Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The Case for Having More Kids (NYT)

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/the-case-for-having-more-kids/
April 7, 2011, 9:00 am
The Case for Having More Kids
By DAVID LEONHARDT

Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason, is the author of �Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids,� which will be released this week. Mr. Caplan doesn�t believe everyone should have a lot of children. But he does say many parents and future parents should consider having more children than they are currently planning.

...

Mr. Caplan: The central idea of twin and adoption research is that disentangling nature from nurture is hard. Our intuition isn�t very helpful. Yes, kids of college-educated parents know more words. But why? Maybe their upbringing is the reason, as you suggest. But babies from college-educated families might excel even if raised by high school dropouts, by learning a higher fraction of the words they hear, or spending more time reading.

So what does the twin and adoption data say? Language fits a standard pattern. Consistent with your skepticism, upbringing has a noticeable effect on the vocabulary of young children. But as children mature, this effect largely fades away. The Colorado Adoption Project found, for example, that 2-year-olds adopted by high-vocabulary parents had noticeably larger vocabularies. But as the kids grew up, their vocabulary scores looked more and more like their biological parents�. By age 12, the effect of enriched upbringing on vocabulary was barely visible.

Admittedly, there�s a sense in which upbringing is all-important: If a baby is raised by wolves, he won�t know any words. (There�s also a sense in which genes are all-important: If you had wolf DNA, you wouldn�t know any words either.) But twin and adoption research focuses on questions that are much more relevant for parents: how your child will turn out if you switch to another parenting style.

<rest of article at link>

Since, as Caplan explains, intelligence is highly heritable, it is especially important for smart people to have lots of children.

Forgive me if I decline to take anything seriously by someone who says that raising kids can and should be easy and that you should make it easier on yourself by Ferberising them and using timeouts! Sheesh.

Am I the only one here who doesn't think that highly intelligent people are more important than anyone else?

I certainly am not convinced that increasing the number of highly intelligent people at the cost of also increasing the number of people who think it's fine to prioritise an adult's wishes over the needs of a tiny baby is an improvement! (Do I think that *other things being equal* being more intelligent is a good thing, though? Yes.)

While I don't agree with the point of view of the writer (or the OP's statement about smart people having more kids for that matter), I do appreciate the opportunity to read articles I probably wouldn't otherwise have sought out on my own. I find it valuable to have the time to process what's in the article and settle on my own position and arguments for/against it. As a result, I am sometimes better-equipped to argue in real life when a similar topic comes up.

So, for my two cents worth, I say post away, Bostonian. Just don't mind us if we disagree with you.

One might think it would be the smart people who realize that putting more time and resources into a smaller number of children would guarantee better reproductive 'success'.

My knowledge about Mr. Caplan's ideas is limited to what I read in the linked article and a few other things he's written in his blog. Even so, from what I read, there seem to be a lot of misinterpretations in this thread. I'm not used to seeing this kind of thing here. For example, I didn't read anything in the linked article stating or implying that "smart people are more important than anyone else."


I didn't get the impression that he believes that raising kids should be easy. What I inferred was that there are healthy ways to make things go better for parents and kids:



This advice sounds perfectly reasonable to me. A break is a basic need.


You can berate me all you want for agreeing with him here, but I think he's spot-on. BTW, "fun" and "easy" are not the same things.

As for the concept of smart people should have more kids, which seems to have originated here and not in that article, I can't see what's wrong with this idea. What's so bad about having more smart people on the planet?

Val

I definitely agree with the included snippet in the article. My observations tell me that nurture can produce advanced skills early in life in almost any child, but nature limits just how advanced these skills will be in later life.

Growing up as the oldest in a large family is definitely fun and interesting, sometimes a little more interesting than you want it to be.

My values and feelings definitely don't like the idea of trying to purposely build a smarter population. However, I also have a practical view on this and am hoping we are heading towards being a smarter population.

Interestingly enough, the average brain volume in humans peaked 10,000 years ago and has been on a steady decline ever since. As John Hawks has said in this video, on his good days he likes to think the brain is becoming more efficient.



