Happy birthday Arnold! On your birthday, I'd just like to thank you for your years of insightful, prolific blogging. I've read almost every one of your posts for the past ~10 years, and I've greatly appreciated learning about macroeconomics (PSST), career strategies (work for a profit), mid-century St. Louis (I went to WashU), fighting against the passions of the Current Thing on the internet (forcing yourself to delay publishing posts), and much more.
Perhaps more on-topic, I'm reminded of something you wrote awhile ago, which has stuck with me (though I can't seem to find the actual quote): Most generations are insufferable because they think they are the first to discover sex. This generation is insufferable because they think they discovered moral philosophy.
“Free markets are awesome because they give business incentives to do good stuff that sounds bad.”
In my opinion, traditional norms of marriage and having children are awesome because they give individuals and families incentives to do good stuff that sounds unappealing in the near-term.
Pile On - Happy Birthday Arnold. I'm only a couple years younger than you - but I'm a very happy double grandpa now. Demographics is destiny*.
The Norm Geras Normblog had a great question: Is there any significant position you've changed your mind on? https://normblog.typepad.com/ (He died in 2013)
I used to be very much in favor of Heinleinian "responsible promiscuity": The Moon is Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land. But now I think that's a mistake.
Because humans make decisions based on emotions, then use their brains to rationalize those emotion-based choices, and even claim they're "rational". The general optimal is strong support for monogamy and avoidance of sex outside of marriage.
But this optimality is based on 3 groups, with unequal amounts of optimality for each group:
1) Normal monogamous (60%) - is better for them AND their children.
2) Accepting monogamous (20%) - is better for their children, but a little bit worse for them
3) Non-monogamous (20%) - is a burden for them to follow, so they will violate their promises of faithfulness. Honest "responsible promiscuity" is better for them. Their kids have problems and issues whether a parent is cheating or if they're honestly in an open marriage (like Will Smith?).
Most norms & laws that are optimal for society, in general, are sub-optimal for some minority, or possibly even a majority.
[*I claim that pro-life grandparents have maybe 10 grandkids vs pro-choice (-abortion) parents with maybe 2 grandkids. Over decades, the human race will be evolving to be more pro-life.]
"We are well rid of many of the 1950s norms that my generation overthrew. But the norm to get married and start a family could use a revival. I think it would lead to more life satisfaction."
Maybe 1950s sexual and cultural norms are a necessary component of 1950s family formation. You can't have one without the other.
That seems borne out in the data. On the lower end marriages only form and stick together if the people follow 1950s sexual and cultural norms. At the high end people only people following those norms have children, especially multiple children.
If you can't bring 1950s cultural and sexual norms back, you're just going to have to live with the breakdown of the family and low TFR. Face up to the choice.
I am a bit skeptical about the common reasons people give for not having kids. I don't think many people care about their careers so much, particularly since most don't have careers that preclude children, for example. I think there is a deeper dysfunction going on with modern young people, along the lines of not actually being adults, feeling like they can handle responsibility. I suspect the same "Everyone is going to die without experts to take care of us and tell us what to do" mentality that suffuses all aspects of our culture particularly affects this choice.
You talk about grandparenting as if there is 100% certainty that everyone will have the gratifying experience that you clearly enjoy.
There is a heck of a lot that can go wrong on the long path to blissful grandparenting, starting with trekking through the endless minefield of parenting.
I enjoy reading about your grandparenting bliss, mainly, probably because of the disaster of grandparenting that occurred in my family. Which is why I’m not so sure the promise of grandparenting should be the basis of policy choices/recommendations.
Maybe since I'm middle-aged, I think parenting should be the primary focus vs. grand parenting.
Is it really true that a big shift in happiness comes from becoming a grandparent? I think in the average scenario, you're gonna spend a whole lot more time with your children than with prospective grandchildren. Possibly, grandchildren are a measure of parenting success.
If you have a happy, fulfilling relationship with your children, perhaps having grandchildren will be validation of that. If, on the other hand, you raise angry, transgendered narcissists who sterilize themselves, perhaps the lack of grand parenting reflects some of the unhappy relationship on parenting. And, if your kids go to the other extreme and become out-of-control sexaholics who make you a grandparent at age 40, you might not be very happy with that either.
