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Bryan Douglas Caplan

Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids Paperback – May 8, 2012

by Bryan Caplan (Author)

4.2 323 ratings

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We've needlessly turned parenting into an unpleasant chore. Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. These revelations have surprising implications for how we parent and how we spend time with our kids. The big lesson: Mold your kids less and enjoy your life more. Your kids will still turn out fine.

Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is a book of practical big ideas. How can parents be happier? What can they change -- and what do they need to just accept? Which of their worries can parents safely forget? Above all, what is the right number of kids for you to have? You'll never see kids or parenthood the same way again.

Print length

241 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Basic Books
Publication date

May 8, 2012
Grade level

11 and up
Reading age

13 years and up
Dimensions

6 x 0.61 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0465028616
ISBN-13

978-0465028610
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Chattanooga Times Free Press
“In a nutshell, Caplan believes that parents put too much pressure on themselves to raise perfect children, when there is very little evidence that hyper-parenting does much good and plenty of evidence that it does harm by stressing parents out.... [M]ost kids just need a calm house with parents who love them, he says. Deep down, most of us know that. And once you release yourself from the drudgery of perfect parenting, your kids will relax and probably flourish, too.”

National Review
“Even if Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids won't actually convince people to have more kids, it serves as both a brief and remarkably well-written introduction to genetic research, and a guide book for easier parenting. The Tiger Mothers of the world would be well served by reading it.”

Steve Silver, movie critic for The American Conservative
“[A] delightful book, breezy in prose style, but reasonably rigorous in its handling of the nature-nurture statistics.”

Fabio Rojas, OrgTheory.net, Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University
“Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is a new book by economist and blogger Bryan Caplan. It makes a simple argument of extreme importance: you should probably have more children. Though this book is written by an economist, it's not another cute-o-nomics pop text. It's a serious book about family planning that's based on his reading of child development, psychology, genetics, economics, and other fields. It's about one of life's most important decisions, and this is what social scientists should be thinking about.”

Kirkus Reviews
“[T]he author's mission is noble—encouraging individuals to parent two or more children.”

Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate
“Original, lively, well-researched, and wise, this book could change your life.”

Lenore Skenazy, author of the book and blog, Free-Range Kids
“Imagine this: Parenting doesn't HAVE to be a chore. Your kids are safer than you think, smarter than you think and besides—you have less influence than you think! So sit back, relax, and read this book with your newfound free time. The sanity you save may be your own.”

Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and Adapt
“Provocative, fascinating, and utterly original, Bryan Caplan's book overturns the conventional wisdom about why parenting matters.”

Wall Street Journal
“Despite its wickedly subversive premise, Mr. Caplan's book is cheery and intellectually honest.... And the bedrock of his argument is solid: Modern parenting is insane. Children do not need most of what we buy them. So, yes, the “price” of children is artificially high.... The best argument for children isn't that they will make you happy or your life fun but that parenthood provides purpose for a well-lived life.”

Motoko Rich, New York Times
“Mr. Caplan, who has already been dubbed the ‘Un-Tiger Mom,' writes, ‘While healthy, smart, happy, successful, virtuous parents tend to have matching offspring, the reason is largely nature, not nurture.'.... His argument may be refreshing in an era of competitive preschool admissions and hyperactive extracurricular schedules.”

Tyler Cowen, Holbert C. Harris Professor of Economics, George Mason University
“This is one of the best books on parenting, ever. It will bring life into the world, knowledge to your mind, and joy into your heart.”

Judith Rich Harris, author of The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike
“A lively, witty, thoroughly engrossing book. Bryan Caplan looks at parenting from the viewpoint of an economist, as well as a father. His conclusions may surprise you but he has the data to back them up.”

Robert Plomin, Medical Research Council Research Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry
“I loved this book. Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids should be required reading for parents—as it will be for my children, who are now having their own kids and getting caught up in the more-work, less-fun traps of parenting covered here. And as a geneticist, I can report that Bryan Caplan has the facts right. Even better, he interprets those facts in a way that will change our view of parenting.”

