Ask Me Anything about parenting as an Effective Altruist

It's not a question but just thought it'd be nice to share the perspective of somebody who decided not to have children.  Always nice to showcase a wide range of views and decisions. Here's an excerpt from my interview with Julia Wise about it. Can read the whole thing here.

"I super, super wanted kids. I didn’t want kids when I was younger, and then when I was about 20 I was in the park, minding my own business and a little toddler toddled up to me and he gave me this bent daisy. And my brain exploded! I was like, “Oh my God, I need babies now.”

I just became absolutely obsessed. EA was my number one priority, and the next one was kids. I actually had a blog about parenting. I was reading all these books about it, reading studies and figuring out exactly how to deal with pregnancy and everything. I’d sit out outside of playgrounds and do my homework next to the playground so I could watch the kids play, just be around them. 

Then I was like: impact. I decided that I wasn’t going to have kids because of impact. And that was the worst. For the longest time, this was the closest I ever felt to giving up because I just felt so resentful.

Every time I saw a kid, I just felt so horrible. I was like, why the fuck am I doing this? I don’t even know if anything’s working. And this is so important to me.

Julia: What kind of effects were you thinking about on your impact?

Kat: The main thing is just time and energy. Basically every spare amount of energy I had was going towards impact. So there was no room for kids. Any extra thing that I took on as a responsibility, it was definitely just going to have to come from the “helping the world” budget. 

Then I just felt bad all the time. The thing that made me realize that I would actually have kids was realizing: I just have to have one willpower break. I just have to have a willpower break long enough to have a kid, and then it’s over. Then I was like, well, I’m probably going to have the willpower break anyway, so might as well just plan accordingly.

Goal factoring and practical experience

Kat: So then me and my husband at the time were planning on having kids. But it was never the right time. I thought, maybe I’ll do the goal factoring. I came up with this spreadsheet. I came up with a whole bunch of different options that you could do. I basically broke down, what are the things I want about children and what are the things that [my partner] wants about children? Because those are different. And then I came up with a whole bunch of like alternatives. Like what about a dog? What about fostering? Volunteering a lot with kids? All sorts of stuff. And that was to tide me over until we could have kids, and maybe find something that didn’t require as much time investment. 

Then we stumbled on babysitting. Oh man, I get to spend time with the kids and develop this relationship with them. But also I get paid for it. Amazing!

I babysat three separate sets of kids, and they were all perfectly ordinary kids. They were not kids with behavior problems or anything like that. But that was enough for me to realize: oh, I do not want to be a parent. I do not want children at all. 

I’d had experience with kids before. I’d been a summer camp leader. I’d worked with 30 plus kids at a time for a whole summer, that sort of stuff. And I loved it, but what I realized when I babysat was that I was just the fun summer camp leader. I went and played games with them, and it’s fun to play with kids. Playing with kids is the best. 

But putting them to bed? Holy shit. Why is it so hard!? I’d read all the books and I was like, oh, I’ll appeal to intrinsic motivation and reason. Nope, does not work. Very quickly I ended up bribing them. I was like, I will give you candy if you go to bed, please.

Two things that happened:

The kid who I babysat the most, the first day I came, he was like, let’s make potions. I was like, yeah, let’s make potions! It’s really fun. The next time I came, he’s like, let’s make potions. I was like, oh, we made potions last time. How about we do something different? He’s like “POTIONS!” Okay, fine. And then it was potions again. And potions again. And I was like, wow, this was fun the first time. And now this is really irritating. I just can’t convince him to do anything else. 

The other thing was one time I was there when his mom was still there and he was eating some cereal at the table. He’s five, right? and he had said something that was kind of racist or sexist, I forget what it was. 

And the mom was just perfect. She had clearly read all the parenting books, and she just responded in the most perfect way. She gave this great speech about how to think about it.

And I was like, wow, you gave a really good metaphor there, this is so inspiring, you’re such a good mom! 

And the kid just looked up and was like, “Mom, I want more sugar.” He didn’t care at all. He was not listening. He just wanted more dopamine. 

I was like, ah, it’s just so destroying.

I want to be that sort of mom. I want to impart important wisdom and stuff. Obviously I’m sure eventually he’s going to grow up to not be bad or anything. He’s just five and it takes time. But argh!

So then I ended up not wanting kids at all — I totally switched. It went from my system one was like, “I want kids,” but my system two was like, “I don’t want them,” to now both of them are in complete agreement. 

I still like playing with kids. Occasionally I’ll get this little twinge, like, aw, they’re so cute. But just give it five minutes. Almost always within five minutes, they’ll do something really annoying. And I’ll be like: ah yes, this is why I don’t want them. 

