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I suspect I'll get downvoted for this, but for some reason, I find this quote chilling, “Children are a financial drain,” Merrill wrote. “The time investment of

I suspect I'll get downvoted for this, but for some reason, I find this quote chilling, “Children are a financial drain,” Merrill wrote. “The time investment of raising a child is immense. The responsibility is epic. The impact on future projects would be drastic. In light of these factors, it makes sense to reduce the chances to nearly zero and have a vasectomy performed.” It seems to completely remove the joy and satisfaction that comes from raising children. Only a few things should be viewed from a financial lens. Wealth is not money, wealth is discretionary time.

Pkeod 14y ago
YMMV. Not everyone wants kids, plenty of people are already having kids, many people who do have kids regret it entirely, and many people correctly recognize that you can't live your dreams and raise your kids right. It's not just a financial lens for many people it's a time lens too. Having kids whose lives you very probably won't even be allowed to be a part of is a reality for many guys too. Even if you have kids in marriage the reality is you will probably get a divorce, the kids will go to the mother, and you will pay. Why risk it if you know you can avoid it? Having kids it's a guarantee of joy or satisfaction. Writing books, creating epic things can give just as much joy and satisfaction. 10 year at a time male birth control is coming so vasectomies will no longer be necessary. http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/vasalgel-home http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/vasalgel-home http://reddit.com/r/childfree http://reddit.com/r/childfree
- rayiner 14y ago
  This is why India is ultimately destined to overtake the western world. Either directly or from within. Having had occasion to debate about this on /r/childfree, I feel like a lot of their arguments are based on one of the following fallacies: 1) That there are "too many people." That may be true in parts of Africa, but in the developed world, the positive economic contribution of each additional person still vastly outweights the cost of their incremental strain on natural resources. 2) That depopulation in the future doesn't affect people in the present. If you're thinking of investing in a startup, what does it do to your calculus if you know that your customer base won't be any bigger in 20 years than it is today, and will be older? 3) There is no positive externality to having kids. Your average person is going to contribute millions of dollars in labor and social value (how much would you pay to save the life of a loved one?) over his or her lifetime. 4) Failure to look at the value of alternatives in incremental terms. The question isn't: what is the value of having kids versus doing a startup, it's: how much does having kids reduce my probability of doing a startup, and what is the weighted value of that relative to having kids. 5) Failure to account for the correlation between parent-child incomes. I'd say 90% of the kids from my high-income suburban middle school are now making median or above incomes. Maybe 7-10% are in the top 1% of income for their age bracket. High income people create a larger positive externality when they have kids. 6) Failure to weight the value of alternatives by probabilities. Your average person has very few alternative courses of action that is going to generate as much economic value as raising kids. Your high income person has has a greater probability of doing these things, but writing a best-selling book or founding a successful startup is far from guaranteed. So the relevant question is not: what has higher external social value, doing a startup or having a kid, but rather which of those has higher social value weighted by the probabilities that your startup will have any real success (low), or by the probability that your kid will achieve at least median economic success (quite high). This is of course not to argue with anyone who chooses not to have kids. Nobody needs to justify personal decisions like that. But to the extent that they do try to justify it (and that's largely what /r/childfree is--people who feel the need to justify their decision), it's useful not to rely on fallacious reasoning to do so.
  - Pkeod 14y ago
    /r/childfree is still a useful place for people to gain some perspective - that there are actually people who never want kids and have mostly good, personal reasons for this. Not everyone cares about the fact that other countries will likely dominate in the future. Hey, good for them. For individuals who weigh the risks and rewards in our society it is easy to make the judgement having kids does not make sense. A lot of things we do in modern society is that individuals value their own welfare more than the welfare of the group, and are unwilling to sacrifice in exchange for the group's future prosperity. I refuse to be a disposable slave. I value my time and my life, and I am worth more long term by not taking what seems to me as stupid risks.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      You make an important point, which is that the value of kids is a positive externality that is not easily captured for yourself. And that's certainly true with regards to kids: you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars raising them, but it's their employers and society at large that capture their millions of dollars in productive labor. If you care more about yourself than your tribe (and there's nothing wrong with that), it does indeed make sense not to have kids. My objection, again, isn't to people who choose not to have kids. My objection is to the people (and I think they make up the bulk of /r/childfree) who rely on specious arguments to justify their decision, and act like they're doing society a big favor in not having kids so they can focus on their music career.
