productivity effects determine their decision whether or not to have children. I’m just hoping to help better inform those who factor it into their choice (although, again, you make a good point about these studies’ failure to account for the counterfactual of people who want children deciding against it).
I would caution against leaning to heavily on only productivity impacts when deciding whether to have a child or not. I do not think this post intends to say this, but I worry this could be the takeaway for some readers and therefore thought it worthwhile to expand on. Something the material in this post leaves out is the effect of wanting to have children but deciding not to due to concerns about productivity. While this has not been studied to my knowledge, I would be concerned about studies on involuntary childlessness—my precursory understanding is that people who want children but do not have them are more likely to suffer mentally. Moreover, if you have kids and obsess about productivity, they will likely pick up on it—I have 2 examples of that (i.e. my own kids and how they very easily pick up on “daddy has to work”)! I therefore think that issues around parenting and productivity should be navigated with a lot of care and deliberation. If nothing else—if you worry about productivity and decide against having kids I think you should strongly consider freezing some eggs and sperm to increase the chance that you can have kids later on if you regret your decision—treat your future self with compassion! One further idea might be to survey current EA parents if anyone regrets having children due to the impact on productivity.
That said, I think this article can be helpful for those of us that have children but are wondering about healthy ways to increase productivity. One tip from my side is to set a fixed number of hours to work each week that feels achievable. I do this and feel good about the work I completed while I can after than dedicate time to my family “productivity guilt free”.
Thank you for bringing up other important considerations and limitations of these studies. You are right that, with this post, I don’t intend to make any claims about the extent to which anyone should let productivity effects determine their decision whether or not to have children. I’m just hoping to help better inform those who factor it into their choice (although, again, you make a good point about these studies’ failure to account for the counterfactual of people who want children deciding against it).