I think the lesson from this that I took away is that before you have kids, it’s really good to get some babysitting experience. It’s a really good way to cheaply test being as close to being a parent as you can be without actually being a parent, that’s pretty available to most people. Once you have them, you can’t go back, there’s no “I’ve changed my mind.”"

Full post here. Also Jeff wrote about why he disagrees with my conclusions here.

And thanks for posting this AMA! Such a useful thing for the community. 

I am a woman in early/mid twenties. I am confident that I want kids, I also hold pronatalist views generally speaking. As a woman, three of my greatest concerns are timing (the whole biological clock thing), paternal investment, and social environment for child rearing. Big shocker I know :)

1. Someone else already asked about timing, but I think my question is slightly different. Regarding timing, I am keenly aware of the trade-offs between a) being younger and having more physical energy and strength but fewer financial resources accumulated and b) being older and having less physical strength but having greater financial resources. I’ve pretty much accepted the fact that at some point I will have to take a physical hit and a career hit if I want to procreate, but I feel conflicted about when the best time for this is. Physically, earlier seems better. Financially, later seems better. Mentally, I’m not sure. Obviously the prospective partner and his resources play a key role, but assuming full paternal investment in the mother and progeny, when do you think is the best time for a woman to have children in terms of her mental and physical health and in terms of psychological development of the child?  The average age of first time mothers (26 y) and fathers (31 y) in the United States seems to continue creeping upwards
2. As for paternal investment, I’m not sure where to start, this topic feels like a minefield to me, partially considering that mostly men make up this forum and EA. I sometimes get the sinking feeling that even the most invested male partner I could ever find would not be able to deliver the kind of childcare or domestic skills that women are capable of delivering, which feel essential to the entire enterprise of procreating. The caretaking of both men, children, and the elderly seems to fall on women’s shoulders disproportionately, which is frustrating for any woman who wants to do or be anything other than a caretaker, especially in countries with less governmental support. I’m writing these things based on the structure and gender roles of our society, statistics on gender and families for which I would be happy to make a link post if anyone wants it, and in spite of men’s best efforts (which in turn make me think that successful child rearing is not so much about selecting an invested mate as it is about finding a community of women to help with kids). Not trying to say that men aren’t capable of being great parents or having good domestic skills (a lot of both great and inept dads out there), just sometimes that it feels this way from my perspective. My questions are, what do you think optimal paternal investment looks like or what do you think it should look like? From an anthropological or evolutionary point of view, how much direct involvement in children’s lives should women realistically expect from men? How do you think optimal paternal investment changes in the context of modern times? 
3. It is clear to me that the nuclear family is not a good structure for child rearing, maternal health, or children’s psychological development. It takes a village as they say. What do you think is the best living arrangement or social environment for families? How valuable do you think intergenerational living is? Have you heard of cohousing and if so, what do you think of it? 

What precautions did you take or would you recommend, as far as preventing the (related) problems of falling in with the wrong crowd and getting infected with the wrong memes?

What morality and metaethics did you try to teach your kids, and how did that work out?

(Some of my posts that may help explain my main worries about raising a kid in the current environment: 1 2 3. Would be interested in any comments you have on them, whether from a parent's perspective or not.)

Thank you very much for this offer - I have many questions, but I don't want to eat away too much of your time, so feel free to answer as few or as many of my questions as you choose. One criterion might be only answering those questions that you believe I would have the longest or most difficult time answering myself. I believe  that many of my questions could have fairly complex answers; as such, it might be more efficient to simply point me to the appropriate resources via links. While this may increase your work load, I think that if you crossposted this on LessWrong, its members would also find this post valuable. 

Background 

My partner and I are both in our early-mid 20's (we are only 2 months apart in our ages) and are interested in having children. More specifically, we currently believe that our first child, should we have any children together, will likely be born 6.5 to 9.5 years from now. We are thinking about having 2-4 children, but the final number depends on my partner's experiences with childbirth and on our collective experience of raising the first, second, etc... child. Some members of my partner's family experience depression and my partner has a mild connective tissue disorder. Members of my family deal with some depression as well. My partner and I are thinking about using embryo selection to address for these things and to potentially optimize the IQ of our children, among other features that might have polygenic scores. We might also consider using gene-editing if it is available, but we definitely have to think more about this. The current health risks to both the host and embryo involved with IVF and egg extraction make my partner nervous, but she thinks she is more likely than not to follow through with the procedure. As for temperament, my partner and I are both relatively calm and inquisitive people and broadly share the same parenting values, though we haven't, of course, fully scoped these values out. I suspect that I might be more conservative or rigid than her with my future parenting practices, but much of this comes from me having not yet formed beliefs about what works and what doesn't with parenting and instead making precaution my default mode of operation. Now, onto the questions. 

