Bryan Caplan's Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids is like the Bible. You already know what it says. You've already decided whether you believe or not. Do you really have to read it all the way through? But when you're going through a rough patch in your life, sometimes it helps to pick up a Bible and look for pearls of forgotten wisdom. That's where I am now. Having twins is a lot of work. My wife does most of it. My nanny does most of what's left. Even so, the remaining few hours a day leave me exhausted. I decided to read the canonical book on how having kids is easier and more fun than you think, to see if maybe I was overdoing something. After many trials, tribulations, false starts, grabs, shrieks, and attacks of opportunity . . . https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-selfish-reasons-to-have
Full Episode
Welcome to the Astral Codex X podcast for the 15th of May 2025. Title, Book Review, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. This is an audio version of Astral Codex X's Scott Alexander's Substack. If you like it, you can subscribe at astralcodex10.substack.com. Brian Kaplan's Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is like the Bible. You already know what it says.
You've already decided whether you believe it or not. Do you really have to read it all the way through? But when you're going through a rough patch in your life, sometimes it helps to pick up a Bible and look for pearls of forgotten wisdom. That's where I am now. Having twins is a lot of work. My wife does most of it. My nanny does most of what's left.
Even so, the remaining few hours a day leave me exhausted. I decided to read the canonical book on how having kids is easier and more fun than you think to see if maybe I was overdoing something. After many trials, tribulations, false starts, grabs, shrieks, and attacks of opportunity... Here's a photograph.
It shows the top of Scott's head, hidden behind the book, selfish reasons to have more kids. He's lying back and reclining on a couch, with his feet crossed casually over each other. One child is draped across his lap and appears to be staring at the camera.
The other one seems to have got Scott's attention by banging on a toy or otherwise grabbing a toy and appears to be in the process of perhaps hurling it off the couch and has obviously captured Scott's attention as he's reaching out with his hand.
Scott writes, After many trials, tribulations, false starts, grabs, shrieks and attacks of opportunity, I finally made it to the part on how fun and easy this all was. Kaplan's main argument is 1. We spend much more time and effort on parenting than our parents and grandparents because we think the extra effort will make our kids better, happier, and more successful. 2.
But behavioral genetics finds that parenting doesn't make much difference to later life outcomes. It's mostly either genes or inscrutable random seeds plus noise. 3. So you can relax. Don't run yourself ragged rushing your kids to gymnastics classes they don't even like. Four, if you ask parents whether they're happy, you get different answers depending on what exact framing you use.
It's kind of a toss-up. But people who understand and internalize the points above will have a better time than average. So for them, kids are probably a great bet. I buy the behavioral genetics. I buy the ambiguous happiness results. But how long do parents really spend on childcare? And how easily can those numbers be cut? How long do parents really spend on childcare?
Kaplan's most striking statistic is that fathers now spend more time with their kids than mothers did in 1960. Not because gender roles have changed, but because both parents' workload has been growing in tandem. Equally startling is that mothers spend more time parenting today than in 1960, even though in 1960 they were much more likely to be full-time homemakers.
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