Reason
“Economist Brian Caplan: Kids can be cheaper than you think...so maybe you want more of them than you think you want. He makes the case for this controversial proposition at length in his fascinating and well-argued new book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think.”

About the Author

Bryan Caplan is an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute. Caplan is also blogger and editor for EconLog, one of the Wall Street Journal's Top 25 Economics Blogs. His first book, The Myth of the Rational Voter was named "the best political book of the year" by the New York Times, and made the Financial Times list of the Best Books of 2007. In addition, he has written articles for a variety of publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Oakton, Virginia, with his wife and their three children.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; Illustrated edition (May 8, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 241 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465028616
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465028610
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 11 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.61 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #122,526 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #65 in Sociology of Marriage & Family (Books)
- #1,217 in Parenting (Books)

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4.2 323 ratings

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Bryan Douglas Caplan

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I'm Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times bestselling author. I’ve written *The Myth of the Rational Voter*, named "the best political book of the year" by the New York Times, *Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids*, *The Case Against Education*, and *Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration* – co-authored with Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s Zach Weinersmith. My latest project, *Poverty: Who To Blame*, is now well underway.

I blog for EconLog. I've published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Newsweek, Atlantic, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, and appeared on ABC, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN.

An openly nerdy man who loves role-playing games and graphic novels, I live in Oakton, Virginia, with my wife and four kids.

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TJHLJ

A good read, I wish it addressed a couple other things

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 2, 2012

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So, I actually bought this book because I had just had my first child, and those first few months can be rough. So I wanted some reinforcement that I actually made a good decision, even though that ship had sailed. As hard as the baby was, I wanted a glimpse into the future, when it would be a lot more fun. Also, I already basically agreed with the premise, I am one of six children and I really enjoy being a part of a big family. I am not positive I will get that high myself, but this seemed like an interesting book. And it was indeed a worthwhile read.

His main argument is that since parenting doesn't need to be as hard as many parents make it, you can afford the time investment in more children. This book should have been titled: "Why Parenting Doesn't Matter That Much." I feel like the author is arguing that much of the time. Not really that parenting doesn't matter, but that if you really try hard to be a good parent, your style may not matter all that much as to how they turn out (though it will matter in terms of them liking you). And I think he is convincing in that. I like his empirical approach, though others may not like all the cites.

The author tries hard to make his reasoning economic at its core. Kids are work and work is a negative, but it doesn't have to be that much work, he says. But some children are more work than others, and that analysis doesn't hold up on the micro level, even if it does in aggregate. Sure, on average a typical child may be x hours of work a week, and a typical child is fulfilling and fun enough to more than balance out x. But what if your specific child turns out to be significantly more difficult? Maybe they have a difficult personality, or a specific propensity for destruction. Maybe they will be born disabled, and you will be their caretaker for your entire life. I cannot say that would not be fulfilling or that such children deserve anything but love and affection, but it would drastically change the equation if you are truly trying to be economic about it.

Overall though, I really liked his analysis of the impact different parenting styles has on children - not a tremendously demonstrable amount, typically.

13 people found this helpful

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Joshua Gans

Cheaper parenting, same children

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 12, 2011

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It has been about a year since I read a pre-release draft of Bryan Caplan's Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. I just got the Kindle version. As the only other economist to launch into the parenting arena, his take was more than a little interesting to me. Unlike Parentonomics, Caplan's treatment was research-based. And unlike Parentonomics, it had a strong advocacy for parenting styles and parenting choices; specifically how many kids to have. So it was closer to the Freakonomics approach to popular economics than what I had attempted.

Anyhow, now that Caplan has graced the Wall Street Journal, I see that he will soon wip up a storm of controversy similar to that of the Tiger Mother. From the few Amazon reviews, it is safe to say either people really love the book or they really hate it. Either way, ka-ching.

