| 0:37 | Intro. [Recording date: July 1, 2024.] Russ Roberts: Today is July 1st, 2024 and my guest is neuroscientist, philosopher and novelist Erik Hoel. Erik's substack is The Intrinsic Perspective. This is Erik's fourth appearance on EconTalk. He was last year in July of 2023 discussing consciousness and free will. Our topic for today is children. We'll get into parenting, public policy toward the family, and the moral dimension of being a parent. Erik, welcome back to EconTalk. Erik Hoel: Oh, it's a pleasure to be back for the fourth time. |
| 1:09 | Russ Roberts: Today's conversation will be based on some of your recent essays at your substack, The Intrinsic Perspective. Let's start with your claim--a bold claim--that parenting makes you a better person. And, that's the first part of your essay but you do some throat clearing beforehand and you start off saying that life before children was a little bit boring despite having done drugs at Burning Man. So, I want you to talk a little bit about the transition that occurred when you went from no children to children--and you have two, just for the record. Erik Hoel: Yeah, I do. And just to clarify, I think it made me a better person. I carefully hedged in the piece to say I'm not sure that parenting is the right move for everybody; and if people have very strong opinions about not being a parent, I believe in personal choice regarding that. But, when it comes to my own psychology, there was a very significant phase shift in the before-or-after. And, maybe I'll phrase it in a way that I didn't in the essay but in a way that you yourself might appreciate which is that I think people are utility monsters when it comes to themselves. And, it's very hard to notice this: that, you go through life and your preferences--what movie you're going to watch, what food you're going to eat--all these things are this constant, almost exhausting game of optimization. And, I used to--when I would get on a plane, I'd be, like, 'Oh, what book am I going to read? what am I going to watch on the plane? And, what little snack am I going to bring?' or something like that. Whereas now, when I get on a plane, that is not even on the radar at all. And it's honestly a relief in certain ways to not be a utility monster. And, I don't think I was particularly unique in this: I think it is this implicit background noise that is very hard to notice. And maybe saints and some other people notice it and actively combat it every single day but I think most people don't. And, that was one of the most refreshing things about parenting was to give up the exhaustion of being a utility monster for your own preferences. Russ Roberts: Yeah. And you don't want to share your Cheez-Its with a small person, or your Chex Mix--those are my two guilty pleasures on an airplane. I would just phrase it a little differently. You phrased it for me--I think, thinking I'm an economist--so you said 'utility monster.' I think it's a little worse than that. I think it's more a fun monster. It's utility defined in its narrowest sense: In these three hours, what's the most fun I can have? On a plane, it's limited so I look for that book, the movie, the Cheez-Its--whatever bad snack you choose for yourself. Perhaps an apple. And, I do think that having children forces you certainly to realize you're not the center of the universe. Right? That's a different way to say what you're saying: you're forced to spend a lot of time worrying about a pretty helpless creature. You do concede early on in the piece that there's some pretty tough parts to parenting. And flying would be one of those. For young people who like to travel, the prospect of adding the burden of taking your kids with you is, I think, a very strong deterrent for some people to have children. So, let's concede to start that it can be very miserable to parent, and there's a lot of drudgery involved; and you're not naive about that. Erik Hoel: Yeah, and I talk about this a little bit in the piece when I'm sort of speculating about why the 'parenting is great, actually'-like-genre of article is sort of not as popular, particularly lately, among a certain class of outlets. There's been this trend to have articles titled things like "The Parents Who Regret Having Children" in Time Magazine. And these have been a pretty popular genre of article at least in places like Time or The New York Times or The Guardian or so on. And, some of them are pretty harsh, right? But they also have the ring of truth to them, in the sense of--somebody described it in the Time piece as 'domestic Gulag.' Right? And I do think that that captures an element of what's hard about parenting. But, in speculating: Well, why aren't there sort of reply-pieces to these pieces about actually regretting parenting where somebody says, 'Well, actually, parenting is great.' And, I think one big issue is just that: Well, parenting is also very, very hard and it can be terribly hard at times. And it can be sad: it can be deeply sad at times. You can disappoint yourself. Your children can disappoint you. And all those things together make it very easy for someone who says, 'Oh, parenting is great, actually,' to be subject to criticism. The 'parenting is great genre' is sort of this very delicate genre. I forget what heard what Kurt Vonnegut said about literary criticism, but it's something like donning a full suit of armor to attack an ice cream sundae. And, like, that's the 'parenting is great' essay: it is just this, like, ice cream sundae. And you can sort of find great ways to poke holes in it. Like, one reason why I personally think it's not a very popular genre is that it's sort of saying things that everybody knows to a certain degree. Seventy percent of Americans have children. So, new parents go through this phase where all this stuff is suddenly new to them, and yet it's really not sort of world-transforming information. It's sort of information that everybody knows: you're just sort of experiencing it. And, in this--you know, it reminds me of is--I'll pull from another philosophical example. Mary-the-color-scientist is this famous argument in philosophy of mind by Frank Jackson. And in it--it's sort of these--Daniel Dennett called these 'intuition pumps.' But, in this intuition pump, it's, like: Mary the color scientist is raised in this black and white room and she's this incredibly good neuroscientist. She specializes in vision. But she's never actually seen color. She's only seen black and white. And, there's this question of: Okay, assuming she knows everything about visual processing in the brain, when she finally sees color for the first time--think Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz walking out into Oz and then color coming in--does she learn anything new? And if she learns anything new, how is that information not covered by the neuroscientific information that she has? And, it just--this is a thought pump used to sort of justify that explanatory gap about how to explain consciousness. But, it's a good description of parenting in a way, because it's: Listen, everyone can tell you what parenting is, like, from the outside; but it turns out that actually experiencing things is just completely different from knowing them from the outside. And that's, I think, another reason why the 'parenting is great'-essay is sort of not super-popular. It's because you're just expressing knowing the information that everybody knows but you're just doing it from the inside. Russ Roberts: Yeah. It's an article for people who already have kids to feel good about themselves. Russ Roberts: Usually, it's not convincing to the people who don't have kids--partly for the reason that you just talked about: you can't imagine it until you've experienced it, something we've talked about a lot in this program. Adam Mastroianni talking about whether the brain is connected to the ears: you hear something that's sounds reasonable but you don't internalize it until you've--usually--lived it. And, I think there is a genre of 'parenting is awful' and that some parents regret it. On the other hand, I think it's hard for parents to admit they don't like their kids. That would be very painful, I think, for most parents. Even out of just respect[?disrespect?] to their own children, it would be a horrible thing to tell your children that you regret having them. I mean, I can't think of anything crueller. |
| 10:01 | Russ Roberts: So, I think the literature on this is a mess. Whether children make you more or less happy, I think, is kind of silly--on a scale of one to five. We'll talk later about the fun of kids versus other richer ways to think about the virtues of children. But, I think there's a natural cherry-picking that occurs among parents and non-parents; and it's very reasonable. I was sitting in an airport once talking to a stranger because I was working on my book on this question--Wild Problems--about decision-making--whether to have a kid or not, whether to get married or not--and I mentioned to her that there was a study that showed, that looked at happiness among people and that childless single women were the happiest group. And her face literally lit up. She was so pleased to hear that. She was single and childless as it turned out. And then I had to tell her it was a bad study and why it was a bad study. There are many reasons studies can be bad, this was bad because they had literally misinterpreted what the wording the question was and we'll put a link up to that. But, I think this question of: 'You should have children because it's really great,' or 'You should not have children because it's really awful,' is not particularly helpful. And it's partly because we're all different. And, as you point out in the article, in your essay, many people reasonably don't have children--don't want to and for good reason. And the fact that I like being a parent or you like being a parent is not relevant for them. They're not you and they're not me. On the other hand, there are things that people have not experienced that maybe hearing people talk about it could give them information--but, just information