Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids?

During the Covid-19 lockdown, if you felt like you had nothing to do, maybe someone jokingly suggested: why not make more babies?

The Case Against Kids

What? Aren’t kids nothing but trouble?

Think about it — when they’re babies, they cry at unholy hours and destroy your sleep schedule. When they’re teenagers, they rebel, talk back, and you can’t fire them (because, well, they’re your kids). When they’re in school, you have to supervise their homework, nag them to study — often with moderate or zero success. You spend enormous amounts of money and energy hoping they grow into decent, competent human beings who might one day become doctors or engineers and make you proud.

So, if I’m selfish and rational, wouldn’t I just skip the hassle and have no kids at all?

Enter Bryan Caplan

Here’s where Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics, comes in. In his book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, he argues that if you’re selfish and rational, you should actually have more kids than you originally planned.

Wait… what?

The Long-Term Payoff

Caplan starts with this: despite the early hardship, most people don’t regret having kids. In economic terms, there’s no buyer’s remorse. Given the chance, most parents say they’d go through it all again.

Yes, kids make you miserable in the short term — sleepless nights, tantrums, teenage rebellion. But in the long term, they become a deep source of joy, especially as you grow older. If you’re being rational, you won’t just focus on the painful first few years. You’ll weigh the entire timeline. And the good years — the satisfying, meaningful ones — tend to outweigh the hard ones by a long margin.

The Myth of Intense Parenting

Still, raising kids is expensive, right? Especially in cities, where expectations are high. You want your kids to excel in school, be great at sports and music, have manners, be likable. So you stress yourself out trying to manage every aspect of their life — homework, tutors, music lessons, sports, behavior. Parenting starts to feel like a grueling job with no promotion in sight.

And yet… after all that effort, your kids might still fall short of those expectations. You wonder: What did I do wrong?

Caplan would say: relax. Parenting is overrated. Because everything will eventually revert to the Nature rather than Nurture.

Nature vs. Nurture

Decades of twin studies show that how kids turn out has more to do with their genes than your parenting style. Nature trumps nurture. Your parenting might shape their early years, but in the long run, their traits — intelligence, personality, health, life choices — tend to follow their genetic blueprint.

That means your efforts to mold your kid into a musical prodigy, a math genius, or a model citizen may have only short-term effects. If you’re constantly drilling facts into their heads, they’ll remember them for a while. But as they grow, their genetic tendencies reassert themselves.

So you don’t have to be afraid of making the wrong choice of parenting, unless it’s really egregiously wrong, it can’t go too wrong anyway and the effects tend to even out in the long run. So just relax.

What Actually Matters

One thing parenting does affect long-term? Appreciation.

How you treat your kids — whether you’re kind, warm, supportive — shapes how they remember you. Those memories last. You can’t control their IQ or their career path, but you can influence whether they’ll want to visit you when you’re old.

The Caveat

Caplan’s arguments aren’t a free pass to ignore your kids. The twin studies he cites are based on middle-class families in safe, stable societies — the U.S., Sweden, etc. If your neighborhood is full of drugs, crime, or chaos, then parenting — and protecting — matters a whole lot more. But then I suppose that those who do get to read this post or the book are more likely having at least a middle-class family background.

The Real Takeaway

You don’t need to be a tiger mom. You don’t need to optimize every hour of your kid’s life. If you’re a decent parent by normal standards — good enough that an adoption agency would approve you — you’ve already passed.

So give yourself a break. Cut the activities both of you hate. Let them watch TV without guilt. Say yes to sleepovers. Let them pursue interests instead of test scores. Focus on making good memories — because those are what stick.

In the end, if your child remembers movie nights more than math drills, that might not be a failure.

That’s the point.