  - john_b 14y ago
    Given 1-4, and the fact that the investment in raising a child is almost entirely borne by the parents while the returns (financial, emotional, social, etc) are distributed more widely, sperm or egg donation programs seem like a logical alternative. It's probably the only circumstance in which you can actually make money (instead of spending it) in the process of creating a human. Genetic factors could also capture some of the correlation that would otherwise be present due to #5 in a nuclear family kind of environment. Since the value of children vis-a-vis retirement planning is no longer as significant as it once was several centuries ago, it seems to me that there are few good material reasons to have children for most middle and upper-middle class people. Very high income people can reap benefits via inheritance, but most people don't have enough wealth for that benefit to outweight the costs (both actual and opportunity) involved in raising children. This isn't to say that the non-material benefits of raising children cannot be significant. But these benefits are highly individual and should average out over a sufficiently large sample, so I'd expect large scale societal trends in childbearing to closely follow the financial cost/benefit analysis inherent in the decision.
- fennecfoxen 14y ago
  "Why risk it if you know you can avoid it?" That's a point. Also, a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries. ;)
  - Pkeod 14y ago
    Friends are the family you choose. I would rather go out and make good friends than hope my kids would become good friends. I do not have kids and I do not plan to. If I had kids I would want to raise them right, and I know that I really wouldn't be able to do what I want to do in life and that. Everyone dies alone.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      Friends are nothing like kids. I wouldn't trade my life without even thinking about it for my friends. It's all hormonal response, sure, but ultimately anything that gives you satisfaction is ultimately just ways of manipulating your neurotransmitter levels. Having kids just happens to be one for which your body has a built-in response that gets you seriously drugged up.
      - Pkeod 14y ago
        It is our biological imperative to reproduce, but with humanity we can rise above our animal imperatives and impulses. I choose to avoid many things which push the biological buttons. How old are your kids? Even with the special bond parents can have with their children that's not a guarantee things will be good. I know awesome parents who have raised horrible people. I know awesome kids who turned into horrible people after they left the nest. Most people seem to eject their aging parents into nursing homes when they are too old, because people would rather live their lives than take care of their parents. Good friendships last forever and don't require you to change diapers in the early years while convincing yourself its all worth it for the few golden moments if you don't happen to be forced to miss them because of work or just chaos. Convincing me to want to have kids would first require me being convinced that I should want to ever get married. :)
        14y ago
- thesis 14y ago
  Wow... you seem very jaded... or negative. "many people who do have kids regret it entirely" "can't live your dreams and raise your kids right" "reality is you will probably get a divorce, the kids will go to the mother, and you will pay"
  - Pkeod 14y ago
    In many polls when as if people would not have kids if they could do their life again they said they would not have kids. It's the truth. Raising children without being neglectful takes a serious amount of time and money. If you don't have the money you have to go and make the money and that means paying someone else to watch your kids to take the chance of them raising them for you. Yes, that's the reality. Statistics of divorce say so. Not only are you likely to get divorced, as there is usually more incentive to wives to ask for one, but if you live in a state which has alimony lives you could be stuck paying money. I'm not jaded or negative. I'm an an extremely realistic (data is emotional) person who is very excited to live life well and do a lot of great things - I live in the real world, but I'm also very optimistic with what I do choose to do.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Most people regret their lives regardless of their choices, because dissatisfaction and bitterness is a human genetic tendency. Most people rage against their mortality and blame everything for it.
    - joshuahedlund 14y ago
      Sources? Two can play the polling/statistic/studies/arguments game about children: http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/046501867X http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/0465...
      - Pkeod 14y ago
        Upbringing is much less important for development than genetics? No. Single mothers who raise kids in poverty with no father figure raise more daughters who have more kids without getting married or even involving a strong father figure (repeating the cycle), and more sons who become criminals or forever doing minimum wage jobs and going nowhere. Parenting > culture > genetics. Your genetic predisposition does not make you who you are. A person who is sheltered and not able to see the world is much worse off than a person who is given perspective about the world and able to expand their library of thoughts. Which of my opinions do you want me to show are informed by data?
