As a person who expected to never have kids now contemplating parenthood, this book was, uh, rhetorically useful; it got me thinking about things in a different way and challenging some of my long-held beliefs. It tries to walk the fine line between essay and meta-analysis, but I felt kind of bludgeoned by studies after a while and skimmed the last half of the book. He's thorough, though.

I still have a hard time accepting that the twin studies are as definitive as presented. ( )

Caplan's main thesis here is that nature matters more than nurture. He has twin and adoption studies to back him up. So therefore, all things being equal, (i.e. we aren't talking about abusive parents, drug addicts, etc) parenting STYLE really doesn't matter. Your kid is going to grow up and be whoever they are whether you're a big hippie like me or more of a super-nanny type. So driving ourselves crazy trying to be perfect so that we can ensure a bright future for them is silly and we should all just relax. He claims it is good for society and yourself to have more kids than you are planning on--so for people who plan on none, have one. For those planning two, have three, etc.

Now, this book is obviously geared toward a certain type of person--a person who is debating whether or not to have more kids is someone who likely has the means to do so. Caplan doesn't really address the financial aspect of increasing family size, other than to say that kids aren't as expensive as we make them and that in the 50s people had way more kids on way less money.

It was an interesting argument, and I was especially intrigued by the adoption studies that showed children were more like their bio parents than their adoptive parents regardless of how they were raised. I don't know if I'm completely on board with this author's argument, but it did make me think about how it's myopic to look at parenting in the short term and to ask myself how many kids I want when I'm sixty. (The answer? At least the one I already have. Still not sure about more.) ( )

Every now and then, I pick up a book and absolutely disagree with it from the start. Sometimes I decide to read those books. This is one of them.

Caplan does make good points when stating that the initial investment of time and resources into childrearing is not greatly increased when having multiple children in succession. He also examines a number of happiness studies to determine that “customer satisfaction” when having children is greater than the regret of non-parents.

Perhaps my main issue with this book is not the economic arguments (which, coming from an economist, are fairly sound) but the emphasis that he places on family studies and genetics, without having a background in either field. Reading a few excerpts regarding the heredity of criminal traits to my aforementioned boyfriend (who happens to be studying genetics) resulted in a baffled “What?!?” and though I myself have no expertise in science, I know contradicting statements when I read them. ( )

This is a pretty good argument that within a limited set of circumstances (middle class first world families) there isn’t much to be gained from the absurdly over intensive parenting of the past ~40 years, and that by relaxing expectations, it becomes reasonable to have marginally more children. He presents arguments that future-you would prefer to have had more children (probably valid for many people), but some of his arguments about the net utility of “left side of bell curve” people to society seem pretty weak — Japan is doing quite well. One thing I found interesting was how even small ($500-4000) cash payments to prospective parents increased the number of children they had. ( )

"To be brutally honest, we’re reluctant to have more children because we think that the pain outweighs the gain.”

This book is targeted at people who feel some interest in having a child - or another child - but think raising the child well would be more work than they really want to sign up for. The title’s a bit inaccurate: Caplan is mostly trying to convince you that the downsides of having children are exaggerated, not sell you on the upsides. He argues that contemporary society encourages parents to stress over their children’s upbringing to a degree that isn’t really worthwhile.

To make this point, he mostly relies on research on twins and adoptees that indicates parenting styles have little or no long-term impact on a variety of aspects of children’s lives, including life expectancy, overall health, intelligence, happiness, conscientiousness, and income.

Some reviewers misinterpret the argument to be more extreme than it is. As noted in the book, “research focuses on middle-class families in First World countries”; the claim is not that parenting styles and childhood environment are irrelevant, it’s that the differing styles and environments seen in middle-class First World families lead largely to similar outcomes (and thus, that choosing one of the more labor-intensive parenting styles from this range is probably not worth it). To use one of his examples, it's an argument against forcing your kid to take karate lessons against their will, not an argument for child neglect.

I wouldn’t want to make any drastic decisions on the basis of these studies, but they do seem like a useful caution against having too much anxiety about being a ‘perfect’ parent.

Some of the most interesting caveats noted in other reviews include potential sampling bias due to the reliance on adoptive parents and twins; inability to measure the success of very uncommon parenting styles; potential failure to detect indirect inheritance of mental traits (i.e. a father’s alcoholism influencing a son's gambling); potential failure to detect combinations of small influences. ( )