In October I reviewed explanations for the clearly-maladaptive demographic transition, whereby societies consistently have fewer kids as they get rich. I leaned toward: Lower … acceptance of childbearing and motherhood as measures of the status of women.
I feel that kids should be something people value, so that they are treated better, because kids are people, and I feel this would lead to more utility for all.
Hanson seems to be suggesting a balance between "few kids because kids are low status" and "too many kids because kids are exist to support my status", with "kids should be high investment so there aren't too many of them, but their good treatment is associated with high status."
“High birthrates and female employment rates tend to move together,” said Ms. Hagemann, an expert on the German care system. “Child care and a school system that covers the working day is key.”...In Europe, Nordic countries have the biggest share of women in the labor market and also, with France, high birthrates. All offer a continuum of support for parents with young children from subsidized care and paid parental leave to all-day schools with off-hour programs, Willem Adema of the O.E.C.D. said.
I have the same question as Zack. Also, Robin, earlier you had argued that population will once again approach the malthusian limit in the future and there's not much we can do to prevent that. So why does it matter to you that some people have fewer kids now than they could? Given your beliefs and values, shouldn't you be devoting all your energy to reducing existential risk, rather than figuring out how to get people to have more children?
Single-moms are not noted for their "extreme parenting". Rather, they are associated with extremely lax parenting, perhaps dumping their children on their own parents. A Chris Rock joke: "If a kid calls his grandmomma mommy and his momma Pam, that kid's going to jail!".
License child bearing, and make the licenses hard to obtain. For your purposes you want them hard enough to get that they increase status, but not so hard that this reduces the birth rate.
So the licenses can't be expensive (execpt maybe on a sliding scale - to give conspicuous consumption opportunities to the rich); ideally, it must be something that anyone could get, so no IQ test or anything like that.
Better would be that the licenses require the parents to be physically fit, and above average sexual performers. Possibly you'd need a vote from your local community for you to be granted the license; so only socially influential people could get them. Since one can exercice, practise sexual techniques, and move to communities where one would be higher status, this seems to suggest the right mix of barriers to encourage maximum high status and maximum reproduction.
I think the key is to take a more universal utilitarian approach to parenting and accept successful children, anybody's children, are a benefit to society as a whole.
VERY much agreed.A neutral description of saying that the demographic transition istechnically maladaptive from a Darwinian perspective is one thing.A normative claim that the demographic transition is maladaptivefrom a policy perspective is quite another!Why would anyone in their right mind want usto overpopulate ourselves right back to Malthusian subsistence limits?If too much human life is cranked out, life becomes cheap again.This is not a desireable outcome!
Prof Hanson, as you point out in your very next post, if livingstandards fall, so does civility. Do you wantthis to happen? Our best hope is to strengthen, stabilize, and extendthe demographic transition, not to reverse it.
Why do I feel that you don't try to overcome any of your own biases? Why is this all about motherhood, when the title explicitly says "parenting"?
Ironically, though, I'll quote my mother (who was not original in this sentiment): "virtue is its own reward". If you're looking for external rewards for parenting, I suggest you focus instead on your career and leave parenting to those of us foolish enough to want to do it. Period. We just want to do it.
Well, different nations have different levels of fertility, be it "eugenic" or "dysgenic." It just means that some nations or groups of people will eventually outbreed others, for better or worse, right?
For example, religious groups (Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims) will outbreed secular people, as per the article "The Return of Patriarchy." Unless technology intervenes.
BTW, I would be interested on your views about the "Misandy Bubble" article by The Futurist. It's long, but worth reading.
Magfrump, good question. I was thinking paying parents to have and raise children who are above average at least in money making would possibly increase more quality babies. So I guess adoptive and biological parents would both be a part of that process and maybe could split rewards somehow.
A problem with letting a child decide who gets the payment is that it doesn't necessarily encourage parents to make more babies if the kid can decide not to reward the parents for that behavior.
