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* Are we saving enough for college considering how fast tuition is going up*

It's not obvious to me that the college system as it stands today and has stood for the last twenty years is going to be similar in twenty years.

In Arizona, full-time community-college students pay under $2k/semester for school: https://www.maricopa.edu/future-students/tuition-fees. It is possible, even today, to pay relatively little for a four-year college degree.

Most people prefer existence to non-existence, even if the cost of housing is high. https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/046...

> Or to put it another way, the ROI of investing additional time into raising your children remains high as you go from spending 5 minutes a day up to 1,000 minutes a day.

Do you mean ROI for the parent (satisfaction of spending time with your child) or for the child? It seems counter-intuitive but I believe a lot of research has shown that upbringing actually doesn't matter too much, provided you meet a certain obvious threshold (giving them proper food, not abusing them, etc)

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/046...

⬐ mjevans

I can't think of any study offhand, but I hypothesize that the ROI to society long term favors parents that are there to support their children and do a good job of it, not merely an adequate one.

Having children has always been a choice, e.g. historical birthrates are closely coupled to harvest success. So people are choosing to have fewer children now, and most of that has to do with opportunity costs.

Caplan's "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids" (https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/046...) has some data showing that parents are putting more and more time into children. (And his argument is that it is mostly unnecessary, i.e. it doesn't correspond to improved outcomes for children, given a relatively normal stable family.) I wonder how much of this is just changed social expectations (e.g. call Police / Child Services if you see a kid walking home along from school), how much is social signaling, how much is reduced family support.

Bryan Caplan wrote an interesting book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, that is also germane to this topic (https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/046...).

1. Yes. You don't know if your kid will be the one who solves or ameliorates climate change.

2. Human life is its own good.

3. Bryan Caplan discusses this and many other interesting topics in Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/046....

⬐ cylinder

Always enjoy contrarian views, thanks. Reading the free Kindle sample. Interesting. Shame about the militant negative reviews.

⬐ Waterluvian

I'm having kids for one reason: I hate mowing my lawn.

⬐ ImTalking

You could always buy a goat.

⬐ kbenson

I have an acquaintance who borrowed someone's goat for a few months to deal with her grass. Unfortunately, she also had a deck that surrounded a portion of her house. The goat destroyed[1] the deck (and I believe a portion of the siding). Having a relatively large animal (for a house) with hooves running (galloping) around on a wood structure isn't necessarily a good plan if you care about that structure.

1: Well, maybe not destroyed. Achieved the equivalent of 10-20 years of normal wear in months may be more appropriate.

⬐ torkable

lmfao why was the goat on the damn deck?

⬐ sjg007

That's one type of kid.

⬐ x1798DE

This is not a good reason to have kids if that is your only reason. Assuming your kids can mow your lawn from age 8 to 18 and they only cost you $100k over their lifetime (I'm guessing a conservative estimate), you're basically paying $192/week for lawncare, not including payment "in kind" parenting.

⬐ kbenson

Children have also historically been an insurance policy. Should you have financial or medical hardships later, they are generally more likely to have your best interest at heart (however they perceive it) than some disinterested third party.

⬐ throwaway_java

good luck getting your kids to do what you want, when you want.

It'd be easier to sell or concrete over your lawn.

⬐ AznHisoka

What's the harm in just letting it grow?

⬐ lj3

Brush fires.

⬐ daxfohl

I'd mow my lawn and everyone in my neighborhood's twice a week for a year (and snowplow the sidewalks / Michigan) if I could take a break from the kids for a couple days.

⬐ clumsysmurf

> 2. Human life is its own good.

This assumption is challenged in David Benatar's provocative book "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence"

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0...

The thesis (which seems absurd, and most will not accept it), is that coming into existence is an overall harm.

Whether one accepts that or not, human life is demonstrably not /good/ for almost all other life on this planet, since we compete with those resources and. As Elizabeth Kolbert points out, humans are causing the 6th great extinction.

> Bryan Caplan ...

Is a member of the Cato Institute, which is anti-population control.

My view is more that most people have a distaste for learning, education and autodidacticism because they grow up steeped in a culture that discourages these things, while simultaneously rewarding the opposite sorts of behaviors.

Caplan has a counterargument to this - twin studies and various observational studies that attempt to do similar things. He goes into detail occasionally on his blog, and also in his book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465028616/ref=as_li_tl?ie=...