through the ears; it's not clear it's going to get through to the brain. So, you talk about the fact that much of it is drudgery, and miserable, and it constrains you. You didn't talk much about that but it constrains you from travel and other life choices. And, you also point out you're a man--which means that a woman's perspective is obviously going to be much richer on both the pluses and the minuses relative, I think, to ours. Erik Hoel: Yeah, absolutely. And, that's always sort of a danger of speaking from being grounded too much in your own perspective. But, I do think--I think, in a sense, some of the changes that come with parenting are relatively predictable. Like, they do often hit people in the same way. I'm actually a big believer in the fact that most--there's this huge portion of the United States who are quite good parents. And, you can tell this because you'll get some book for your kid, and they'll love the book and you feel really good about reading them in; and you go to some other person's house and you'll see the exact same book. Like, their bookshelf doesn't look too different from yours even if you're, like, trying really hard to give your kid really interesting reads. I think The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been on the Bestseller List for 19 years. So, there's sort of a class of parents in the United States who I think are very good parents and do find a lot of meaning about it. I actually think that that's one reason why it's actually hard to find very strong effects of parenting: which is that, actually, once you get to a certain socioeconomic level in the United States, parents are actually pretty self-similar in that they're all just relatively high-performing and put in a lot of effort. I know that, of course, there are parents that don't. But I think it's underdiscussed that there is this large class of people who read parenting forums and who try, at least, to pay attention to the latest research and implement what they can and not give their kids food that they think might have microplastics in it. Like, there are parents who are sincerely, sort of, giving the effort. And so, that's what I mean when I say that I think that there's this universality that occurs. And in a way, the universality, funnily enough, sort of gets in the way of showing the effects of parenting. There's some interesting research on parenting styles. And, what parenting styles are--are the most effective--but it's always a little bit hazy and ill-controlled because of the fact that parents are often quite similar and then they just group by socioeconomic status so you end up just measuring socioeconomic status instead of parenting. |
| 14:49 | Russ Roberts: I just have to mention--I'm sure Carle is a fine person who wrote The Very Hungry Caterpillar. And we do own it. But it is not one of my favorite books to read to my toddler or to my grandchild or my kids when they were younger. And, I would just say that it's a weird genre, the children's book, because--and by children's book I don't mean Tom Sawyer. I mean board books and books for very young children that, as you point out, high-achieving and eager-to-please parents are reading to their kids at young ages. A lot of those books, of course, are written for the parents. And many are ubiquitous. They're very common; but probably the single bestseller is Goodnight Moon. I do not like reading that book out loud to my kids although I've done it dozens and dozens of times. My wife was--I hope it's okay to reveal this, not a fan of reading Curious George--which I loved. And, maybe it is a good point, actually, just to list some of our favorite children's books for listeners who would like to read books to their children. Do you have particular favorites or books you don't like that you'd like to share? Erik Hoel: So, one thing I've noticed is that a lot of more modern children's books have very simple form and shapes for the colors of the art. You sort of have to go back to the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s to find books--like, obviously, this is a generalization but it's certainly something I've noticed. Some of my favorites are these more ornate, sort of filled with detail. So, Jan Brett, who did, like, The Mitten, The Hat, Trouble with Trolls--these sort of classic takes on these folk tales. And the pages are always sort of dripping with detail and, like, little things to ferret out. And, it is very easy now to go and buy, like, a board book where the people are just, you know, two ovals; and the pig is, like, four ovals, right? And that sort of thing has both bothered me and sort of worried me. And, so, I've had to sort of go back in time a little bit to people like Bill Peet, you know, who did Wump World and Elephant and the Ant [The Ant and the Elephant--Econlib Ed.], and some of these old, sort of more classic books. Because the art is so much more striking and so much more--I don't know, there's so much more, sort of, like, detail poured in and I wonder if that's an effect of the software the illustrators have access to or so on. But, definitely finding things that are a little bit older and a little bit more striking has worked well for me. Although that requires them to be a certain age. Russ Roberts: Yeah, it works well for you, Erik: that's part of my point. But I would add, for those who do read to their children who are listening, I sometimes do a read-through, and I'm looking for language acquisition for my granddaughter, say--I want her to hear the words. But often I'm doing visual scans of the art and talking about what's in the picture and not just pointing out the words that match the picture but things that are happening in the picture that might be of interest. I'm just going to put in a vote for a slightly older age than, say, Goodnight Moon--but a slightly older age would be The Seven Silly Eaters and The Gardener. Those are two books I love; we'll put up links to it. And we'll put up links to some others either that either of us like. |
| 18:45 | Russ Roberts: Now, you make a bold claim that--and you started to talk about it; I want you talk about it some more and I'm going to disagree a little bit--that parenting, having a child has made you a better person. Again, the flip side would be, no, it doesn't: It stresses you out; you become anxious, short-tempered, and bitter. But, in your case, you argued it actually made you a better person. Talk about that. Erik Hoel: I think I say--when I say 'better,' I think I mean less jaded. Looking back, this is, again, the sort of thing that's very hard to realize when you're in it and I don't think I was unique on this. When somebody talks about change, there's always this option that, like, you know, maybe I was just deeply selfish or something. Right? That's always a complete possibility. But, I think that, more so, this change was based off of the fact that I thought growing old meant becoming more jaded. And, to become unjaded, and because you have this little person running around who is interested in almost everything--I mean, I call this, personally, I call this, like, the lore of the world. So, my favorite part of--when I was young, I used to read a lot of fantasy and play fantasy video games. And my favorite part was just the deep lore of these worlds that the authors would construct. Where you're, like, 'Oh, the elves came from this previous kingdom' and, like, 'Here's the map,' and so on, right? And I always had this, like, deep satisfaction coming from the lore of the world. And our world has a lore, too-- Russ Roberts: Good, that's pretty good-- Erik Hoel: and just explaining it makes you think of it again. You're like, 'Oh, yeah, whales are these things. They're massive, big as a house. They live in the water; they sing; they sing beautifully,' right? And, as you're explaining these things, you begin to realize how absolutely crazy it is that we sort of live in a world of this much complexity and with this much background. And, so, just explaining the lore of the world to a new consciousness has made me less jaded. And I think that that's what I mean by better. I think it's better to be less jaded than more jaded. And I thought becoming more jaded was sort of the natural state of aging, because at the point prior to having kids--and, I was older; I think I was 32--I had become a little bit bored with the lore of the world. I had read many great novelists. Yeah, had I gotten through all of Proust? No, but I've got through a lot of Proust. And so, there comes to be a point where you had this almost felt like diminishing returns for almost everything. Like, I could go out to eat, but I've gone out to eat, like, a thousand times, and it's always been very good; and now it'll be good again, and so on. I'm not saying everybody feels that way. But I certainly did. And I think a big part of it was just this unjadedness of having this new consciousness and then being like, 'Oh, actually, dump trucks are crazy cool.' Russ Roberts: Extraordinary-- Erik Hoel: Yeah, it is crazy we can move that much dirt. Russ Roberts: There's nothing sadder than that Remembrance of Things Past only has seven volumes. Just another difference between you and me, Erik, on the Proust thing. |