Optimal Timing

How much do my partner and I stand to lose in terms of our children's health and psychological development if we were to have our first child at age ~28 versus at age ~32. We might have up to 4 children, so assuming each child is 2 years apart in age:  "first child at 28" scenario ==> new child at ages 28, 30, 32, and 34; "first child at 33" scenario ==> new child at ages 33, 35, 37, and 39. While I am unfamiliar with the details of the research, my current belief are "risk of child having health defects due to older father only really begin to increase, on average, when fathers reach around the age of 40" and "risk of child having health defects due to older mother increase, on average, in early 30s". I think it is important to consider how old my partner and I will when our youngest child is 10 in each scenario: 44 for the first scenario and 49 for the second scenario. I am unaware of how large the difference in physical ability / stamina is for the ages 20 vs. 30, 30 vs. 40, 40 vs. 50, etc... but I feel that 44 vs. 49 constitutes a large difference in stamina. 

Embryo Selection and IVF

Do you have any forecasts concerning embryo selection and IVF? Some example questions: How much do you think IVF will cost in 2027? in 2032? How do you think the risks associated with IVF and egg extraction with change in the next 6 years? In what ways do you think polygenic screening will improve in the next 6 years? What are you thoughts on the safety, morality, and practicality of embryo selection today, and how do you think this will change in the next 6 years? 

Nature vs. Nurture 

Can you provide a concise reflection of the current consensus of the genetics / biology community on this question? Your answer might contribute marginally to my parenting attitudes and behavior.

Naming

There are two primary questions I have on this. (1) In your experience, how much do you believe a person's name affects their life outcomes? My current belief is for the overwhelming majority of people the effect is marginal. (2) What do you think are the effects of having your children call you by your first name instead of by something like "Mommy" or "Daddy"? My partner and I intend to have our children call us by our first names. 

Holidays

Assuming that my partner and I raise our children in a sparsely populated suburb or rural region in the Eastern USA, do you think never celebrating holidays such as Christmas or birthdays would have a strong effect on the psychological development of our children? My partner and I intend to avoid celebrating any conventional holidays, except for Halloween, and to celebrate the Solstices and Equinoxes instead. 

Twins 

If we had the option to do this, do you think it would be a good idea to have 2 pairs of twins instead of 4 children, i.e. generally speaking, do people who have a twin sibling experience higher levels of well-being, and if so, would recommend this option? 

Birth Order

From what I've read, it appears that, at least among many current indigenous societies, the demographic that predominantly plays with and cares for children beyond the mother and father are adolescent females. With this in mind, might it make more sense to have the first child be a female? Additionally, I've come across the idea that the last child of families with more than 2 children typically has more estrogen than other the children, on average. What are some of the consequences of birth order by sex, assuming that my partner and I have 4 children and that each of these children are born 2 years apart? For example, would you suspect that the well-being of the following group, in order of birth from 1st born to last born, (F, M, M, F) experiences higher well-being than (M, F, F, M), all other things controlled for, hypothetically?

Geographical location

My partner and I are considering forming some establishment in a region with forests, some terrain, a low population density, and low air pollution* that is at most 3 hours away from an urban area. Some regions in the Eastern US comes to mind here. The air pollution part has an asterisk next to it since I highly value this consideration for where to raise children. Generally speaking, what might be some disadvantages to raising children in such an area? I suspect that a potential lack of immediate access to healthcare services might be one. 

Education and technology

My partner and I plan to home-school our children until they are college age. We suspect that socialization might be a large issue if we follow through with this plan. I intend to instruct my children in many subjects and would very much like for them to develop strong critical thinking skills, a curiosity and wonder with the universe, and a general mental framework for how the world works. This is all standard though; do you have any recommendations for inculcating these things across the various developmental milestones? For example, it might be the case that I should primarily talk to an X year old in such a way because they have not developed Y capacity yet. Also, I am quite keen on limiting the access of my children when they are young (0-10, but this upper bound is something that I need to think about) to most of YouTube (except for educational channels), most of the Internet (except for educational websites or resources), and all of television. I intend to teach my children at least the basics of electronics and programming, so their engagement with the technology involved with these things would be openly encouraged. What would might be some consequences on the mental development of my children of me taking these actions? Of course, your answer is not the sole consideration for my decision.

