Be A Dad

A key turning point in my life was when my wife declared that her biological clock said she wanted kids now. I hadn’t been thinking of kids, and the prospect didn’t inspire much passion in me; my life had focused on other things. But I wanted to please my wife, and I didn’t much object, so we had kids. I now see that as one of the best choices I’ve made in my life. I thank my wife for pushing me to it.

Stats suggest that while parenting doesn’t make people happier, it does give them more meaning. And most thoughtful traditions say to focus more on meaning that happiness. Meaning is how you evaluate your whole life, while happiness is how you feel about now. And I agree: happiness is overrated.

Parenting does take time. (Though, as Bryan Caplan emphasized in a book, less than most think.) And many people I know plan to have an enormous positive influences on the universe, far more than plausible via a few children. But I think they are mostly kidding themselves. They fear their future selves being less ambitious and altruistic, but its just as plausible that they will instead become more realistic.

Also, many people with grand plans struggle to motivate themselves to follow their plans. They neglect the motivational power of meaning. Dads are paid more, other things equal, and I doubt that’s a bias; dads are better motivated, and that matters. Your life is long, most big world problems will still be there in a decade or two, and following the usual human trajectory you should expect to have the most wisdom and influence around age 40 or 50. Having kids helps you gain both.

And in addition, you’ll do a big great thing for your kids; you’ll let them exist. It isn’t that hard to ensure a reasonably happy and meaningful childhood. That’s a far surer gain than your grand urgent plans to remake the universe.

Having kids is actually the best-proven way to have a long term influence. So much so that biological evolution has focused almost entirely on it. By comparison, human cultural mechanisms to influence the future seem tentative, unreliable, and unproven, except when closely tied to having and raising kids. Let your portfolio of future influence attempts include both low-risk, as well as high-risk, approaches.

Added 2p: Of course our biases help us make our meanings, in parenting as elsewhere:

Belief in myths idealizing parenthood helps parents cope with the dissonance aroused by the high financial cost of raising children. (more; HT Eric Barker)