So what is the Caplan thesis? It is, basically, that if parents think that by parenting they are putting in costly effort now to improve the lot of their children in the future, studies don't back that up. In stable environments, nurture has little impact relative to nature. The implication Caplan wants to draw is that parents should chill -- what he calls "Serenity Parenting." However, interestingly, like the Tiger Mother, the philosophy has only partially sold itself at home. Instead, Caplan hasn't been able to quite practice what he preaches. That is why I'd suggest that the better term for Caplan is the "Lemur Father" based on my perception of lemurs as depicted by King Julien in Madagascar. (Ergo: "I don't know why the sacrifice didn't work. The science was so solid.")

Of course, in typical economists style once Caplan has convinced you that you can lower the costs of parenting by being more lemur like, he notes that you can therefore, have more kids. Why because the marginal cost of an additional kid is lower than you think. Again, the apparent trauma of having twins meant that it took 7 years to convince his wife to have another but it is clear there is even more negotiation going on.

But regardless of the level of the cost curve for parenting, it is surely the case that the marginal costs of parenting for each additional child are increasing. What is also the case is that, for many parents, they have actually assessed that marginal cost and decided that enough was enough. Families, last time I looked, were pretty much bounded. The best we can hope for is that we forecast the net negative marginal return before having the marginal child rather than after it. There are some days when I think the jury is still out on that for Child No.3. But then again, I'm not about to return her any time soon.

Caplan is, of course, all about the evidence and so there is a testable hypothesis here. Lemur Parents will have more children than other types of parents. The ultimate Lemur parents were, of course, the Gilbreths (of Cheaper by the Dozen fame). They had parenting down to a fine art and surely for Caplan minimised parenting costs. But those are isolated examples. What would a large scale study show?

Because there is a countervailing effect. You can be Lemur by choice but similarly, as it is by definition easy to be a Lemur parent, you can be Lemur by default. That is, how do I distinguish Lemur parenting from lazy parenting? The parenting behaviour will be indistinguishable but because the actual process of having a baby is hard, the lazy ones will have less nor more children. I haven't in the brief few minutes i have taken to write this post come up with a clever way of identifying the causal relationship here.

Interestingly, Caplan admits that some parenting is hard. Moreover, he wrote: "We used the Ferber method--let the kid cry for 10 minutes, briefly comfort him, repeat--to get our twins to sleep through the night." That is, of course, something we practiced to. But we didn't do it because it was easy but instead because it was hard. That said, we explicitly did it so we would have an easier time later on. So I guess there is some Lemur in us after all.

Anyhow, if you like Parentonomics you'll like this book. Read it and take some time away from parenting to see how it goes.

14 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Martin Erlic

Is life any good though?

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 24, 2017

Verified Purchase

Bold thesis, satisfying conclusion and all around great book. High on facts, low on rhetoric. Still, I lean more toward being a kid as opposed to having some of my own. If children really are just cheap consumption goods, then don't we owe them a whole lot more than we presently on average give? If unborn people aren't alive to ponder whether life is better than non-life in the first place, then putting them in such a position by giving birth to them, I feel, is a misdeed. Having children in order to satisfy our own rational self-interest, i.e. by signalling commitment ability to employers, securing our inheritances from needy would-be grandparents, or insuring against loneliness in old age—seems like a mean thing in general, given that we know one day they're going to die. If life is a negative externality on newborn children, I'd feel bad about not giving them absolutely everything as compensation for having to live. In this case, I'd want to be on the receiving end of that investment (if I were my own parent, of course). If Bryan can convince me that life is actually a good, then maybe I'd be more enticed to have a child as opposed to being one.

One person found this helpful

Tamara Yates

Summed up - if you want more kids don’t feel bad about it.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 8, 2020

Verified Purchase

Great premise but a lot of the science is unfounded. Taking a biopsychology course right now and the talk about how much “nature defeats nurture” is cringeworthy when faced with the amount of research that shows nurture is also a strong component of development.