I personally feel our improved abilities to educate the next generation has removed the need for certain valuable abilities provided by the once larger average brain. At least on my bad days, but I go with John Hawks on my good days.

I wasn't advocating creating some kind of eugenics program aimed at raising IQs. I was only saying "What's so bad about smart people having more kids and increasing the number of smart people out there?"

That is what I wonder, as well. Most of the small-family parents that we know chose to do things that way because they calculated the costs of college, private school tuition, etc. etc. and found that it just didn't make sense to spread those resources more thinly among more siblings.

Of course, then there are those of us that consider ourselves fortunate to have had even the one child.

In general, I'm not sure that contributing to a rise in global population is necessarily a good thing no matter how intelligent those children might be. Maybe that's just me.

My impression from Mr. Caplan's ideas (and I agree on this point) is that putting lots of time and resources into someone's childhood is not necessarily always for the good of the kid or the parent.

Children need time and space, just like adults. I think that current trends in raising children tend toward more hovering and micromanaging and less space and free time. Kids need time away from authority figures and scheduled activities so that they can just be themselves and make their own mistakes.

As the world population grows and as technology becomes more important and more complex, we'll need more smart people, not less. The number of tasks that benefit from being done by a smart person will grow, not decline. If there are fewer smart people available to do them, quality will suffer. This is just a fact, not a political statement or some kind of judgment.

I knew that and was basically agreeing with the what's so bad about smart people having more kids and increasing the number of smart people out there.

Just was adding that my values are against intentionally doing this, but my hopes are that this is the way we are going. Had nothing to do with what you said, just wanted to include my full view on this. I am willing to admit that sometimes the nicer thoughts are not always the ones leading to the best end result.

For instance, if I had 4 children and a cougar was about to attack, I would probably put myself in front of the cougar, get eaten and all four children would probably be lost. Yet a more selfish person would possibly focus on protecting themselves while trying to fend off the cougar. In this case maybe one child would be lost and the more selfish adult would still be around to protect the remaining 3 children. I would still probably make the first choice even though my reasoning tells me it might have a higher probability of a worse end result.

If the fraternal male birth order effect I have read about is true, then we are heading for a more female typical brain oriented male population due to reduced number of children per mother. I don't know about anyone else, but I think this might be a good thing.

Oh, I agree with that, as well. I definitely think that having fewer children just so that you can more effectively micromanage them is... um... well, it's unhealthy.

I'm not so sure that viewing population growth as either inevitable or as desirable is a good thing, however. But I realize that this is where a rational consideration of things like fresh water supplies, energy needs etc. runs smack into both idealological considerations of personal autonomy and also of faith. In a pragmatic sense, it may be too hot a political potato to handle given the inevitable comparisons to eugenics and fascism... but that's not precisely the same thing as calling efforts to stabilize population growth inevitably futile. Just that there has been (remarkably?) little widespread concern about the world's "carrying capacity"-- yet.

Well, to me, advocating that more smart people produce more children than less smart people is the same as advocating that less smart people should not produce as many children as more smart people. I don't see a difference.

And I don't see unusually-high intelligence as being the sort of attribute that is uniformly good, like compassion or health. Perhaps as our need for intelligence grows the average intelligence of our population will grow. That seems to have happened, and I believe that it will continue to happen if it continues to be beneficial.

But I don't see an under-supply of intelligent people in the world that ought to be corrected. I don't see why people who are perfectly satisfied with their lives and jobs and circumstances would benefit from an increased IQ. I don't want my IQ to be higher, or lower, and I don't want that for other people either (though of course I would not wish mental disability on anyone).

I guess what I'm saying is that intelligence is like height. I see no reason why being tall is better than being short (unless one wants to be a basketball player) or why being short is better than being tall (unless one wants to be comfortable in airplanes). I see no reason why people who are short or tall should reproduce more or less than each other.

And yes, in a world as overpopulated as ours, I see an argument for an increase in one group of people as an insidious, rather than overt, form of eugenics. To me it is no less offensive.

I thought Caplan made a good point about second hand stress but disagree with his recommendation for parents to turn to electronic babysitters like television and video games. The negative effects of too much T.V. and video games are well documented and most children already far exceed the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines.