| 22:33 | Russ Roberts: But I'll just switch in a different author. But, I think that's exactly right. For me--my granddaughter--for totally inexplicable reasons, is obsessed with owls. And I showed her a video of how an owl can fly without making any noise--which is a lot of lore. It's a beautiful, incredible thing. I don't know if she appreciated it. The video also showed some regular birds flapping and making noise and I explained it to her. She was, at that point, very young--a year and a half, maybe a little over a year and a half--but she was fascinated in a way that reminded me that I, too, should be fascinated. And, I think I've mentioned on here mimesis and her imitational language. I have four kids; I watched all of them acquire language. It was extraordinary. I forgot how extraordinary it is, and I got a little jaded, and a grandchild brings that back to you--that it starts off with imitating a sound and a syllable. And then it's a whole word. And then it's a phrase. And then it's a sentence. And then she can finish her song or the line of a song or a poem. And, on the surface, it's the most mechanical, uninteresting thing in the world, and yet you know it is the seeding that will become a blossom of human consciousness and language acquisition that is extraordinary. So, yeah, it definitely makes you more awed, A-W-E-D. I think it does make you a more sensitive person. I think you--and you allude to this in the piece--you become not just more appreciative of the world around you, you become a little bit more vulnerable because your child is so helpless and you're afraid that something's going to happen to them. And you spend an inordinate amount of time protecting them. Erik Hoel: And, I'm at the point now in the parenting journey for which I'm still--another caveat just to throw in, right?--is that my eldest is three, right? So, this is all spoken from the perspective of a very new parent. Another thing that is, honestly, a little bit heartbreaking already is that a lot of the lore of our world is not good. We were at the grocery store the other day, and he likes octopuses. So I had picked up something and it was, like, frozen octopus, and I said--because I'm so used to speaking, I am always trying to explain things and talk to things--so I was, like, 'Oh, wow, look at these suckers on this octopus; you can see them.' And he said, 'Oh, that's fake octopus.' And I didn't know what to say then. I didn't want to confuse him. So I said, 'No, honey, that's real octopus,' and he repeated--and he generally gets it pretty quick--but he repeated, 'No, fake octopus.' Right? And, I got out of the seafood section quickly; and it was heartbreaking. And the same for children. Also, as they become older--like, another heartbreaking thing about becoming a parent beyond just the daily grind aspects of it, what I found to be most--one other thing that's heartbreaking is that children rapidly begin to become their own person: and human beings have spiky bits in our psychology. We're, like, 'Oh, don't bother me, I'm doing this thing,' right? And everyone knows that and everyone who has been in a relationship knows that other people have spiky bits and you have to sort of navigate around the spiky bit. And we have to all do the best we can with regard to that. And I certainly have plenty of spiky bits. But, watching them develop spiky bits is also a little bit heartbreaking. At the same time, you can't have a full, developed human consciousness with its preferences and its thoughts and its reasonings and its narrative ability--you can't really have that without the spiky bits. But still, watching them develop is one of those little softer heartbreaks where you realize they're not just going to be happy to see you just when you walk in the room no matter what. They're going to be, like, 'I'm not in a good mood.' Like, 'Go away.' And so, that's, I think, another aspect of it. But I would say that that's still--just being able to feel that feels to me like being less jaded, because I think more about what this world is and what this universe is like and watching young minds begin to relate to it and figure out how they're going to relate to it: figure out how they're going to relate to--I had to kill a bug in the house the other day, right? And he saw me kill the bug, right? And so now we got to have a conversation about what happened to this bug. And so on. But even that, I don't think I would trade, despite, as you say, some of the drudgery and day-to-day logistics of having kids because that's just so much better to me than the more jaded state that I was in where I didn't think twice about swatting a fly. Right? And now I think twice: I think, 'Oh, how am I going to explain that we do this? Maybe I can guide the fly out?' You're suddenly in a totally different situation. |
| 28:48 | Russ Roberts: Yeah. It's another thing, I think, that parents don't talk about--they don't talk about it with each other. Husbands and wives, I think, talk about it but not with so many other husbands and wives and certainly not with people who don't have kids. It's bittersweet; and the sweet is sweeter than you can imagine and the bitter can be bitter. They grow up, they become their own people, they become spiky; and you become more like your parents and they become more like you, with all that is beautiful and painful about that. They want--they have to assert themselves and you're not used to it. You've become used to being something different. There's two great moments in--there's probably more than two--but two of my favorite moments in literature--if I can use that term very broadly--the very last Calvin and Hobbes cartoon and the end of A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh series--Christopher Robin's series--I can't read them without crying. Because, they capture--and Peter Pan is an obvious, another example--they capture the magic of something that is inherently temporary. And that's what makes it beautiful, by the way. It wouldn't be as beautiful if it lasted forever and never changed. So, it is perishable. Childhood, it ends. They become a little more jaded, a little different in their relationship to you; and it makes the power of that all the greater. And I think it's part of the reason that grandparenting is so surprisingly exhilarating. I was not prepared for that and it's because it reminds you of what you once had when they were little. And you've forgotten a lot of that, because you're jaded and you get your spiky bits. And they grow up, and you get along with them as well as you can. But there was a time when they loved you in a way that they cannot--and should not--love you. As they get older, they have to be their own person. And so, that's a secret. Don't tell anybody. It's private. Erik Hoel: While we're talking about the inherent difference that is necessitated when they grow up--like, as you said, it would be unhealthy to love a parent in the way that a two-year-old loves a parent--you know, in the parenting literature, it's often--the parenting literature, as you can probably imagine, is not that great but, broadly, researchers sort of break down parenting styles into either authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, or uninvolved. So, there's these sort of four main categories that they group under. And, as you might be able to guess, despite having still a somewhat scary name, it turns out authoritative parenting generally leads to better developmental outcomes: more self-confidence, more skills, that sort of thing. And, by 'authoritative,' here it's just meant that the parent provides some sort of authority, versus, say, permissive parenting where basically there is, basically, nurturing but is no authority. Versus the authoritarian, which is sort of, I think, probably used to be one of the most popular parenting styles. And I think--by the way, I think one reason why is that, if you have-- Russ Roberts: Deeply appealing-- Erik Hoel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you have a large number of kids--as people used to--I think you are forced into basically being either authoritative, permissive, or uninvolved. Like, I think it's very hard to maintain the sort of discipline and detail for authoritative parenting versus, like, authoritarian. And, I think, authoritarian--you know, the way the literature describes this style of parenting; it's probably one where we're all familiar with--it really is that you can, like, break a child psychologically the way that you break a horse or something. And, that still happens to people. And it's sort of--as much pushback as a little toddler can give you, like, ultimately, an adult has so much more fundamental power and the relationship is so asymmetric that you can really sort of break them psychologically. And, I think that that's fundamentally what authoritative--oh, sorry, authoritarian--parenting is based on. And, in a way, I think it's a coping mechanism. And same with permissiveness. |
| 34:03 | Russ Roberts: I'll just to add a political twist to this: You know, I always like to say we want our own way and it starts young. If you start with a toddler or an infant and you try to take something away from them that they want, you find out very quickly that human beings have an assertiveness about their own utility that is hardwired. They very much want to be free. And that's the libertarian impulse we all have. And at the same time, as the parent, we like to run their lives. And there's something paternalistic, literally, about that, that can be healthy. We don't want them running out on the street or putting their hand on the hot stove. But there is, I think, a Pygmalion effect in parenting where we want our children to do what we tell them, partly because that's emotionally satisfying--it's shameful, I think, something to be resisted in parenting--and that's the authoritarian part. But there's also this part that we kind of want to clone ourselves a little bit. So, some of that lore that we're talking--I mean, I like it that owls don't make noise when they flap their wings. It makes them more effective hunters. And maybe my desire for my granddaughter to see that is not just my desire to open the world to her but my desire to make her more like me. And so, yes: she will watch The Court Jester with me when she gets older, with Danny Kaye, because I want her to have my sense of humor. And the Marx Brothers. And she's going to like--I like New York in June because Sinatra's a giant and she should understand that, even though it goes against the tide of popular culture, she should understand that the great American songbook was the pinnacle of music in this country--etc., etc. So, I think it's a really important lesson, I think, for us as parents and, if I can get on my soapbox here as I have been for the last minute or two, is just to be aware that they need to be their own people and it's the natural impulse. Isn't it funny how easy it is to notice in other parents that they try to make their kids like