2 people found this helpful

Adam Carlton

Good Message - Bad Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 13, 2011

Verified Purchase

Middle-class family sizes across the globe have been declining. Women are having children later, and are having less of them or none at all. In economist Bryan Caplan's view, this is mostly because prospective parents have been caught up in the view that their potential children are `blank slates' - they will underperform or turn to the bad side unless parents invest huge amounts of their own precious time in launching them on an optimal life-trajectory. No wonder kids are such a poor investment!

This view is, however, almost entirely false. The life prospects of your children, their intelligence, personalities and even potential criminality are outside your control, consequences almost exclusively of their genes. If you're from good stock, then almost certainly your kids will turn out all right, whether you over-invest in them or not.

In a field full of diverse opinions underpinned by a library of popular books, it's important to state what's different about Caplan's entry into this crowded field. Quite simply, it's based on real empirical evidence and research (which we technically call `science'). The way to separate the effects of on-board genes and family-upbringing is to look at twins, especially those separated at birth and raised by different families. The other piece of the puzzle is provided by the fate of adopted children, where the child's outcome can be compared with the traits of the birth-parents and also with the adopting family.

What does all this tell us? The genes win hands down. Chapter 2 is the main meat in this book, reviewing numerous `behavioral genetics' studies with the following results:

1. Parenting has little to no effect on overall lifetime health of offspring. Parents don't affect height, weight or teeth-quality.

2. Mozart in the womb or no Mozart, parenting has zero long-term effect on a child's intelligence as measured by IQ tests (the gold standard). Separated twins correlate almost perfectly with each other; adopted children correlate with their birth parents.

3. Exactly similar conclusions hold for: life happiness, success in life, educational attainment, character, values, sexual attitudes and religion.

The only area where nurture seems to matter is whether your children will appreciate you later in life: it pays to be nice to them.

Why do so many parents believe otherwise? Their evenings are spent working over the homework and sponsoring life-enrichment classes for their little ones; weekends involve chauffeuring their offspring to sports matches or dancing classes; summers bring improving camps, while piano lessons occupy any remaining time.

The answer is that families, like the army, are a total environment with asymmetry of power. You can control the experiences of your little one and so you do, whether what you offer conforms to your child's likes and aptitudes or not. For a period you can force a child to go against its genes but be forewarned, it will not stick.

Chapter 3 re-iterates some of the points in chapter 2 and rebuts charges of `genetic determinism': we are not zombies controlled by a genetic `program'. Since the consequences of genes are so powerful, however, Caplan suggests that you `choose a spouse who resembles the kids you want to have': assortative mating implies you probably did, but if you applied this level of rationality to your romantic engagements you're probably in trouble anyway. Surprisingly, Caplan argues that `if you want to dramatically improve a child's life, adopt from the third world'. Good for the child perhaps, but did Caplan really review the solid, scientific work on ethnic differences in IQ and personality?

Chapter four shows, with statistics, that children are a lot safer today than they were in the 1950s (which themselves were a golden age as compared to 1900). The difference is almost entirely due to the fact we have largely conquered childhood diseases. Parents tend to worry more about abduction, kidnap and murder and these have, if anything, gone up but the actual rates seen by middle-class families are vanishingly small.

The rest of the book is devoted to arguments as to why having more children is good both for you and for the world. Briefly, your kids will enrich your old age even if they are a pain in the short term; and large populations sustain and nurture culture and the new ideas which drive progress. I agree with both these ideas but they're hardly earth-shaking or new.

One curious section in chapter 5 (p. 116) explores the reasons why - as a matter of fact - middle-class people are choosing to have fewer children today. After rejecting the standard economic argument (diminishing marginal returns to extra children) he comes up with three reasons: changes in values, self-imposed rules and changes in foresight. This comes down to the decline in religion, the time-consuming urge to over-parent and an alleged civilization of our basic urges.