T.V. adds more stress to our lives since advertisers spend billions of dollars targeting kids to nag their parents to buy them stuff. Plus an NIH study showed television viewing was negatively related to creative play, especially among children younger than 5.

I totally agree with this. Thanks for typing it up! :-)

You've distorted what I wrote. That bothers me. This subject makes some people uncomfortable, which is understandable and okay, and it isn't helped when people throw around unfounded accusations and try to inflame things.


Again, I didn't say "unusually high." I said "smart," which is probably around the +1 SD mark more or less, depending, etc.



This is totally off-topic from what I said. Please don't throw in random segues to inflame a discussion. I never said anything disparaging (or otherwise) about people who who are happy with their lives or their IQs.


You've made my argument for me. I said that our world is being increasingly driven by technology. Technology workers have to be smart, and there's no way around that. They need other characteristics too (e.g. integrity, drive), but this doesn't detract from the fact that they need to be smart.


Invoking Godwin's law never helps. Though a corollary to that law says that I've won the debate because of your accusation.

I haven't accused you of anything, and I'm not trying to be inflammatory. I'm trying to explain how your statement sounded to me and if I misinterpreted you I'd love to hear a clarification.


Okay. Personally, I don't use the word "smart" in that way, so I used words that I am more comfortable with. The cutoff point doesn't matter at all IMO.


No, you didn't. But when you say that smart people should have more kids, it implies to me that you are saying that being smarter is a good thing that we should strive for. All I'm saying is that that may be true for some of us, but not for all of us. Again, if that's not what you meant, please clarify.


Eh, I'm not sure about that. I think we could make the argument that the opposite is true, actually. And again, if it is true that we need smarter people, I think that people will get smarter...without making extra babies because of extra IQ points.


Um. I'm pretty sure that you brought up eugenics first. Regardless, I certainly didn't accuse you of being a Nazi (nor are Nazis the only people who have supported eugenics). My intention is not to debate, but to make my opinion clear. If you have your own opinion, and obviously you do, that's fine by me.

I don't think there is an undersupply of intelligent people either. However, I don't think the people in charge have any idea of who the appropriate people are for the work they are choosen for. I also don't think intelligence has anything to do with IQ tests.

It is not just a matter of whether I am satisfied with my life, but what about everyone else. I don't think IQ has anything to do with satisfaction in life. All I want is for the world to run a little smarter and make life much more satisfying for as many people as it can.

I don't know what to say about not wishing mental disability on anyone. The same could probably be said for giftedness. I haven't found the people I know with mental disabilities to complain anymore than anyone else I know.

Val - Thanks so much for standing up and crying foul of folks twisting and inflaming. I'm not sure there is room on this Forum for these sorts of discussions, but I am sure that there isn't room for imflaming people's comments.

I enjoyed looking up Godwin's Law. But I do have to say that as much as I love, and owe to IQ tests, their history is wrapped up in American Eugenics Movement and very ugly. I don't believe in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I like this book War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
for more details, although I can't say I got more than half way through it. Life is complicated.

Maybe we should start "Greatest Contentious Topics Thread" and all the folks who want to whine and flame can post there?

Love and More Love,
Grinity

So... in our over-populated world, what should the target population be... and who gets to decide that figure? And who gets to enforce that figure? And as long as we are mandating a reduction, how is it any more or less evil to dictate which segments of the population need greater reductions?

Since I'm not a fan of gov't control over much of anything -- let alone population control -- I think we've got to have a little more faith in the individual. And if some populations haven't figured out that the dozen-kids-per-household isn't the best strategy, well, I suppose they'll figure it out at some point.

On the other hand, while (and because) I'm not going to bounce around the globe extolling the virtues of my own personal vision of nirvana vis-a-vis population control, I see nothing wrong with sharing with some choice local friends and relatives the idea that a few more comparatively smarter babies in this world isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Is it just me, or am I the only one that has considered that the world doesn't exactly seem to know what to do with the "smart" people that it currently has? Maybe having more of them (relatively speaking) isn't going to help very much if they're still being NCLB-ed to death in schools anyway...



<mumbling> It might just be me. Nevermind then...

Indeed.