Similarly, rewarding teachers wouldn't encourage parents to have more kids, that I can see. Parents could cut a deal with teachers to split rewards, I suppose, to encourage teachers to teach kids stuff that will help kids be productive.
Robert, kids can reward parents freely now. The idea is to increase fertility rates.
I was serious about entertaining the idea, but not necessarily thinking it is ultimately a good idea. Thinking about this more, I think a big problem is that it punishes successful people by taking some of their income away. This probably should have been obvious to me but I just didn't think of it. I also think moms would tend to hate this idea, the way I stated it anyway. Third, why should just parents who have kids who make above average income get rewarded? What if every parent whose kid made above subsistence got a percentage of the money they earned above subsistence, as a reward for making more people and the benefits of more people? Fourth, something about the amount of the reward and how it's paid out doesn't seem that enticing to me. I don't know. If your kid makes 45,000 dollars, and that is 5,000 above his peers, you get 25% of that or 1250 bucks that year from your kid. Plus to get it, you have to raise the kid for about twenty years and hope he's above average, which is not likely. Maybe it would make a little difference, I don't know.
The Anuta of the Pacific have it figured out. The youngsters have the kids when they're most fertile & healthly. The 30 plussers raise the kids when they're more mature & ready. Spend your 20's figuring life out. Adopt kids when you get into your 30's. Cut the genetic link to the kids you raise. Solves all sorts of problems. Integral part of the culture.
High fertility benefits the genes, i.e., the family. It doesn't benefit rival genes (non-family). So if there is some social mechanism (such as status) that evolved to encourage high fertility (as opposed to merely accidentally encouraging it), it should be found within the family. If it is social status, then it should be status within the family. In that case, the way to damage that mechanism and reduce fertility is to make family ties matter less.
I feel that kids should be something people value, so that they are treated better, because kids are people, and I feel this would lead to more utility for all.
Hanson seems to be suggesting a balance between "few kids because kids are low status" and "too many kids because kids are exist to support my status", with "kids should be high investment so there aren't too many of them, but their good treatment is associated with high status."
update on inspiring high birthrates:
“High birthrates and female employment rates tend to move together,” said Ms. Hagemann, an expert on the German care system. “Child care and a school system that covers the working day is key.”...In Europe, Nordic countries have the biggest share of women in the labor market and also, with France, high birthrates. All offer a continuum of support for parents with young children from subsidized care and paid parental leave to all-day schools with off-hour programs, Willem Adema of the O.E.C.D. said.
nyt
I have the same question as Zack. Also, Robin, earlier you had argued that population will once again approach the malthusian limit in the future and there's not much we can do to prevent that. So why does it matter to you that some people have fewer kids now than they could? Given your beliefs and values, shouldn't you be devoting all your energy to reducing existential risk, rather than figuring out how to get people to have more children?
Single-moms are not noted for their "extreme parenting". Rather, they are associated with extremely lax parenting, perhaps dumping their children on their own parents. A Chris Rock joke: "If a kid calls his grandmomma mommy and his momma Pam, that kid's going to jail!".
License child bearing, and make the licenses hard to obtain. For your purposes you want them hard enough to get that they increase status, but not so hard that this reduces the birth rate.
So the licenses can't be expensive (execpt maybe on a sliding scale - to give conspicuous consumption opportunities to the rich); ideally, it must be something that anyone could get, so no IQ test or anything like that.
Better would be that the licenses require the parents to be physically fit, and above average sexual performers. Possibly you'd need a vote from your local community for you to be granted the license; so only socially influential people could get them. Since one can exercice, practise sexual techniques, and move to communities where one would be higher status, this seems to suggest the right mix of barriers to encourage maximum high status and maximum reproduction.
I think the key is to take a more universal utilitarian approach to parenting and accept successful children, anybody's children, are a benefit to society as a whole.
"Benquo: Sweden’s higher fertility relative to Italy is almost certainly due to the substantially larger Moslem immigrant community there.