- loganfrederick 14y ago
  "Plenty of people are already having kids" Arguably not true. Population growth rates have been decreasing in a variety of countries[1] and economists have found connections between economic growth and population growth[2]. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Generational-Storm-Americas/dp/0262612089 http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Generational-Storm-Americas... [2]: http://scholar.harvard.edu/kremer/publications http://scholar.harvard.edu/kremer/publications
  - Pkeod 14y ago
    Out of my graduating highschool class, I only know of one woman who isn't now a parent. Will it soon be my civic duty to have kids? I'll still say no.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    "Plenty" is not a fact that can be disproven, it's a value judgement, and that growth rates have been decreasing does not mean the world is running out of people. Also: economic growth based on an ever-increasing number of customers is not a sustainable policy.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Children have a human right to see both parents unless there is a risk of harm from on of the parents. This comes from the UN convention on rights of the child. (http://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30177.html http://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30177.html) America, along with Somalia and South Sudan, has not ratified the convention. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_ratification_of_the_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_ratification_of_the_Convent...)
  - Pkeod 14y ago
    The reality in the US is a mother can move across the country while a father is forced to pay child support, if he moves he can likely lose his well paying job, and if he can't find a just as good job where he moves he could be put into jail for non-payment (debtor's jail!).
  - deepdog 14y ago
    The reason we haven't signed the Declaration for the Rights of the Child is because the areas it addresses is a state issue. If the Federal government were to sign such a treaty it would become law. Which is a big no-no since the federal government can't intrude on state issues.
    - whatsreal 14y ago
      Could we have a referendum on the issue at the federal level, or would it require the states to individually ratify (through state governmental bodies or referendum) the right of an agent of the federal government to sign the treaty and allow it to become state-level law somehow? I don't know much about law, but I am a fierce advocate of state rights based mostly on the idea that it is far more feasible to have a democratic government that involves millions or tens of millions than one that involves hundreds of millions. This issue is however one place where my ideas trip up. It is kind of embarrassing that we are 1 of 3 (assuming the grandparent comment is correct) countries not to ratify the treaty and the other two are an (essentially) failed state and a brand new one that has to sort its internal self out before working on such things as UN treaties.
    - 14y ago
- Evbn 14y ago
  Uh, if you never get to see your kids, they aren't a time sink.
tripzilch 14y ago
Well think about the other side then, kids growing up in a family where daddy is owned by shareholders. Corporations don't usually make babies. So who would be ultimately responsible for these children?
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
Of course it's chilling. It takes all emotion out of the equation. He allowed others to make him a vegetarian, Republican, even to try homosexual relations. This is so way beyond an experiment that I suspect there's a clinical term for his affliction. That said, in less developed countries having many children is a form of retirement planning, so I'm not sure he's even right about them being a bad investment.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  It doesn't seem to different from someone in a long-term BDSM relationship. (I have no idea what the actual term is, not my scene). The only difference is that except instead of one Master, he's got as many as are willing to buy shares. If this is what he's into, I ain't in any position to judge - except where it hurts other people who didn't consent, such as McCormick.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    The article is obviously a shallow source of information about the situation, but it seems to me that she got hurt more by the changes in her expectations (e.g. wanting to have children) than by his experiment. That said, I agree that it was selfish of him to start that game without fully getting her on-board.
- scythe 14y ago
  That clinical term would be narcissistic personality disorder: he's more concerned with appearances (doing what investors say) than outcomes (does he actually want to do it). That is: the reality of what he does matters oh-so-much less than what other people think of it. Do you think this guy would publicly admit to having sex with another guy if he couldn't disclaim responsibility to his investors? But hold on: >A reminder for others: shareholders don't dictate what's tabled. We can only vote on what's proposed, the implication being that K5M is fine with either outcome. His friend's words. Here's Wired: "Feeling the weight of investor expectations, Merrill spent a drunken night “fooling around” with him. " Note that I'm not saying he's bisexual; I'm not a mind-reader. I'm just pointing out the obvious difference between who made the decision in the story and who made it in reality. So everyone is wondering how this will end, here's your answer: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/04/the_near_death_of_a_salesman.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/04/the_near_death_of_a_s...
carlob 14y ago
This seems rather shortsighted, children are a drain, but an asset too. I think one should view them as spinoffs, and of course shareholders will have equity in them. What? You can't sell stocks of your children?!
