Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids overview

[John Salvatier]

Hi Folks,

Would anybody care to look at a (very) rough draft post for an overview of Bryan Caplan's Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids and give me feedback (link)? Caplan argues that twin and adoption studies strongly suggest that parenting has much less impact on adult life outcomes of the children than most people expect. So far we've focused on presenting a rough outline of that argument. Our main intent is to make people interested in reading the book as well as draw out criticism of the book's thesis. I'm curious if you think our focus should be expanded and what can be cut out or should be added. 

I've been working on this with another LWer who goes comes to the Seattle meetups. 

John

[William Ryan]

I would like to point out that these studies are largely looking at the proportion of variance explained, and the technique can distinguish between genetics, shared and non-shared environment.  These studies, and Bryan Caplan himself, then make the huge assumption that shared environment == the entire effect of parenting.  I am frankly quite shocked that this assumption passes without much question at all.  Do any of you have siblings?  Did you parents actually treat you remotely the same as each other??  Mine sure didn't, and I haven't seen any parents who do treat all their children the same either.  I doubt shared environment matters at all because almost none of the environment is shared.

It is also worth noting that if only the child's peer group matters (a la Judith Harris), the parents can control their child's peer group.

[John Salvatier]

I think on this particular topic, the strongest evidence comes from adoption studies (not without their potential confounds) which varies the parents. 

[Laurent Bossavit]

> interested in reading the book as well as draw out criticism of the book's thesis. I'm curious if you think our focus should be expanded and what can be cut out or should be added.

On a quick skim, this (either the book or the review, not sure which) seems to overstate the influence of heredity and understate that of non-parenting environmental influence, the claim I've seen previously is that life outcomes are influenced in a major way by who you associate with, it would be worth locating who's made that argument (I think I've seen it summarized as "you are the average of the five people closest to you") and giving it some space (is that what the Jason Collins link on "peer effects" is saying?)

Cheers,
Laurent (very much a hands-off parent)