"
No, it's not.
http://www.thelocal.se/1540...
The native Swedish birth rate is 1.82, considerably higher than the overall fertility rate in Italy.
Because of the cited hypothesis that the low-status of mothers is (partly) responsible for the demographic transition - probably.
Benquo: Sweden's higher fertility relative to Italy is almost certainly due to the substantially larger Moslem immigrant community there.
VERY much agreed.A neutral description of saying that the demographic transition istechnically maladaptive from a Darwinian perspective is one thing.A normative claim that the demographic transition is maladaptivefrom a policy perspective is quite another!Why would anyone in their right mind want usto overpopulate ourselves right back to Malthusian subsistence limits?If too much human life is cranked out, life becomes cheap again.This is not a desireable outcome!
Prof Hanson, as you point out in your very next post, if livingstandards fall, so does civility. Do you wantthis to happen? Our best hope is to strengthen, stabilize, and extendthe demographic transition, not to reverse it.
Why do I feel that you don't try to overcome any of your own biases? Why is this all about motherhood, when the title explicitly says "parenting"?
Ironically, though, I'll quote my mother (who was not original in this sentiment): "virtue is its own reward". If you're looking for external rewards for parenting, I suggest you focus instead on your career and leave parenting to those of us foolish enough to want to do it. Period. We just want to do it.
Best regards,Jim
A simple solution would be to just pay for people to have and raise children if all you care is the number of children.
Well, different nations have different levels of fertility, be it "eugenic" or "dysgenic." It just means that some nations or groups of people will eventually outbreed others, for better or worse, right?
For example, religious groups (Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims) will outbreed secular people, as per the article "The Return of Patriarchy." Unless technology intervenes.
BTW, I would be interested on your views about the "Misandy Bubble" article by The Futurist. It's long, but worth reading.
Magfrump, good question. I was thinking paying parents to have and raise children who are above average at least in money making would possibly increase more quality babies. So I guess adoptive and biological parents would both be a part of that process and maybe could split rewards somehow.
A problem with letting a child decide who gets the payment is that it doesn't necessarily encourage parents to make more babies if the kid can decide not to reward the parents for that behavior.
Similarly, rewarding teachers wouldn't encourage parents to have more kids, that I can see. Parents could cut a deal with teachers to split rewards, I suppose, to encourage teachers to teach kids stuff that will help kids be productive.
Robert, kids can reward parents freely now. The idea is to increase fertility rates.
I was serious about entertaining the idea, but not necessarily thinking it is ultimately a good idea. Thinking about this more, I think a big problem is that it punishes successful people by taking some of their income away. This probably should have been obvious to me but I just didn't think of it. I also think moms would tend to hate this idea, the way I stated it anyway. Third, why should just parents who have kids who make above average income get rewarded? What if every parent whose kid made above subsistence got a percentage of the money they earned above subsistence, as a reward for making more people and the benefits of more people? Fourth, something about the amount of the reward and how it's paid out doesn't seem that enticing to me. I don't know. If your kid makes 45,000 dollars, and that is 5,000 above his peers, you get 25% of that or 1250 bucks that year from your kid. Plus to get it, you have to raise the kid for about twenty years and hope he's above average, which is not likely. Maybe it would make a little difference, I don't know.
The Anuta of the Pacific have it figured out. The youngsters have the kids when they're most fertile & healthly. The 30 plussers raise the kids when they're more mature & ready. Spend your 20's figuring life out. Adopt kids when you get into your 30's. Cut the genetic link to the kids you raise. Solves all sorts of problems. Integral part of the culture.
High fertility benefits the genes, i.e., the family. It doesn't benefit rival genes (non-family). So if there is some social mechanism (such as status) that evolved to encourage high fertility (as opposed to merely accidentally encouraging it), it should be found within the family. If it is social status, then it should be status within the family. In that case, the way to damage that mechanism and reduce fertility is to make family ties matter less.