themselves--but not me, of course? Erik Hoel: Yeah, you, too. I think--absolutely. I think, to me, what separates--it's basically just people trying at parenting in the sense of, like: you do certain strategies and then other strategies don't work, and you select among those. But, when it comes to this philosophical proposition, let me tell a little story about what I was told growing up which was, of course, that everyone had this innate 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' You have some deep, innate thing within that, and then your mission is to go and find that. And, one mistake that I saw a lot of people of my generation make was to go to a very expensive college, take out a lot of debt in order to pursue something that was relatively amorphous. And sometimes they would do it across the country, which then has all sorts of really pretty long-term ramifications, because you often stay there; and so you don't see your family as much and so on, maybe it even makes it hard to get childcare yourself later on in life because your parents aren't around to be grandparents. And, in one way, I don't think anyone was trying to harm people from my generation by telling us that. I think it was all very, very well-intentioned. But, at the same time, I'm not actually sure that there was, within all of us 15-year-olds, some deep core of what you might call real innate personality. And I think, more so, personality is sort of this thing that just, like, gets lacquered on over time. And so, when I think about, just to go back to this sort of philosophical point about letting kids be their own people--of course, that's super-important--at the same time, I feel like, sometimes, because our culture very much embraces that message, we might go a little bit too far that way, where we think: Oh, there's some sort of deep, innate, you know, like, real preference that someone has--and it's, like, genetic, I guess; or, like, where exactly does it come from? And, I think you have the preferences of--that the world impinges upon you, in the sense of: most people very much enjoy doing something that they're good at. Like, if you are very good at playing the piano, you're going to enjoy playing the piano because there's a satisfaction that comes with mastery. And, maybe you didn't really want to go to the piano lessons when you were seven, right?--but, in the end, you're 18, and you're very good at playing the piano, and you do, like, deeply enjoy it. And so, I think there's this, like, delicate balance. And what I would say is that, you know, there's probably no perfect set point within that delicate balance, unfortunately, that we can, like, identify. But, just to give, like, a little bit of pushback on the whole--like, how do we let them express themselves--because this is something I think about a lot. One thing that I've been doing is teaching my son to read; and I've been writing, like, guides on my Substack about how to do that and how to do that as a parent. And, of course, there's always, like, this question of: Well, what if--and I'm teaching him quite young--and so there's always this question of, well, what if he wouldn't have wanted that? And, to me, it's sort of like, well, now his personality is someone who is young and likes to read or likes to at least try to read. We go out and we read signs in the world and he can read simple stories and things like that. And that's sort of part of his personality now. And, we're at this--it's almost like the ancient sort of nature-versus-nurture-mix question, which is: How much is his preference of wanting to read--and he even now gets upset that he cannot read certain books and he wants to progress--how much of that is his innate, and how much of that was me sort of just doing 10 minutes a day of reading practice with him trying to make it fun and sort of instilling this preference onto him? And, then, in that case, I'm not sure that that is so much of a bad thing. But it depends very strongly on what preference, and it depends on how strong and how authoritarian-versus-permissive you sort of get with it. Russ Roberts: Yeah, I'm sure he's really disappointed he can't read Swann's Way yet, by Proust. Erik Hoel: I'll share with him Knausgard: that's more my style. Russ Roberts: Share with him what? Erik Hoel: Knausgard--Karl Ove Knausgard, My Struggle. Yeah. Russ Roberts: Oh, My Struggle. Oh, there you go. Okay. I think-- Erik Hoel: He has a great essay series--written to his kids, by the way--that I highly recommend. It's called Spring. It's all the seasons. It's, like, Spring, Autumn, Winter, Summer, and-- Russ Roberts: Cool-- Erik Hoel: it's all just these essays. And they're basically explaining the lore of the world. Like: what are pipes? You know, like, if you think about it, it's totally crazy. We all live, and if you could, like, take away the dirt, we'd have all these pipes running everywhere, like, super-interconnected like a brain. It's all stuff like that. But, yeah. Russ Roberts: I recommend David Macaulay--his books Castle, and others--which show how things work in the background. They're amazing. |
| 42:32 | Russ Roberts: But I was going to say: I don't think you mistreat your child in teaching them how to read, making them a reader or a musician or an athlete. I think it's great to expose your kid to everything: art, music, sports, literature, drama, and so on. I think where people get in trouble is that, let's say in your case you're--I'll just pick on you a little bit more about the Proust thing--you happen to really like, really dull, self-absorbed French literature. Okay? And, so, you give that to your kid. And when he doesn't like it, you force it down his throat again and again because you know better than him that this is the greatest literature. etc., etc. I think that's the problem. Or--I suspect your child is bright, above average, and can read at the age of two-plus, which is unusual--but let's say you don't have an exceptionally bright child and you're trying to teach them how to read at two and a half. And they can't do it. And you get more frustrated. And you just say they have to try harder. I think that's where the challenges are. I would never suggest that you should treat your kid like a blank slate and let them find out what's interesting. You have to--it's just like any kind of educational process, this idea, for example, that: 'There's no point in learning facts because you can look those up, so don't learn any facts.' Well, you have to learn facts, so you can learn how to think. And similarly, you have to give your kids a grounding--a foundation and all kinds of human experiences--to allow them, both physical and intellectual, to allow them to explore the world and to find their own place in it. So, I think it's wrong to say that--you know, there's extremes, and both the extremes are wrong. 'You're going to be a lawyer like I am, and you're going to go to the best law school in the country,' etc., etc. That's cruel, unusual punishment. And similarly, it would be cruel to give them nothing--to give them and just say, 'Well, you find out what's right for you.' That, too, would be silly. So, I think they're--both extremes are not healthy. Erik Hoel: Yeah, and I think the most common--just in sort of my observations--the most common push for parents is very based within the standard academic school system. So, most parental pressure that I see in the world is based off of trying to get their kids, like, a high GPA [Grade Point Average] in elementary school or something--so sort of begin this long climb. Russ Roberts: This rat race, yeah. Get in the rat race now. Don't wait until you're older. It'll be too late to be a rat. Erik Hoel: Yeah. You don't want to miss the rat race. But what's weird to me about that is that I almost don't have--frankly, another thing that I've looked at is, and written a lot about, is the education of many of the great geniuses of the past. And, if you look at somebody like Mozart, of course, there is an element of essentially child abuse for this poor kid who is being just courted around to different courts and basically is being made to perform. He's completely homeschooled and self-educated by his musician father who is incredibly involved and ambitious about his son. But there's also cases where the parent actually seems like a pretty--like a not bad parent at all. John Stuart Mill is a great example of that, where he does look back on his father--he had his troubles later on with things like socialization--but he looks back on his father without any sort of great hatred and in many ways thanks for essentially creating him in sort of this Polgarian [László Polgár--Econlib Ed.], like, 'I'm going to raise a genius'-way. And, what's interesting to me is that parents, rather than saying, like, 'I'm going to make this child,' who seems relatively interested in music early on, 'I'm going to make them an incredible pianist,' or something. Instead, it's almost always focused entirely on, 'I'm going to make it so that they have a really good resume going into college.' And, it's like this weird misdirection where it's if people tiger-mommed about the correct things--a great example of this is Terence Tao, who is probably one of the greatest or maybe the greatest living mathematician. And, if you go back and you look at his education, I have bad news in that it was not primarily lecture-based classes that he's just going to. His parents were mathematicians. His mother was a teacher. She homeschooled him from a young age. Of course, he was sort of interested in mathematics; and by seven, he's, like, an incredible mathematician. And sure, certainly some portion of that is genetic. His parents are very smart, he's very smart. But, it's so specific to--it just so happens that someone who used to teach mathematics to middle schoolers has now raised the best living mathematician, and his father would go to gifted conferences and so on. And, as far as I can tell, Terence Tao has a pretty happy life. He's married. He has children. There's never been any scandals. He's got a great career. He probably has certain regrets and