I have never heard of a flimsier and less convincing set of reasons. The elephant in the room is the pill: contraception which is universally used and which doesn't impact the pleasures of intimacy (unlike the condom). So having children is now solely a conscious decision for any woman with enough `foresight' to take the pill. No wonder something with such a negative short-term impact on finances, career and recreation tends to be put off. Not so hard, is it?

So this book is a mish-mash of solid science, common-sense and Bryan Caplan's unsubstantiated opinions mixed in with too much information (Caplan wears shorts to work in the winter). Even at 184 pages it feels padded and it must be said that Caplan is not a good writer. He adopts the slightly folksy, informal style which most populist academics seem to like but his writing is dry, unstructured and far too repetitive. Caplan should have followed economist Steven Levitt (of `Freakonomics' fame) in signing up a real writer (like Stephen Dubner) to add the anecdotes and sparkle which keeps the reader glued to the page.

Caplan's previous book, `The Myth of the Rational Voter' was similarly overly-dry but that was targeted at his fellow economists and had a sizeable dragon to slay (the theory of Rational Ignorance). Here he's aiming at the general public: the arguments are fine but it could have been a far, far better book - the result is that it won't have the impact it deserves, something to bear in mind for the second, improved and expanded edition, Dr Caplan.

24 people found this helpful

J. Parkinson

Solid data with common sense, really shifted my thinking

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 7, 2021

Verified Purchase

At first, upon hearing the claims you feel somewhat underwhelmed; I confess to an expectation to be amused or at least scoff at the arguments the author would have to offer for reproducing more. He disappointed me by offering neither. Instead, I found a lot of solid research that backs up common sense from Many perspectives. Consider my mind changed!

With the research so readily available and the sense so common, it makes me wonder about the tropes that show the antithesis to this in today's media. Admittedly also my own bias against his arguments from the outset was equally shocking in it's obvious lack of basis in reality.

In summary: Have more kids!

3 people found this helpful

Daisy

Economics Without Ethics!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 9, 2012

Verified Purchase

I found this book truly shocking. It is a depressing confirmation of my belief that no life is given to another magnanimously and with unconditional love. This book is an anti-Kantian encomium of quid pro quo ethics and self interest. It teaches that it is morally acceptable to use other human beings to meet your own ends even to the point of advising would-be grandparents on how best to maximise their chances of having grandchildren by using money as an inducement. Does it get any lower than this? It is difficult for me to accept that such morally reprehensible advice is even allowed to appear in print though I remain a firm advocate of the uncensored publication of one's beliefs. What Caplan is proposing is the exertion of one's will on the reproductive freedoms of others. He might as well make the point that it is morally permissible to attempt to dictate another person's sexual orientation. It is particularly galling, given that a generation of "baby boomers", many of whom, I have no doubt, worked hard to accrue their wealth, were also well placed to capitalise hugely from house price inflation. Through this, they were able to provide their children with a standard of living which we can scarcely hope to emulate let alone perpetuate! Caplan appears to be suggesting that such people use this good fortune to dictate, or at least influence the existence and even quantity of their grandchildren. How sad that previously untold wealth has spawned a generation which thinks it has an entitlement, indeed a right, to manipulate and control those who come after it! To me, a married woman in her mid thirties trying to decide whether or not to have children, Caplan's message is disgusting. Anyone reading this book must remember that it is written by an economist who has at heart, the interests, not of human beings but of cold economics. His concern is that in the future, there will be an insufficiency of young people to care for older ones and the burden will not be met by the state. If you want a balanced view, I can highly recommend David Benatar's "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence" though I admit, he could have picked a catchier title! This is a cogently argued belief system born of an incisive intellect and written by a philosopher, not an economist. It is essential reading for anyone in danger of being influenced in their reproductive choices by Caplan. You have been warned!

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