Accounting for Children

by Will Wilkinson on April 25, 2008

Let me emphasize that I’m not trying to discourage anyone from having kids, or another kid. I’m just really genuinely interested in the real net cost of kids to their parents in terms of lifetime happiness, consumption, status, etc. I think people should make hugely significant choices, like how many kids to have, with accurate information about those costs. If people want a bunch of kids anyway, despite the costs, then that’s just evidence other considerations matter to them. And I’m a pluralist, so that’s cool. But if people are rushing into these kinds of choices on the basis of bad or incomplete folk information, and they end up worse off than they might have been, by their own lights, then that’s not good at all.

Artificial

rational calculation, the population curve for humanity would still be arithmetic instead of geometric after 1,000 CE

Selleys

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Selleys

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Mike D

P.S.

Agreed that having kids is more about meaning than happiness. I myself said this to a coworker who was ambivalent about fathering children due to the loss of free time and romance with his wife:

"You'll have less fun and happiness, but you'll have more joy and meaning."

Potentially, there's a point parallel to those utilitarians who want to maximize total utility instead of average utility.

If meaning is asserted/manufactured by humans, more humans might result in a greater production of meaning.

Mike D

Will,

You don't want people to decide whether to have kids or how many to have without accurate information about the costs. Fair enough -- more accurate information is always helpful when optimizing.

But, since we know that not having kids (or not having enough kids) might have an opportunity cost in terms of benefits foregone, shouldn't you be equally worried that those who have not had kids lack accurate information about what they are missing out on? Why assume net costs instead of net benefits?

Since most parents nowadays (in contrast to times when everyone got married at 18) have experienced at least some portion of their adult life childless, I think we should take their assessments of the net benefits/costs of having children as the more accurate, at least given their idiosyncratic preferences.

We might say to the childless as we say to children "How do you know you don't like it? You haven't even tried it yet."

The only people I can think of who have comparable information to make informed assessments would be those who *had* been parents, but had lost or severed the relationship with the child.

Ryan

I just want to point out that Malthus was no "idiot", Duoist. I'd like to have seen you predict the unprecedented take-off in trend productivity growth a couple hundred years back.

Will Wilkinson

I see you have taken what I call below, "the route of the sentimental moralist." Which is fine, I guess, if you're not interested in actually knowing things. I have no interest in the population of humanity. We're talking about the self-interest of parents. You seem to say that kids are both obviously not in the parents' self-interest and yet the self-interested benefits are incalculable. Which is it?

And still... How many do you have, and why don't you have one more than that?

a Duoist

Will,

If having children were a rational calculation, the population curve for humanity would still be arithmetic instead of geometric after 1,000 CE, and Malthus would be a god today instead of being an idiot. No one is ever really ready to have children, and the 'benefits' of having children are wonderfully incalculable...for some.

Hold your sleeping child against your chest, nuzzle the sweetness of her hair, and toss out cost/benefit analysis to the unmoved and unmovable among us. The child makes an adult as much as the adults create the child: it is a mutual transformation, all for the better.

Some call it, 'biology.' Others call it, 'humanity.'
A few might call it, 'maturity.' But the very best word to describe it, is "happiness."

'Be free,' Will.

Will Wilkinson

Right. No one ever uses birth control and everyone has 10 children because it's just too creepy to think about the costs and benefits.

a Duoist

Good grief, Will, cost/benefit analysis of having children? Preceeded by, cost/benefit of getting married? Preceeded by, cost/benefit of... What will be the psychology of the child who resulted from a cost/benefit analysis, or what will be the character of any marriage after a required cost/benefit, or...?

Sometimes, a cold shudder is known as, 'the willies.'