Very few of my peers are having kids. My husband and I are the youngest parents at the Princeton University daycare at 31 years old. The next youngest parent is 3 years older than us, and his kid is a year younger than ours. Considering median age of first birth at the national level is 30 years old, it seems like a potential problem that the national median is the Princeton minimum.
I wonder what the birth rate is specifically among American parents with/doing STEM PhDs. I’m guessing it’s extremely low for people under the age of 45. Possibly low enough to raise concerns about how scientists are not procreating anymore.
Princeton is raising annual stipends to about $45,000. Two graduate student parents now have a reasonable combined household income, especially if they can live in subsidized student housing. I wonder if this will make a big difference in Princeton fertility rates.
On the other hand, none of my NYC friends making way over $90,000 have kids, so this might be a deeper cultural problem.
To be clear, I don’t think people who don’t want to have kids should have them, or that they’re being “selfish” or whatever. But societies without children will literally die, so it’s concerning that American society has such strong anti-natal sentiment. Especially if it’s the part of American society with some of the smartest people who are more motivated by truth seeking than money.
One (probably awful) idea I’ve been playing around with is scaling up parenting.
Say, find some good people (maybe couples) who care about education and love raising kids, and fund them to raise a lot of kids with strong genetic potential.
There may be ways to raise them to be great people (e.g. this Future Perfect piece) and with devoted parenting it might be possible to raise them to be “expert do-gooders” (thinking of the Polgar sisters).
Very few of my peers are having kids. My husband and I are the youngest parents at the Princeton University daycare at 31 years old. The next youngest parent is 3 years older than us, and his kid is a year younger than ours. Considering median age of first birth at the national level is 30 years old, it seems like a potential problem that the national median is the Princeton minimum.
I wonder what the birth rate is specifically among American parents with/doing STEM PhDs. I’m guessing it’s extremely low for people under the age of 45. Possibly low enough to raise concerns about how scientists are not procreating anymore.
Most birth rate statistics I’ve seen group doctorates in with any professional degree other than a masters, so it’s hard to tell what’s going on outside anecdotal evidence. For example: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-05-508.pdf
Princeton is raising annual stipends to about $45,000. Two graduate student parents now have a reasonable combined household income, especially if they can live in subsidized student housing. I wonder if this will make a big difference in Princeton fertility rates.
On the other hand, none of my NYC friends making way over $90,000 have kids, so this might be a deeper cultural problem.
To be clear, I don’t think people who don’t want to have kids should have them, or that they’re being “selfish” or whatever. But societies without children will literally die, so it’s concerning that American society has such strong anti-natal sentiment. Especially if it’s the part of American society with some of the smartest people who are more motivated by truth seeking than money.
One (probably awful) idea I’ve been playing around with is scaling up parenting.
Say, find some good people (maybe couples) who care about education and love raising kids, and fund them to raise a lot of kids with strong genetic potential.
There may be ways to raise them to be great people (e.g. this Future Perfect piece) and with devoted parenting it might be possible to raise them to be “expert do-gooders” (thinking of the Polgar sisters).