Happy birthday Arnold! On your birthday, I'd just like to thank you for your years of insightful, prolific blogging. I've read almost every one of your posts for the past ~10 years, and I've greatly appreciated learning about macroeconomics (PSST), career strategies (work for a profit), mid-century St. Louis (I went to WashU), fighting against the passions of the Current Thing on the internet (forcing yourself to delay publishing posts), and much more.
Perhaps more on-topic, I'm reminded of something you wrote awhile ago, which has stuck with me (though I can't seem to find the actual quote): Most generations are insufferable because they think they are the first to discover sex. This generation is insufferable because they think they discovered moral philosophy.
Bryan Caplan says,
“Free markets are awesome because they give business incentives to do good stuff that sounds bad.”
In my opinion, traditional norms of marriage and having children are awesome because they give individuals and families incentives to do good stuff that sounds unappealing in the near-term.
Happy Birthday Arnold!
Happy Birthday Arnold. My personal favorite Arnold quote is: "hard to break versus easy to fix."
Pile On - Happy Birthday Arnold. I'm only a couple years younger than you - but I'm a very happy double grandpa now. Demographics is destiny*.
The Norm Geras Normblog had a great question: Is there any significant position you've changed your mind on? https://normblog.typepad.com/ (He died in 2013)
I used to be very much in favor of Heinleinian "responsible promiscuity": The Moon is Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land. But now I think that's a mistake.
Because humans make decisions based on emotions, then use their brains to rationalize those emotion-based choices, and even claim they're "rational". The general optimal is strong support for monogamy and avoidance of sex outside of marriage.
But this optimality is based on 3 groups, with unequal amounts of optimality for each group:
1) Normal monogamous (60%) - is better for them AND their children.
2) Accepting monogamous (20%) - is better for their children, but a little bit worse for them
3) Non-monogamous (20%) - is a burden for them to follow, so they will violate their promises of faithfulness. Honest "responsible promiscuity" is better for them. Their kids have problems and issues whether a parent is cheating or if they're honestly in an open marriage (like Will Smith?).
Most norms & laws that are optimal for society, in general, are sub-optimal for some minority, or possibly even a majority.
[*I claim that pro-life grandparents have maybe 10 grandkids vs pro-choice (-abortion) parents with maybe 2 grandkids. Over decades, the human race will be evolving to be more pro-life.]
"We are well rid of many of the 1950s norms that my generation overthrew. But the norm to get married and start a family could use a revival. I think it would lead to more life satisfaction."
Maybe 1950s sexual and cultural norms are a necessary component of 1950s family formation. You can't have one without the other.
That seems borne out in the data. On the lower end marriages only form and stick together if the people follow 1950s sexual and cultural norms. At the high end people only people following those norms have children, especially multiple children.
If you can't bring 1950s cultural and sexual norms back, you're just going to have to live with the breakdown of the family and low TFR. Face up to the choice.
Happy birthday!
I am a bit skeptical about the common reasons people give for not having kids. I don't think many people care about their careers so much, particularly since most don't have careers that preclude children, for example. I think there is a deeper dysfunction going on with modern young people, along the lines of not actually being adults, feeling like they can handle responsibility. I suspect the same "Everyone is going to die without experts to take care of us and tell us what to do" mentality that suffuses all aspects of our culture particularly affects this choice.
You talk about grandparenting as if there is 100% certainty that everyone will have the gratifying experience that you clearly enjoy.
There is a heck of a lot that can go wrong on the long path to blissful grandparenting, starting with trekking through the endless minefield of parenting.
I enjoy reading about your grandparenting bliss, mainly, probably because of the disaster of grandparenting that occurred in my family. Which is why I’m not so sure the promise of grandparenting should be the basis of policy choices/recommendations.
Is parenthood universally something that sounds unappealing to the young? Or is it a figment of the WEIRD cultural imagination?
Happy birthday!
Maybe since I'm middle-aged, I think parenting should be the primary focus vs. grand parenting.
Is it really true that a big shift in happiness comes from becoming a grandparent? I think in the average scenario, you're gonna spend a whole lot more time with your children than with prospective grandchildren. Possibly, grandchildren are a measure of parenting success.
If you have a happy, fulfilling relationship with your children, perhaps having grandchildren will be validation of that. If, on the other hand, you raise angry, transgendered narcissists who sterilize themselves, perhaps the lack of grand parenting reflects some of the unhappy relationship on parenting. And, if your kids go to the other extreme and become out-of-control sexaholics who make you a grandparent at age 40, you might not be very happy with that either.