Emotions and Discipline

My partner and I are both highly conflict avoidant. We are both quite calm most of the time and are not too affected by anger or frustration, though we do feel such things occasionally. We intend to not display frustration, anger, or intense exasperation in front of our children, but don't know if this a good idea. Are there some emotions or reactions that should not be shown to children as they may lead to a weakened ability to deal with / tolerate certain aspects of human interaction / the world? Also, my partner and I are both unaware of what the most developmentally beneficial forms of discipline are for children. For one heuristic, we are considering making an effort to enforce disciplinary action immediately in response to some undesirable action, and to always follow throw with what we promise and warn about. 

This is a long list of questions, but thank you for reading it if you've gotten to the end. It has actually been helpful in eliciting some of the ideas I've had about parenting that I've not explicitly written out. 

Have a nice day!

Hi Prof. Miller,

Do you think I should spend effort and research and care about the particulars of having kids ahead of time even though I largely perceive myself as possibly/probably never wanting to have kids?  It certainly seems reasonable to strongly expect I might eventually fully change my mind about having kids just because having kids is - well - genetically mandated and such. Preparing and planning now seems like a wise hedge against my lack of desire to have kids right now?

I am a 30 year old male now and am still sorta mostly leaning towards not having kids. Is that normally a sign that this is how I should expect my psychology to be throughout my thirties and forties? And I should just not sweat it and continue to focus on studying AI Alignment?

Secondly, do you think there is a  good pronatalist argument to be made that an EA that doesn't feel like they want kids should still regardless have kids? I've heard the "in expectation if EAs all have kids we'll get more geniuses - low prob. in each case, but such high potential impact that we ought to have kids" argument. I take this line of thinking seriously, but I still find it hard to think that this argument could ever be strong enough to - on consequentialist grounds - mean someone who doesn't want kids should have kids regardless.

Thirdly, I find the idea of adopting pulls at my heartstrings, but have lost track of how many times I've heard the argument that I should have my own kids to pass on my genes. Naturally sperm bank donations are always an option if I am rationally committed to the latter. But the question still remains which is, as an EA and a psychology professor, how do you think about adoption vs having your own kids?

Thanks for writing this! I appreciate this conversation. I think if I had been aware of your assertion that dads are typically more on the fence about having kids but still happy to have them, I would have been more excited to have kids with my partner earlier, so I especially valued that point. I want to reinforce your message that it’s important to think about this and maybe weight the “have kids” option more heavily than the average EA might do by default.

Anecdata: I am a woman who planned not to have kids. I allowed for the possibility I’d change my mind, but I wanted to prioritize my career. Around 35 or 36 I started to want kids. I found that health issues meant that having kids is not an option now. I did test my fertility in my early 30s and it was normal, but things changed rapidly. I am quite heart-broken about it and expect this to be one of my greatest life regrets.

If it helps anyone else, here were my reasons for changing my mind. (It wasn’t just my biological clock, though of course that was part of it):

• I didn’t want kids because I expected to put ongoing, lifelong energy into my romantic relationship(s), career, and hobbies. I’ve always had some health issues so I didn’t expect to have surplus energy for kids. But in fact, I reached relative career stability and relationship stability by 35 and knew how to manage my health. I strongly desire personal growth. While I expect to continue to find that at work sometimes, the rate has slowed down more than I expected. I felt a growing interest in adding another lifelong endeavor to my portfolio of projects, outside of work. I love contributing to others’ development and my hobbies are compatible with kids. Kids started looking like a great addition to life that I would have energy for. Planning for kids actually made my work and hobbies feel more fun because I was excited to teach my kids about them at home and to discover their own related or differing interests.

• The responsibility of parenthood seemed overwhelming to me. As I aged, I noticed that new responsibilities always feel overwhelming at first but that is something that can be overcome. This no longer seemed like a good reason not to parent.

• I previously worried that parenting would reduce my impact. I now think that having a large impact is uncertain anyway due to my health issues and the kind of work I do. With less certainty about my impact at scale, I actually felt more motivated to keep pushing in my job because I thought I would be working toward supporting a family.

• I previously thought kids might be boring or I might not be a very interesting or engaged parent. Seeing my nieces and nephews change over time has been really rewarding for me though and has brought a lot of happiness and engagement with my extended family. I noticed I found it really rewarding to contribute to the kids’ learning, they inspire me to create more in order to share new experiences with them, and they make familiar experiences more engaging because they interpret the world in unexpected ways. I find myself very engaged in supporting and discovering who these people will become as they grow up!

• I worried I’d lose my individual agency and identity to motherhood. It is definitely true that I’m less focused on my own needs and wants when I’m around kids, so this is a real risk. However, my attitude changed about motherhood: having kids means creating new agents, and then (ideally) supporting them in becoming independent. I felt excited about taking on the goal of being a role model of agency to my kid(s).