certainly ascribes things to his parents, as we all do. That's one of the things you recognize as a parent, where you're like, 'I'm going to get judged at some point and maybe it won't even be for what I expect.' But it's almost funny because it's, like: creating a Terence Tao is just as requires basically the same amount of tiger-momming as it does to eventually get your kid into Harvard. Terrance Tao didn't go to Harvard: he went to a community college that was close to his house because his parents were so in charge of his education that they were sort of guiding him through it. And so, it just seems to me that--listen, there's probably some happy medium. But I guess my message would be, if you're going to be like a tiger-parent, maybe just don't do it along the axes that everyone is doing it, and do it along something that's more interesting and maybe more, actually has, like, a moral purpose. Like, if your child is a great mathematician and you inculcated that, then you did something good, right? Because, your child is now going off and advancing human knowledge in a real way, versus getting some sort of high GPA. So, I think that there's sort of this interesting thing where parents do a huge amount of very guided stuff, but it's all for entering the same pipeline, rather than taking weird routes or doing unexpected things like, 'We're just going to do all sorts of music lessons for you,' and you're going to probably go into this if you enjoy it. And, of course, there's always this immense danger for tiger-parenting of any kind that it backfires and it ends up pushing the kid into a place that makes them unhappy and all these things. But I think people do it--my point is that people do it all the time anyways. They just do it based off of GPAs and having a good college resume. Russ Roberts: I think you used the adjective Polgarian--is that what you said? Russ Roberts: Earlier? That's a chess reference, right? That's the-- Erik Hoel: Yeah, that was--Polgár, he had three daughters and basically he called his shot like Babe Ruth in baseball where he said, 'I'm going to raise geniuses.' And then, I think all three of his daughters were some of the best women's chess players of all time. And, I think one was the best female chess player of all time at one point. So-- Russ Roberts: And, grandmasters and--I think for those who want to hear the other--you mentioned John Stuart Mill. I thought about him because he, as far as I know, was taught Greek by his father at three. So, for your children, now's the time. You've got them reading: the three-year old can read, write English some. Let's get him to prepare to read Homer in the original, and now it would be a good time to start. Kidding. But I think the flip side of that--I'm glad to know he wasn't too angry at his father for making him, quote, "who he was." |
| 51:11 | Russ Roberts: But the flip side of that, of course, is--Andre Agassi, the tennis player, has a phenomenal autobiography. And, as you hinted at, it's not that his father decided at a young age that Agassi would be a tennis player--which, he became a great tennis player, a phenomenally great tennis player. It's that Andre hated tennis for most of his life. And it's, I think, a combination of both being pushed into something he maybe didn't love, but also I think part of it is probably being pushed into something by a parent and feeling that you've lost your own sense of autonomy about where you want to put your gifts. And, I think obviously, it varies by child; it varies by parent. There are plenty of--Julian Edelman, the football player, I've heard him talk about how his father drove him incessantly to be a great football player when he had very many limitations, physical limitations, and yet his father pushed him and pushed him. And he's grateful for it. Now, I think it varies tremendously across the board. The other thing I would just emphasize is that greatness is a really tough thing to have your children aspire to. Seriousness, accomplishment, contribution to the world--there are many, many good things you can encourage your children to do. But, to aspire to be a grandmaster, or a Wimbledon champion, or the greatest mathematician in the world, is a tough burden to impose on a young person and probably comes with many costs and many benefits. That's all. Erik Hoel: Yeah, I completely agree. I'll just say that: I think that so many people do that, actually, but what they put as the goal is getting into Harvard. So, it's really not that different in terms of the scope. Now of course, you say: Well, they can choose their own major at Harvard or something. But, in terms of the amount of parental resources that are deployed, I bet that for much of the Harvard entering class, it was somewhat equivalent to Terence Tao. It was just focused on something very different, which is just getting to this elite state. And so, that's sort of my big criticism of modern parenting, which is that there is a lot of actually pushing to make kids succeed in this sense, but it's all based through this academic system. And, I'm not sure that it's actually better to do it that way. Like, in theory, they might have more sort of options once you get to Harvard and so on, versus if you, say, push them into being like a mathematician at a young age. But in practice, I think it probably requires about the same amount of parental resources, and yet one is sort of perfectly accepted, and the other is considered this very strange oddity that we would almost view as some sort of maybe some version of minor child abuse. And yet, the expectations and the pressure is probably relatively similar. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. The obvious cost there is that it's a well-discussed phenomenon. I don't how real it is, but students at elite colleges in America struggle with the reality that now they're not so special. They're among a bunch of other talented, elite people; and they're not very happy. They struggle with the fact that they get their first B, or B-plus, or A-minus. And there's--the measurability of grades, it's terrible. I think it's a terrible thing to do to a kid. But maybe I'm wrong: maybe they're right, maybe you've got to start 'em young. I can't help but remember a friend of mine--who will remain nameless--who took his kid into, I think, a preschool for an exam because it was an elite preschool. And, the teacher asked this little four-year-old--I think she was probably four--what this shape was, and it was a cylinder. And this little girl said, 'A beer can.' She didn't get in. She didn't get in. But there's nothing wrong with seeing a beer can in the cylinder, I don't think; but it can limit your future. |
| 56:04 | Russ Roberts: Anyway, let's move to another essay you wrote recently. We'll come back to one last thing about children toward the end, but I want to talk about this essay you wrote about homeschooling. We did not homeschool. I suspect maybe you're thinking about it, but there was a Scientific American article saying that homeschoolers were very prone to abuse of their children. And, it's a plausible argument. They're alone. There's nobody observing them other than the child, often if[?] it's an only child. So, it is a situation that is potentially abusive. And, it turned out--shockingly, according to this article--that there was an extraordinarily high rate of child abuse among homeschooling parents as measured by--I'm trying not to laugh--but as measured--because it's not a reliable study--as measured by parents being reported to CPS, Child Protective Services, which is to prevent child abuse by parents who have various anger issues and other problems, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and so on. What was your critique of that article? Erik Hoel: Yeah. So, a very--someone described it this way to me, and I think it was basically correct: If you want to do a very smooth hit job on something, use a number that most people have no idea what the underlying base rate is. So, what happened was--and just to give a little bit more context about Scientific American's--this is an op-ed by the editors of Scientific American itself--and it basically relied on this one study that was performed in Connecticut; and it called, like, very seriously for legislation on background checks for parents who homeschool. And, so, before you homeschool, the government would check in. And, what they drew from in making this argument was this study in Connecticut: this young man had died. This young man had died, I think in 2016 or 2017; and he had died while being kept from school from his mother. And the mother had essentially starved him to death. It's, like, a horrific story of abuse. And, she had petitioned to have the daughter taken out to homeschool. And she had so many previous reports on her--she was well-known within the system. Somehow, it never led to anything. There's some report of they had a hearing on her. She had missed five court dates. They had a hearing. It lasted a minute before they closed the neglect case for the child who later died. So, it seems like she was, like, very well-known within the system; but, somehow homeschooling became sort of the focus. And in response to this much-publicized death that made national news, the Child Advocacy Office in Connecticut conducted this study where they looked at homeschoolers who had been taken out of public school--withdrawn to be homeschooled--and then asked: Was there anyone in their families who had triggered essentially a CPS [Child Protective Services] report, some report of abuse prior to that? Russ Roberts: Child Protective Services? Erik Hoel: Mm-hmm. And, what they found was that 36% had that number. So-- Russ Roberts: Frightening-- Erik Hoel: Yeah. So that's a very high number. My jaw dropped when I read it. I thought maybe the SciAm [Scientific American] editors have a point. I mean, that's an astoundingly high number. There are certain things that might bias it to be high, like this is just being withdrawn to be homeschooled. And, it's sort of well-known in the homeschooling research that homeschooling--one issue with