So we should have more smart kids...

and then...


uh...



dumb them into submission with electronic mind control?? JK. But it did strike me as kind of funny.

If what I wrote seemed inflammatory or whiny, I apologize. That was not my intention. I've had this discussion with good friends, who I love and respect, and who disagree with me completely. Nonetheless, my opinion is my opinion.

If you accept the Bell Curve argument that intelligence is largely inherited and that smart kids will usually do well unless the environment is awful, it is less necessary to shell out money for private schools and universities. Going to the local public school and the state university will not ruin your child's chance of success.

I have three kids and am sending them to neighborhood public schools, even though I could afford private ones, because I don't think it would make a big difference to their futures.

Caplan is saying that a moderate amount of TV watching, which does give a parent time to rest, will not permanently impair a child's intellect. I think that is true.

My earlier statement that "it is especially important for smart people to have lots of children" can be fairly labeled as a eugenic argument, and I do not think eugenic measures are always bad. Prohibition of cousin marriage in many states of the U.S. is an example of an uncontroversial eugenic measure, at least here. In some countries cousin marriage is common and leads to reduced IQ and other birth defects.

In general, people act to maximize the chance of positive outcomes. Positive outcomes such as being self-supporting and staying out jail are more likely when the average IQ of the parents is 130 than 70. The same argument could be made for any heritable trait. I think it's reasonable to say that beautiful people should have more children, because they are more likely to have beautiful children. (I am aware that beauty is subjective, but I bet that if a 100 children of movie stars were compared with 100 children from the general public, the former group would be rated better-looking.)

It's a good reproductive strategy for them if someone else is paying the bills.

I support a minimal state where only a small fraction of the earnings of the most productive and intelligent people are taxed away to support the children of others. Then the more intelligent will have more money to spend on their own children -- either spending more per child, having more children, or both.

Sort of, but not really. The world has a reasonably easy time dealing with smart people in general. The problematic ones are the ones who are highly gifted and beyond (think about the term optimally gifted and you'll understand what I mean).

Ahh! Great point. I'm going to start a new philosophical ramblings thread called "What is talent?" on this subject.

While it may be nice for the blogger to say just have more kids and don't sweat the small stuff, I have to say that for us having a third kid was a major decision with significant economic and life-style consequences. It is what pushed us over the edge re having one of us stay home. We knew daycare costs for three kids would be too absurd. The only way we could afford for both of us to be working would have been for me to go back to being an attorney in private practice -- something I didn't want to do. With my non-profit job, the numbers just didn't make sense. Pretty much every penny that I made would have gone to childcare.

So now, I am an over-educated (Ivy undergrad plus a law degree). I don't regret being home with my kids but it was not a no-brainer

I was staying out of this, but Dandy, I have to pick you up on this. If you expect (based on the experience of previous generations) many of your children to die before they reach adulthood, some of the rest to die in childbirth before you reach old age, and you live in a country where your only hope of being cared for in old age is to be looked after by your surviving healthy well-enough-off children, then having as many children as you can is a perfectly rational strategy; you or I would do the same. Not to mention that if reliable safe contraception and sex education isn't available to you, it may be difficult for you to act on a choice to have fewer anyway.

If you want to change the situation, you need to act to decrease infant, child and maternal mortality and provide contraception, not go round exhorting.

CM -- You left out the sentence immediately preceding those you quoted:

"Since I'm not a fan of gov't control over much of anything -- let alone population control -- I think we've got to have a little more faith in the individual."

I have faith in the individual, don't you?

And, yes, I understand the rationale behind large families where the harsh reality of their existence essentially dictates that strategy -- but that doesn't make it the *best* strategy (certainly not in the eyes of those most concerned about over-population). But I sure as Hades don't think it's my responsibility to reduce my family size while *they* figure out how to reduce theirs.

Maybe if we did get busy -- literally and figuratively -- and produced more smart people, we'd have more smart people available to work out solutions to the population issue. Or to better educate folks on family planning. Or whatever.

Consider this: How many times have we been told that we are gonna run out of food in X number years due to over-population? And then danged if some smarty pants don't come along and figure out ways to increase production, etc., to resolve the supply issue.