(The focus of the book is not on education, but on how variation in parenting strategy does not affect adult outcomes. )

Also, your view is not incompatible with Caplan's "elitist, Ayn Rand-ian worldview". Caplan merely asserts that at the time of entering college, it's pointless for most people. The specific reason at which it became pointless for them is irrelevant - "socioeconomic factors", genetics or whatever, it's still a waste of money.

⬐ Scienz

Interesting, and I'm glad to hear any counterarguments (no idea who downvoted you). I'll have to read the book and/or studies before I could give a good reply, but judging from the Amazon reviews, it looks like even he mitigates it in the book by saying some parental actions can have important effects (for an extreme example, being violently abusive to your kids). Given stuff like that, and a lot of the recent stuff in social influence on epigenetics[1], I'm a bit skeptical where to draw the line between nature and nurture. But I'll really have to read the book and twin studies before I could debate those points.

[1] http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/the-soci...

They've figured that out too. Behold, economist Bryan Caplan's book "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids": http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/0465...

Maybe the notion of "total motherhood" is the problem? If those mums wouldn't feel the need to "hover" above their kids every second, perhaps they would be less stressed out?

This is the thesis of Bryan Caplan.

He has gathered a lot of evidence (mainly from twin studies) suggesting that the specific details of how you raise your kids don't matter much [1] - your kids will turn out to be the average of their parents + regression to the mean.

I.e., by age 25, the children of Amy Chua and slacker dad will turn out the same, regardless of whether Chua or slacker gets their way.

WSJ article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870428950457531...

Book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465028616/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

[1] Within the bounds of non-abusive middle class first-world parents. As one example, if both parents are religious, the child is likely to be religious. The only factor the parents have significant influence over is Lutheran vs Catholic.

⬐ nvarsj

I've never been comfortable w/ Caplan's ideas. Maybe the average stays consistent, but outliers differ based on parenting techniques. Surely quality of education plays a large role. He also seems to ignore the large body of evidence which shows socioeconomic background plays a big role in kids' success.

My personal opinion is that Caplan's book presents a minority view based on some limited statistics. Strangely it seems to show up a lot on HN.

⬐ yummyfajitas

Surely quality of education plays a large role.

Why are you so sure of this? Most of the evidence I've seen suggests variation in education quality accounts for very little of the variation in educational outcomes - student race is the biggest predictor and student income is a distant second. This applies internationally as well as intranationally.

He also seems to ignore the large body of evidence which shows socioeconomic background plays a big role in kids' success.

He explicitly acknowledges his data applies primarily to children raised in middle class first world nations. He doesn't ignore socioeconomic background, holds it constant and lets other factors vary.

If you have statistics which contradict Caplan, I'd love to see them.

⬐ Tichy

If he holds socioeconomic status constant, how can he arrive at student income being a strong predictor? Doesn't equal socioeconomic status kind imply equal "student income"?

Also I wonder how quality of education is being measured?

⬐ yummyfajitas

Caplan focuses on middle class households, and provides little data on educational outcomes vs income.

Data I've seen elsewhere (pisa, neap) suggests race + income are the biggest predictors of student achievement.

⬐ barry-cotter

The social status of people on exactly the same income can differ markedly. My first idea on how I'd disentangle SES effects from income would be parental highest degree. I imagine the average MBA is smarter than the average BA but dumber than the average PhD. And JDs and MDs will make more than any of them. If you restrict your sample to those with over 100K in annual income there will still be some people who are self employed trades people even.

And the way I'd bet would be that the children of (Educational attainment group X) have more in common with their counterparts with poorer parents than with the group (has rich parents).

Read Bryan's book, read Judith Rich Harris' “The Nurture Assumption”, read Amy Chua's book. Read the literature on heritability and mutability of personality traits and intelligence. It's all left me thinking that if I'm going to go for more aggro I'll just go for another child or earning more money.

And Amy Chua really, really did not beat the soul out of either of her daughters. The space of non abusive First World middle class parenting styles encompasses her easily.

⬐ Tichy

I only read the newspaper articles about Amy Chua, and if they were true, then in my opinion she tortured her daughters. I remember that they had to repeat piano pieces zillions of times and were not allowed to go to the toilet until they got them right, for example. That's torture. Sure, it could always be worse, but it's probably soul crushing enough. That her kids might not hold it against her doesn't mean a thing because kids always love their parents. In my country there was a case recently of a father abusing his daughter sexually for years and offering her to other men, yet in court she still felt sorry for testifying against him and called out "I still love you, daddy".

I'm sure lots of middle class parents abuse their kids, too, but that doesn't imply the Chua style is non-abusive.

Especially since the torturing was done apparently in the pursuit of meaningless status symbols (daughter played in famous concert hall once, great grades at school).