figuring out the effectiveness of homeschooling is that homeschooling acts as a dropout loophole. Whereas if someone is going to fail out of school, their parent withdraws them to be homeschooled so they don't fail out. So, they don't drop out. And it's very difficult to close this dropout loophole. And so that sort of biases the homeschooling statistics to have this very dense negative end, while it also has this this dense positive end. But, when I was looking into it, I was shocked to eventually find a study where it turns out that, actually, the 37% of children just nationwide eventually have a CPS report put on them. So, they trigger some CPS report. So, the percent of homeschoolings and nationwide is basically identical. And I was shocked at the 37% number. Like, how could 37% of all American kids get CPS called on them before they turn 18? So, in terms of the cumulative rate, it was 37% by the time they turn 18. So, how is that possible? And, so, I both wrote this article saying Scientific American was actually sort of incorrect about this because they sort of made this really big deal about this study that turns out to be no different than the national base rate. So, if you had randomly sampled the national population, you'd get the exact same numbers anyways. So, it sort of seems like a stretch to say that then it would be uniquely linked to abuse. There's definitely some concerns about how reporting occurs after homeschooling. Does it take out a big chunk of the reporting pipeline and so on? So, like, does it help veil abuse? I think that that's a little bit of a different question. But just in terms of being linked to abuse, it didn't seem like that. And after I put out this call, like, on Twitter of, 'Why is this 37%-number so high?' like, hundreds of people--it got millions of views--and like, hundreds of people ended up replying to me, telling me their CPS stories. And, I'll be honest: like, despite it obviously not being a scientific study and it being super-biased in terms of the sample and so on, 97% of them were something like, like literally, 'I put up Halloween decorations and my neighbors thought they were offensive, so my neighbors called CPS on me.' Or, 'My 7-year-old was playing in the yard and someone called CPS. And it was my yard.' Just, really--or, like, some were even, like, darkly humorous. Some were, like: 'I had suction. I had these weird marks on my back and so no one could figure out what these marks were. So the parents--my teachers ended up calling CPS on my parents, and it turned out that when I was a kid, I would lie down in the bathtub and I would sort of move my back around to make the sucking noise that occurs, and I would just do that so much that my back was all, like, marked up from that,' and so that's why CPS got called. And so, it was sort of shocking to hear this sort of number of reports and to see that, in my opinion, CPS seems massively overworked. I looked up the numbers and the average investigator does 70 cases a year, and it seems like most of those are pretty shotgun-fast approaches because a huge number are frivolous calls. Russ Roberts: It reminds me of the time I came home from work one day and I saw my wife having a conversation with a strange man on the porch, and he was from the Office of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [ATF], and the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. And I'm thinking: Why is my wife talking to somebody about Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? We have some alcohol, no tobacco, no firearms. And it was because someone had accused me of being a arsonist of churches, black churches. Russ Roberts: There was a hotline. Some disgruntled person who had not won a competition I was running in the Business School at the time in St. Louis, was disappointed that their project hadn't been chosen. This was an adult, not a student; but we were using students to help with adult business projects. And that's what I think happened, anyway. But basically called in the hotline and this guy was going through the motions, but he also had to not just go through the motions. He had to do it fairly seriously. I--[?] didn't know that it was an absurd claim. And, that's true: If you see welts on a kid's back, it's a natural concern. But it is an interesting example of the earlier thing I talked about, which is the desire for people to control other people's lives, which we have embedded within us--I think alongside of our desire to be free. CPS--Child Protective Services--is a fabulous tool to meddle in the choices that people make that you don't approve of, whether it's Halloween decorations or how they raise their kid or letting them play in the lawn/yard. And, there's so many things like that now, tragically I think, where we're intolerant of choices that people make and view them not just as a choice that you might disagree with, but rather as irresponsible and therefore worthy of calling the state down on someone for their choices. Kind of sad. Erik Hoel: And, what struck me, just doing a deep dive into CPS and how the reports get generated and sort of this report pipeline: One big issue is that they sort of keep a record of all the reports that they don't substantiate. So, that's really why the number is so fundamentally high: It's because there's all these reports, but only this minority are counted after the investigation as having been substantiated. And I think you could--definitely, clearly, I think some version of CPS is absolutely needed, but I'm sort of comfortable about this issue of what seems to me, like, there's this over-report phenomenon that occurs with CPS. One reason why I'm comfortable pointing that out is that even if you wanted CPS to be more efficient and do better at identifying and acting on the cases that it's actually needed for, what you need are less reports that waste the agents' time. So, like I said, the original case that spurred this Connecticut investigation, it was closed in one minute. It was brought up for deliberation; and then one minute later, bang--like, gavel: It's closed. And that is sort of the only, the thing that happens in a system that is overloaded. So, I think you can sort of make the pro-CPS case almost by saying maybe the standards need to change. Maybe we need to fiddle with how mandated reports occur. But clearly, investigating 70 cases a year, it'd be a lot easier if it was 35 cases a year and if it was biased towards the more, like, actually severe things on the spectrum rather than 'I saw a 6-year-old walking alone,' and it turned out they were one block from their house. Russ Roberts: Yeah. I don't think--in theory, Child Protective Services is a good idea, but it requires a culture of tolerance that maybe we've not done such a good job of creating. |
| 1:07:56 | Russ Roberts: It makes you wonder where there's a fixed amount of tolerance that people can handle, and then they need some intolerance elsewhere in their life. In modern culture, in America anyway, it feels like there's so much tolerance of some things, but so much intolerance of other things that were not--people weren't intolerant of 25 years ago or 50 years ago. Say, your choices of what kind of light bulb you use or other things like that. And I don't know, maybe it's just a human problem we can't avoid. Erik Hoel: And, just to loop this back to the earlier part of our conversation: That is, I think, one of the negative aspects of being a parent now, which is that you have sort of fear and shame about being judged for your parenting, and everyone knows at some point that you're going to be--if you bring your cases to bring your children to the supermarket, eventually you're going to be at the supermarket when they throw just some massive tantrum because you accidentally got too close to the candy aisle and they saw all the candy, and then you sped away. And, I think that sometimes what people--so there's this real, like, fear and shame of being a parent and getting judged for parenting. And as many, I go out and oftentimes, it'll be the opposite direction where it's great where people will just come up and talk to me and compliment me and be like, 'Look at you. You've got two kids, you must have your hands full,' dah, dah, dah, dah. But, there's also this deep fear of getting judged. And what people end up doing, especially nowadays, is that they just stop bringing their children to the supermarket. And, what do you do if the kid doesn't come to the supermarket with you? You give them a screen, right? I mean, there's this very sort of clear pipeline. And anyways, but I think that that fear of being judged as a parent, is actually a big sort of new negative emotion that you surprisingly now have a lot of access to as a parent, where you're very fearful that, if you're out in public, if your kid is screaming, you pick them up, that you're going to look like the bad guy or something. I always say: Try to give parents a nod or something. When I see another parent with their kid, I'm like, 'Oh yeah, I feel you.' I try to give them that face, not just fish-eyed, judging stare as they take their kid out. Russ Roberts: It reminds me of a quote from Jessica Todd Harper, previous EconTalk guest. In her book, The Home Stage, she writes: Older people cooed over my children in the grocery store showing me I was doing a good job, smiling wistfully at my babies. Once as I was very pregnant with my third child and my twin toddlers were having a double tantrum of not being led into the lobster tank with the lobsters at the fish counter, a gray haired woman touched my arm and without irony said, "Honey, this is the best stage of your life." Well, that goes back to our earlier part of the conversation, but certainly there is that judgment. It's interesting what is considered good parenting and bad parenting and how it changes. If your kid threw a tantrum in 1920 at the general store and you ignored it, you'd be judged. And now, if you struck them, you'd be judged or if even if you probably yelled at them, you'd be judged. It's hard, but I advocate for bringing them into the grocery store anyway, rather than leaving them locked in the car, in which case you're going to get CPS [Child Protective Services] called on you. Let's close with--a bad joke; I apologize. |
