Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias has some psychological reasoning behind this, about signalling and expectation of how much attention we are supposed to give to children (and pets!)
This escalation of parent signaling is an obstacle to reversing fertility decline, as parents who feel obligated to attend more to each kid are inclined to have fewer kids. This is why my colleague Bryan Caplan wrote The Selfish Reason to Have More Kids, to argue that less-attended-to kids will do just fine. Alas, we also have many other escalating signal trends that discourage fertility. Together these add up to our biggest obstacle to increasing fertility.
For the last two decades I have been telling younger couples "Have more kids and pay less attention to them. They'll be fine." I learned this the hard way, by investing insane amounts of attention in my first two children when they were small. I don't know how much I could have cut that back to get the same result. 10%? 20%? 70%?
A lot, anyway. Save your intensive parenting for the moments they really need it. Otherwise, tell them to go outside and they don't have to come home until the street lights come on.
1 comment:
I was lucky enough to grow up in the generation in which parents were socially encouraged to work two jobs and let their kids just have latchkeys and go play in the forest all afternoon. Alone and unsupervised, save by my beagle, I had many good afternoons.
Post a Comment