The phrase electronic babysitter does not suggest a moderate amount of TV. In fact, in this piece, he celebrates his baby learning to watch television as a "valuable life skill." http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/11/why_tv_is_great.html
He's encouraging parents to plop their babies in front of the TV because it makes it "easier for you to treat your kids well." This ignores the well documented detrimental effects television has on infants and toddlers which led the American Academy of Pediatrics to say:
http://www.aap.org/sections/media/toddlerstv.htm

My thoughts exactly. I've never bought into the idea that we should limit family size due to the resources on the planet. Instead we should be working to conserve those resources and find other solutions. Dealing with limited resources is just another problem for mankind to solve. I guess I'm rather idealistic but I do think that's possible. Plus I love watching Star Trek so I guess my head's up in the clouds sometimes.

Now, I don't necessarily think smart individuals HAVE to reproduce to save the planet or something. That's the choice of each family. Plus gifted children are not easy to raise (especially once you get into the 2E/lots of OE range). Many times you can't just send them to your local public school and have everything work out perfectly (granted, this happens sometimes but usually there needs to be at least some advocacy on the parent's part). Raising a gifted child can take up more financial resources (if you need to send them to private schools, try and keep up with their latest interests etc).

Add to this that many parents of gifted children are gifted adults and may choose more demanding professions because of it. Professions that many times are NOT understanding of parenthood, ones that provide little to no maternity/paternity leave, and may ask you to travel quite a bit. Some gifted parents might both want to work so having one parent stay home with the kids isn't realistic. Now, the government could change a number of practices to force employers to be more family friendly, and I'd definitely encourage that, but that still might not make it easy for gifted individuals to have large families. Additionally, many gifted, working moms chose to have children later in life due to their careers and that also tends to limit family size.

As for the job situation, people being unsatisfied with their jobs. There's no 1-1 correlation with the number of gifted adults and the number of people unhappy with their jobs. This could certainly be a problem where schools can be blamed. Schools that aren't teaching children to their level and allowing children to follow their passions so they end up in jobs that don't suit their abilities. It can also be that some parents are forcing their kids into jobs that earn money instead of ones that allow their child to best pursue their passions. Additionally, there are some people that simply enjoy being in jobs that are below their abilities because then they can follow their own interests in their spare time.

It's too simplistic to say "go out and have more kids" or "stop having kids to save the world". Instead it's wiser to fix the problems surrounding giftedness and also to fix the problems surrounding overpopulation. Even in China where they try to limit population there are families having more than one child out there or at least would like to, limiting the number of kids isn't the solution.

Caplan discusses the ideas of his book in today's Wall Street Journal:
Twin Lessons: Have More Kids. Pay Less Attention to Them..
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/11/twin-lessons-have-more-kids-pay-less-attention-to-them/

He outlined his ideas at http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/fee.htm .

Yeesh, not another one of these flawed conclusions drawn from likely flawed research. The main conclusion one can draw from the study cited, if that article is accurate, is that increasing one's own vocabulary can have a negligible long-term effect on your child's vocabulary, not that switching to another "parenting style" will have negligible effects-- and certainly not that switching to different educational strategies will have negligible effects. These types of studies are often used to "support" a wide range of questionable assertions, such as that the environment has a negligible lasting effect no matter what, that training/education has only a negligible effect on IQ, that only people with a certain IQ should go to college , etc.

Intelligence certainly is highly heritable, and more intelligence is more better.

I agree with you that more intelligent people should have more children than they do now; there may actually be a tendency for the opposite to be true. I don't have any cites ready to hand, but again IIRC lower economic status -> more children, and lower education -> more children as well, likely a secondary phenomenon due to the link between economic status and education. This phenomenon makes sense to me, as it increases the likelihood a family / bloodline will survive, especially in very impoverished regions with abysmal health care, and may increase the financial stability of a family as well.

If there is anything to the notion that highly intelligent people are more likely to be successful and achieve higher education levels, then it may well be true that highly intelligent people have fewer children on average than less intelligent people. And I don't see how that's a good thing, though it is understandable: higher education can take so much time and money that one's personal life is given secondary status for a while, at least enough to impact child-rearing plans.