| 1:12:09 | Russ Roberts: Let's close with the question of meaning and you write--you have a lovely quote. You say, Modern life isn't filled with a ton of what might be called cosmic meaning. That doesn't entail it's not fun, entertaining, or interesting. It can be all those things. However, humans also need really grand-scale meaning; most of us can't go forever without it, even if we are experiencing hedonic bliss otherwise.
Kids might not make you more literally happy, in the sense psychologists care about, which is polling your average mood (although some research has found that happiness does increase following parenthood). But by dint of sheer existence they make your life more meaningful. Meaning children do. That's close-quote, after "make your life more meaningful." I think that's true. I think it obviously depends on the kid and the parent and lots of other factors, but if you're lucky as a parent--and certainly as a grandparent--they make your life more meaningful. And, it's not a small thing. It could be an illusion. I think part of the feeling that it makes life more meaningful is the idea that you're leaving something behind after you die, which can be done in all kinds of ways through your good deeds, books you write, even Substack essays and podcast episodes. But children make you feel--they enrich your life in a way that we would call meaningful. Talk about that and let's close with that. Erik Hoel: Yeah, I think without--it's funny because I also start, again, trying to defend the more sappy, kind of 'kids are great actually'-essay by saying that--it would be very easy to attack it by saying that these feelings are so sort of commonplace and sentimental and so on, that they verge on just being too sappy to even discuss. So, I'll leave that as a caveat to what I'm going to say. But, I do think that there is: 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' remains a really sort of big, open, philosophical question. I think it's the second biggest or maybe the first biggest open philosophical question, with the second being: What exactly is consciousness? But, that question implies, I don't know, some sort of creative force. I mean, you can't have--regardless of what it is, there has to be something creative occurring. And, I do think that in the creation of a human being, you're sort of put in undeserved contact with some more fundamental creative force where--somehow this whole thing, this whole universe is about creation. And then, you get to play this little part in that; and now there's this whole other person who is going to go through the human life story of learning the lore of the world and so on. And so, I do think that there's this innate meaningful connection that's almost unavoidable from what could be called a quasi-religious perspective of tapping into something fundamental. And I agree that people can do--I'm very clear: Kids are not the only path to meaning in life. There's all sorts of things. There's gaining wider perspectives and intellectual journeys and community work and political activism and all sorts of things. But I'll also say that, in my opinion, and I think in most people's opinions, if you sort of get them in private, the truth is most people don't go meditate on a mountain. Most people get their meaning through work, and that can be a very dangerous dependency. Some people have very important jobs. Some people are saving lives every day as emergency trauma surgeons. Some people are Supreme Court justices, some people are Terence Tao; but the vast majority of us just kind of aren't. And so, it's just sort of truth that when you rely on work too much--and this is something I've been guilty of myself--I think you leave yourself open to the question of whether or not, like, any of that is meaningful. And, I think it's a lot harder to ask that for kids because they just represent potential. They sort of represent creative potential in this really fundamental way. And maybe things won't work out. Maybe their lives will be really hard. You can't know any of that stuff really ahead of time. But, I do think it is putting you in contact with something a little bit deeper, a little bit more primordial, definitely a bit more biological, but also, a little bit more cosmic. And at the risk of sentimentality and sappiness and all these things, that would be very easy to attack--essentially everything that I've said here. I do think that that is still all true. |
| 1:17:46 | Russ Roberts: So that's a different answer than you wrote in your essay, I think. This idea that you're part of something foundational, eternal, or at least very old, of creating and being part of this universe is a really beautiful idea. For me, I think of it as just the human experience and understanding my own parents better or my grandparents better, because I've gone through what they went through. That's a very modest claim. Yours is much grander. My claim at the beginning of this question was more that meaning comes from things that last, even though that could be an illusion because the universe is finite--at least philosophically it could be an illusion. So, in a way, that's a couple of different ways of thinking about why having children is, quote, "meaningful." Do either of those speak to you more deeply? And let me just ask it a different way. We're both talking about it in an intellectual way. I think I've probably mentioned this many times already on the program, but when I see my granddaughter, I have a physical reaction that I can't--it's not a rational thing. I don't say, 'Oh, look, there's something that's going to outlive me if all goes well, and God willing, have her own children and it'll keep going. It'll be a little piece of me left in the world after I'm gone.' I don't say that. I just have a physical, probably chemical reaction that, again, is probably hardwired. I find myself smiling for no reason. And not because she's smiling at me or--it's just, it's weird. It's different. So, I don't know how much of the day-to-day feeling of meaningfulness our children can give us is intellectual like you've tried to make it, versus something much deeper and harder to maybe put into words. But take a shot at it. Erik Hoel: No, actually, I completely agree with that other than to say maybe there's not a huge--you don't really have to necessarily pick one or the other. But certainly--and again, this is one of the reasons why the 'parenting is great, actually,' essay is I think, rare and very difficult to pull off. Which is that: in a way, talking about how great being a parent is and what meaning it puts you in is, like, this selfish way of looking at parenting. Because of course, everyone understands the whole purpose of parenting is the children, right? So, the second you are put in the position of saying, like, 'What have I gained?' then you're sort of in a slightly uncomfortable or dangerous position, and certainly open to criticism. But I do think when talking about things that are--like, we feel things that are intellectually deep through our evolved instincts that have been, in some sense, "rationally," quote-unquote, honed over time. And, so, when we have these biological reactions--and I do agree that most of it comes from that--but I'm not so sure. It's sort of, like, I think you get a similar reaction through romantic love in that at least some of what you get from having kids, it's just that there's suddenly this other consciousness around. And consciousness is--putting aside everything about biology or so on--consciousness is just like to share things with other consciousnesses. And so, now, there's this consciousness that you are responsible for. And so you have sort of this sympathetic pleasure that gets derived from the things that that little other consciousness experiences. And, so I think you can sort of frame it in a biological way. You can frame it in almost like a theological way. You can frame it in a philosophical way. But I think that there are some bridges--some bridge laws that connect all those things. And, then, there's just the question of to what degree--to me, the question is to what degree can I hold on to this feeling. Because I know that it gets--I've talked to grandparents; it's funny how much people forget. And it's not on them. It's just that life is very long; and oftentimes, there's been 35 years since you had a kid, and then your kid has a kid. And 35 years is a very long time for a human brain. And, they're like: How do I change a diaper? How do I interact with a toddler? And then, they relearn it, and usually it's like getting back on a bike, eventually. But, I do think that there's--and so I'll confess to being a very young parent and probably having a very romantic conception of it and so on--but maybe sometimes, that's because this lore of the world is new to me, and maybe we should sort of think of perspectives on the world as--actually, sometimes the novel first take is sort of the correct one. Like, whales are amazing. They do sing in the deep waters. And I think parenting is amazing, too. Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Erik Hoel. Erik, thanks for being part of EconTalk. Erik Hoel: Thank you so much again, Russ. |
Does parenting make you a better person? Can it improve your life? Neuroscientist Erik Hoel makes the self-interested case for parenting arguing that it makes you less jaded and more heartbroken (in a good way) for how you experience the world. Listen as new father Hoel speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the universal and particular truths surrounding parenting, and why the perception presented by the media is often at odds with our own experience. Topics include different parenting styles and their effects, how parents shape children's personalities and preferences, and the famous children's books that both men love and hate. The conversation closes with a discussion of the reliability of recent studies condemning homeschooling.