• As I age, I value stability more than I used to. I saw that my social life and community would be more stable if I had kids. When I was planning to be child-free, I planned to build a community of close friends instead of a nuclear family. My partner and I both thought we’d pursue a variety of potentially high-risk work projects as well. A lot of EAs probably want the same in their twenties and some do pull it off! I’ve become less extroverted, less social, and more risk averse with age, however, which makes pulling that off less likely.

• I underestimated how hard stable community is to maintain in the US. I underestimated just how much of US culture pushes against non-nuclear family structures and how much that’s still true even in an unconventional community like EA. I’m the US, so much of society is organized around the atomized nuclear family that it is really much harder than I expected to buck the trend. In my circles, parents+kids create the bulk of social connections outside of work and generate a lot of common experiences, especially in secular communities. Even among my poly+EA+queer friends (where innovating around family is expected), it’s most common for people to make long-term plans that default to a nesting partner and/or kids, rather than making long-term plans with multiple partners or friends. My EA friends are also globalists who move to different states or countries fairly frequently. Those with kids tend to stay in one place more often.

• I also overestimated how much I would personally feel motivated to buck nuclear family norms. I’m not as interested in that as I expected to be! In my 20s, I was happy with innovating on various family and friend living arrangements. In my mid-30s, I find I’d prefer to be able to focus on work, health, and home a lot of the time, but I’d like to do that without being (a) lonely or (b) needing to deal with a lot of roommate turnover. While I have a fairly stable, small peer group of late 20-40yos who I care about a lot, we don’t want to live together and we have ended up living in different neighborhoods or cities for a variety of reasons. Everyone is busy and we don’t see each other as much as we did pre-COVID.

COVID and working from home has made the world even more atomized! It’s extra valuable to live with loved ones now.

• I currently prefer to spend most of my downtime with a small, consistent, core set of people. My 20s were focused on meeting new people. Now, I’d like to go through the daily ups and downs of life with an established core set of people, and keep doing that for a couple decades+. Raising kids through various life stages with my partner and extended family would have produced that dynamic, and likely attracted friends who valued stability as well.

-In sum: US EAs who are pinning their hopes on stable, non-nuclear family structures maybe should expect it to be harder to coordinate that than you think. (This may also apply in most western countries; I just know the US context best).

• I know there are EA group houses in a few cities now, and that’s great! In my 20s, I predicted that I’d love that. I don’t want to have very many roommates anymore though. I value privacy and, again, stability more than I used to. I also want more separation between my home life and work life than I can get when I’m living with past/present/future EA colleagues. I think EA neighbors in a cohousing community where couples/families each have their own house, would be great. I was excited about raising my kid(s) near EA neighbors.

• All that said, if you’re positive you don’t want kids, that’s great! There are some good reasons not to have kids and people obviously create great lives without having kids. I personally expect I’d have had more long-term happiness and actually plausibly more impact as a mom. Other men and women may find they have similar thoughts to mine in their 30s, even if they don’t lean toward having kids now.

PS for EAs considering having kids, I would strongly recommend two books by economist Bryan Caplan: 

1. 'Selfish reasons to have more kids' (2012), which explains that the high heritability of most psychological traits means you can relax and 'trust your genes' as a parent, without trying to hothouse and overschedule and push your kids the way that most American parents do
2. 'The case against education' (2019), which explains why the exact types of schooling your kids get don't actually have much long-term impact on how they turn out, once you control for their cognitive and emotional traits -- e.g. it won't matter that much whether you do public school, private school, home school, or unschooling

Also, for people curious about nature vs. nurture issues in how kids turn out, I'd recommend popular behavior genetics books such as 'Blueprint' (2019) by Robert Plomin, or the classic 'The blank slate' (2001) by Steven Pinker.

Thank you for doing this!

My questions:

1. Where did the time come from? What activities did you have to give up? How did that feel, emotionally?

2. How did this change in going from one kid to two?

(I say this as someone who:

• Can't really imagine working less and still being reasonably successful in my current line of work
• needs a certain amount of sleep to be productive and happy
• has a life full of other things that bring me joy and feel important to me

At the same time, I have a strong felt sense that I would like to have a child. So I am currently betting that I will find the time mainly by cutting out most of my time with friends / other leisure activities, and that the meaning and joy of raising a child will make this worthwhile. But I worry that I will feel resentful / inclined to prioritize my needs over my child's fullest flourishing.)

While raising young children, how much of the time did you feel happy vs. frustrated? Did you feel able to think clearly?

(I don’t think these are the most important considerations about having kids, but I’m curious.)

Which global, technological, political etc developments do you currently find most relevant with regards to parenting choices?