The thing is, kids always grow up, no matter what you do to them. So you can always say "see, it worked out alright". Until the day when it all falls apart and the emotional backlash happens (in the form of something like the Nazi regime, for example - yeah, quote Godwin's law, I don't care...).

⬐ Tichy

I've heard about that, even own the book but didn't read very far yet. I remain skeptic. Maybe it holds for "standard parenting techniques", but I am more interested in for example the approach of László Polgár http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

He raised 3 kids to become chess grandmasters - and he announced he would do that before they were born. I don't think he was abusive either.

Somehow nobody really wants to talk about that, it is weird. Perhaps it scares people to think that they might be responsible for not making their kids brilliant. And the elite might have an interest in not letting the secret out - somebody has to do the slavery jobs in society, after all. Yeah it is a bit paranoid, but I have become a bit cynical about the setup of our society. Actually it doesn't even have to be an elite trying to hold us down, I think research has shown that people are most happy if other people are not better off than they are, so people are always trying to hold each other down.

Of course I wouldn't condone methods like the tiger mum (I think she is basically a criminal), but I don't think Polgar was abusive, for example.

I guess if you can influence if your kid is Lutheran or Catholic, there are also other things that might have a bigger impact (even Catholic vs Lutheran might make a big difference, I don't really know? What with different work ethics?). Lutheran vs Catholic or "technical vs liberal arts" and so on?

Edit: I discovered Polgar through the book "Bounce" which also talks about other cases for deliberately creating gifted kids http://www.amazon.de/Bounce-myth-talent-power-practice/dp/00...

⬐ dagw

nobody really wants to talk about that

I don't know whom you're listening to, but it seems to me that everybody is talking about it. To what extent you should 'pressure' kids to pursue an activity you believe will be beneficial vs letting them find their own way is one of the big parenting debates.

Perhaps it scares people to think that they might be responsible for not making their kids brilliant.

I think it's more that most parents aren't interested in making their children "brilliant" in the sense of being amazingly good at one very niche endeavor (although you don't have to look far to find plenty of parents who are). Most parents seem to prefer attempting to raise more rounded and well balanced children.

⬐ Tichy

That assumes pressure is the way to raise gifted kids. What I mean is nobody seems to look into proven ways to "produce" gifted kids. If you google for Polgar, only few things come up, mostly chess related, which isn't the point at all. His book is out of print, not sure if it was ever even translated to English (he is Hungarian). That is what I mean by nobody seems to want to discuss it. Not only Polgar, also the other examples I read about in "Bounce" (for example there was apparently a Russian "factory" for tennis stars).

Tiger mom made a splash, but I think that was because people wish they could just force their kids to be brilliant.

I actually don't think "my kid played piano in [some famous concert hall]" is worth destroying the soul of your kid for. But what if the some technique (non-soul destroying) could be used to raise people who are brilliant in fighting cancer or programming social networks?

You are right, everybody worries about making their kids succeed, but people don't seem to look at the right aspects of it. They just follow the path layed out by schools, to put more pressure on rote learning.

⬐ yummyfajitas

Caplan's empirical results certainly don't rule out effects from extremely non-standard (e.g., Polgar) parenting techniques. Then again, the anecdotal results of the Polgar family are also quite consistent with his thesis.

Laszlo Polgar and his wife are both obsessively ambitious and quite intelligent, and Laszlo even obsesses about chess. Caplan's thesis suggests that if raised by others, the Polgar girls might merely have picked up poker or math rather than chess.

If I recall Caplan's book correctly, "technical vs liberal arts" is suggested by twin studies to be primarily genetically determined. The separately raised twin of a civil engineer is far more likely to be an electrical engineer than to work in HR, for example.

As for Lutheran vs Catholic, it's certainly extremely important - if your kids get it wrong, they will be tortured in hell forever.

⬐ Tichy

The interesting thing about Polgar is that he announced he would raise gifted kids before he even had them - he didn't even have a wife then, instead he looked for a wife willing to do the experiment. He wasn't obsessed about chess, he just picked it because it was easy to measure success. He then studied it himself so that he could teach his kids.

Sure, it is still an anecdote, but he repeated it three times with his children. It seems incredibly lucky if all of his children just happened to be super-gifted and would have become prodigies in any discipline just because of their genes, and him knowing they would be like that before they were born.

⬐ flyinRyan

This doesn't dispute what the parent said though: Polgar is obviously going to be selecting for intelligence when choosing a spouse.

⬐ Tichy

OK, true, but not every intelligent child becomes brilliant in something.