Laura Vanderkam of the Gifted Exchange blog has just reviewed the book:

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2011/07/selfish-reasons-to-have-more-kids.html
July 18, 2011
Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids

I spent the last few days reading through economist Bryan Caplan's new book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. The title is a bit of a stretch but the argument is a fascinating one when viewed through the lens of the whole parenting advice industrial-complex.

Caplan's main argument is that within the norms for First World, middle-class homes, nurture doesn't make a whole lot of difference to children's long-term outcomes. Parents can have an effect in the short run, but mounting evidence from identical vs. fraternal twin studies, and adoption studies, shows that over time, these effects become less and less pronounced. Parents have their biggest effect in the moment of conception. After that, there are very few effects that last. The only ones that really seem to are religious identification and political affiliation, but even there it's a shallow affinity. Devout Presbyterians who go to church twice a week might raise a child who identifies as Presbyterian, but he's not much more likely to attend services regularly than other people. The biggest effect may just be whether the child remembers the home as being happy or not.

As for what this means for one's fertility, Caplan suggests that people overestimate how much effort modern parenting requires. If you are a normal, productive adult, odds are your children will be too, and if you raise them within American middle-class norms, any odd outliers are probably not to your credit or blame. The flash cards don't matter. The activities don't matter. The focus on strict TV limits doesn't matter. Discipline matters more for making your life more pleasant in the moment than for anything it will do down the road. So he suggests that people relax and try to enjoy their time with their children, possibly more children than they were otherwise planning to have. After all, bigger families are good for nurturing social ties -- one of the key components of human happiness -- and if items are cheaper than you thought, economists will tell you to stock up.

...

Interesting. So I wonder what the author recommends to people who are not in First-World, middle-class homes?

Personally, I do feel that nature made my kiddo the way he is a bit more than nurture, but both played a role.

I haven't read this thread from start to finish - so I'm really just responding to the blog post Bostonian posted above. I have no doubt that my nurture contributes very little to my dd's abilities. She's got smart genes. I do know however, being the product of two middle class families that are highly dysfunctional, that nurture does impact on life long happiness. Both my parents' families would appear to fit the 'norms' more or less from the outside, both families are made up almost exclusively of highly successful and productive people. Who are also deeply unhappy. My parents too are deeply unhappy people (and relatively successful and productive themselves). I have been successful and productive too, but it has taken me to my mid thirties to be able to move past the nurture aspects of my childhood and find success and happiness in a way that was meaningful to me. (I use 'successful and productive' as this seems to be the author's benchmark based on the review provided).

Also, I do a lot of volunteering at our daughter's school, we have lots of friends with kids. It is quite apparent to me how parental interaction shapes kids. It doesn't change their natures, but I do believe it does shape how their nature is presented.

So I do think nurture plays a part in a middle class family - though perhaps not so much in perceived 'success and productivity'. Why should it not? If it plays a part in outcomes for kids from lower class families (and there is plenty of research to confirm that it does), why would a middle class kid not be influenced by their environment? We're all made of the same stuff. Having adequate resources doesn't suddenly make you well adjusted and immune to your interactions with others. I appreciate the impact might not be as noticeable; I imagine (though have nothing to back me on this other than my own experience) that if you're in a middle class family the resources you have available to you make it less likely you'll drop out of the game all together (and often you have connections that ensure you don't), but whether or not you'll be successful and productive in a way that is meaningful to you, and whether or not you'll be happy I think are less certain. In fact when I think about the middle and upper class families amongst our friends a majority are quite dysfunctional (I'm talking affairs, closeted homosexuality, sibling rivalries, alcoholism, significant drug use, etc). But from the outside they would appear very 'successful and productive'...

Do I think people should buy in to the parent advice industry? Not at all. I always tell friends who are pregnant to do what works for them as a family and to go with their gut because no child and no family are alike. Buying a thousand books might result in finding on one that fits how you like to operate as a family - but it will probably resonate because it confirms what you already feel is right. Though that can have its own value.

Anyway, I'll stop ranting now. When anyone talks about 'norms' in the context of any type of family I get a bit twitchy! (can you tell?)