Why do so few EAs and Rationalists have children?

fwiw I'm using "Bay Area Rationality" to point to a particular subculture (that which grew out of Overcoming Bias and LessWrong and is now centered around but not entirely contained by the Bay Area), and to disambiguate from the broader notion of "Rationality," which I understand to encompass many social movements, subcultures, and time periods. 

Mostly agree - based on the post, I was thinking of "so few" as "basically none," but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were less than average for the comparable group.

And I don't think SSC is anything like a perfect proxy, and I assume it somewhat over-represents people who are less involved in rationality/EA, and are more likely to have kids, but it's the closest proxy I could easily find.

Childcare in the early years is a major expense. Housing is another major one (and one that doesn't go away once they're old enough to be in school). https://thewholesky.wordpress.com/2018/12/27/how-much-do-kids-cost-the-first-5-years/

Getting a place with extra rooms for your children doesn't seem too cheap to me in percentage terms. A couple on their own can get away with one bedroom and more easily easily rent with roommates. With children, not only will they need more room, but they'll probably be more selective of where they live (neighbourhood, who they live with if with roommates). At some point, it might be too inconvenient to not have a vehicle, which means the cost of the vehicle and the insurance, if you weren't going to get a vehicle otherwise.

Raising kids may come out of your time spent sleeping or relaxing (risking burnout and lower productivity), reading (including EA stuff), EA community involvement, exercise. It could lead to value drift if you don't maintain strong ties and commitments to the EA community, and unless you work in EA, these will be harder to maintain. If you're a researcher, a lot of this extra stress and time spent will be during what would be your most productive years.

One study  found that raising a child on average cost £10,822 per year in the UK 2014. I don't know how they calculated this, however. It looks like they didn't deduct child benefits from the cost, which one presumably should. 

 

I agree—I'm ideologically pro-natalist but averse to having kids myself due to cost and more effective ways to positively impact the future.

Worth noting that you might get increased meaningfulness in exchange for the lost happiness

FWIW, I think this accidentally sent this subthread off on a tangent because of the phrasing of 'in exchange for the lost happiness'. 

My read of the stats, similar to this Vox article and to what Robin actually said, is that people with children (by choice) are neither more nor less happy on average than childless people (by choice), so any substantial boost to meaning should be seen as a freebie, rather than something you had to give up happiness for.

I think there's a related error where people look at the costs of having children (time, money, etc.) and conclude that it's not worth it if the children aren't even making you happy at the end of all that. But this doesn't make sense, at least from a selfish perspective: the parents in these studies were also paying all those costs, their childless counterparts were not, and yet the bottom line was essentially no overall effect, suggesting that children are either providing something which makes up for these costs or that the costs are not as big as people sometimes make out (my suspicion as a father of two is that it's a bit of both). And so as Vox put it:

Bottom line: The evidence we have suggests having children doesn't affect a person's happiness much one way or another. But that evidence is limited by people selecting into the path they think is best for them. So: If you want to have kids, have kids. If you don't want to have kids, don't have kids. The happiness literature isn't going to make the decision for you.

Yeah I agree that trading off happiness for meaning can make sense. I would just point out the following from the article I linked to:

But the warnings for prospective parents are even more stark than ‘it’s not going to make you happier’. Using data sets from Europe and America, numerous scholars have found some evidence that, on aggregate, parents often report statistically significantly lower levels of happiness (Alesina et al., 2004), life satisfaction (Di Tella et al., 2003), marital satisfaction (Twenge et al., 2003), and mental well-being (Clark & Oswald, 2002) compared with non-parents.

I'm not sure how selective the author may (or may not) be being here, and there could certainly be confounding variables that aren't controlled for in the studies (I haven't looked at them so can't really say). The reason I draw out that quote is that 'life satisfaction' may be the best overall measure of wellbeing we have, and it should incorporate 'meaning' to some extent, so that Di Tella study should be concerning.

It would be cool for someone to do an in-depth review of the evidence on how children impact on wellbeing. Maybe I will, if I find the time...

Speculation:

• it interferes with working life or self-actualisation, which they value more than the average person
• they have higher standards for what they deem sufficiently good living conditions for family life, e.g. they suppose one should have acceptably sound personal finances, or a bigger home, etc. in ways that other people don't

rK selection.