READER COMMENTS
Matt Ball
Jul 22 2024 at 8:40am
Being a spouse for the past 32 years has made me a vastly better person. But if I’m honest, I think I’ve been a sub-optimal parent for 30 years. Some people have said my story helped them be a better parent. They might just be being kind, but I hope it has helped.
Luke J
Aug 7 2024 at 7:38pm
Around 19 min mark, Russ said that parenting “stresses you out; you become anxious, short-tempered, and bitter.” This is the short of how I think of myself since becoming a parent. I’m not usually a bad parent, but no one can convince me that I’m a good parent either. I’m pretty mediocre. The kids bring out the worst in me. Yet they are amazingly gracious. Mostly.
Ethan
Jul 22 2024 at 9:43am
I am curious where Russ disagrees with Bryan Caplan. Clearly he is not convinced. I am not sure I am either, but it is hard to deny.I think there is something to teaching your kids to aspire to something more and encourage them to challenge themselves. I am contemplating homeschooling and look forward to reading Eric’s work to help guide us if we do.
I also think this video is relevant
Nuria Bertran-Ortiz
Jul 22 2024 at 10:33am
You have covered parenting of typically abled kids but have missed the opportunity to cover parenting of disabled kids. Seems like a big hole if you’re going to have a general discussion on parenting and what one learns/how one grows from the experience.
R R Schoettker
Jul 22 2024 at 11:57am
I consider parenting to be one of the more difficult but important adult activities but one that is fraught with potential peril to a person’s character. I must preface my remarks with the fact that I regard rulership; the action and belief that one has the ability or even the right to control the actions and even beliefs of others, as the root of all evil in the world. However, the justifiable necessity of such direction by a parent over the immature child while hopefully regarded as a transient and temporary stewardship in the development of an eventually independent adult, can also potentially have the consequence of fixing on the inferior character the belief that this dominion is a thing of permanence and even applied beyond one’s blood offspring. So, does parenting make you a better person? Perhaps only if you are a ‘better’ person.
JT L.
Jul 22 2024 at 7:18pm
When two children get together, it’s clear that they too have an authoritarian and/or ‘paternalistic’ leaning. It’s not a human trait that develops in parenthood or even adulthood. Discussion of children developing a personality and the ‘thorny’ aspects might include the tendency of little ones to impose their moral ideas on siblings and other children, often (and quite comically) taking serious liberties to apply the ideas for their own exclusive benefit. But, at best, genuinely believing that they know what is best for everyone around them if only others would step out the way.
Schepp
Jul 22 2024 at 8:08pm
You talk some about purpose, but I suggest that reciprocity is needed, valued and respected. All people are derived from parents. I suggest not all but most should show their gratitude to their parents bringing them into the world by passing it forward and bringing in the next generation. Not all can. Not everyone should. But as said above most should.
Being a part of this circle of life is mostly beautiful. Mean torturing parents don’t fit into this, but our education often misses the beauty of the necessity of parents and children for a sustainable life. The substantive grievance culture taught to kids of how their parents did them wrong, often taught by psychologist and schools led to fewer kids that are more unhappy. Flaws, prickliness and effort seem inevitable part of a beautiful life well lived of parents and children.
Shalom Freedman
Jul 24 2024 at 5:13am
There is a certain childishness in this discussion of whether being a parent makes one a better person. The childishness it seemed to me came at first with the talk about whether to become a parent. There are so many reasons for wanting to and becoming a parent beside the pleasure convenience or happiness effect it has on the individual. What about the desire to continue the family tradition? Or the connection and debt one feels to one’s own community, nation, people? What too about the kind of deep love a parent has for a child, and the meaningfulness raising children gives? For some of us that giving to the child, that caring for the child and trying to do the best for the child is the most meaningful thing we will ever do.
The question not directly addressed in the conversation is one which for some time now has been central in demographic discussion. It has to do with the falling birth-rates throughout the world and especially in the West a malady which is increasingly important in the USA. There are as usual more than a single suggested reason for a major social change. Narcissism, decline of religious belief, pessimism regarding the human future for a great variety of reasons of which AI takeover is the latest. Societies with non-replacement levels of children are those with diminished hope in the future. Perhaps Humanity is preparing for the time when its successor or successors will come into being.
However, there was time and there is still a time for many when in the words of the late Delmore Schwartz ‘The child is the center of this life’ were powerfully true. In old age I suspect this is something that can be said for some of us about the grandchildren too.
Geoff Ryan
Jul 25 2024 at 5:35pm
I recommend Time of Wonder by Robert McCloskey. Beautifully poetic.
Trent
Jul 29 2024 at 2:42pm
I really liked this podcast, not only because I agree with the premise, but because last month I had a discussion with a group regarding the idea that parenting has made me a better Christian. I think it has for two reasons.
First, seeing the sense of wonder in my son’s eyes has re-energized the wonder in my own eyes. And, if you’re a Jesus follower, that’s how we are supposed to view His Kingdom…with childlike wonder.
Second, it’s made me appreciate the sacrifices parents make for their children and heightened my empathy for parents in general, especially single parents (I really don’t see how they do it). Despite the hard work and time commitment (our son is 13 months old), it has been well worth it…absolutely no regrets.
Also, loved the reading list. However, not a fan of Proust – not going to introduce him because I don’t want my son writing sentences that are 4 pages long. 😉
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