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Not yet.
  - angersock 14y ago
    There was an interesting book about this, The Unincorporated Man. Fellow basically gets put in cryostasis and wakes up in future where everyone is a stock venture like this article. There's some fun ideas in there. Parents in the story get something like a customary 25-50% of the child's shares at birth.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      It still works that way, just indirectly. It's called FICA taxes.
jgeorge 14y ago
No downvote from me, but it depends on what moves you. Not everyone experiences the joy and satisfaction that comes from having children. Doesn't mean they're wrong, it just means their priorities differ from yours.
dmm 14y ago
A life devoted to family is antiquated. After all, what revenue can be extracted from a man whose primary source of satisfaction are his commitments and devotion to his wife and children? A man who compulsively watches youtube(tm) videos on his ipad(tm) all night can be show many more ads than one who spends the evening reading to his kids. Modern life is a constant assault of sophisticated propaganda(advertisements) imploring us to identify as consumers of brands and to be materially dissatisfied.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Consume? You think we get to consume? What arrogance! What luxury! The New Capitalist Man shall require no consumption, none at all, only his Work! He shall need only his Work and Work without end, for the self-sacrifice of toil is the one thing that can bring true liberty! He shall pray each morning to his one god, "Work makes free!" /rant ;-) EDIT: /prophecy
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    That's amusing but really wide of teh mark. cosndier how heavily automated many businesses are these day, and becoming more so. Labor is a shrinking factor in the equation, and ideally one that many capitalists would like as close to zero as possible - after all, machines don't go on strike or sing protest songs about their working conditions or demand variety or fulfillment from their labor. On the other hand, without demand, you can't sell your product, so as long as people are around then you have an interest in making them want your product.
    - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
      The lack of demand for work is the entire reason why the worker has to work harder. Got to offer more than the competition, after all!
  - icebraining 14y ago
    I think you're confusing national-socialism with capitalism. The former are professed enemies of the latter.
shadowrunner 14y ago
Someone who views children as a financial drain shouldn't be a parent anyway. The heart needs to be into it.
samstave 14y ago
He was clearly unloved by his parents.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
I thought it was like a 10 yr old talking about how silly it would be to buy a car. After all they cost a lot of money and hey you can get anywhere on a bike. That kind of discussion doesn't have any understanding or appreciation for the actual situation. Its a view looking from the present into the future versus a view in the present looking to the past. But you can't miss what you've never experienced. So some decisions look correct when viewed from one direction in time and incorrect when viewed from the other. So far the number of people I know who have never had kids and wish that they had, exceeds the number of people I know who have had kids and wished that they didn't. Its not scientific of course, just another anecdote. Since I get a lot out of having had kids and raised them I feel sorry for people who won't have an opportunity to experience that, but I recognize that their experience could just as easily not be a positive one.
davidroberts 14y ago
I have three kids, one in high school and two in college. They are expensive, but like many other things, you can decide how you want to divide the expense between time and money. Take education for example. You can send them to expensive private school, you can send them to public school, or you can home-school them. Private school puts a lot of education in other people's hands, but you can choose a school which holds your values and works to inculcate them in your children. Public school is free, but you have little control over value education, and the overall quality can be pretty crappy. You can improve this by living in a less desirable home in an area that has good schools for the same price as a nicer home in an area with bad schools. (Housing prices tend to following public school quality very closely.) You can also make up for it by spending time with your kids, filling in the gaps in their education and instilling values you consider important, or you can farm this work out part-time through youth organizations and lessons from private providers at some expense, but probably less than a fulltime private school. Home schooling gives you complete control over education, but requires an immense amount of time and the quality is capped by your own teaching skills unless you farm out some of the education as mentioned for the public school. My family selected the public model with a heavy emphasis on adding value through our own time, with some investment in private education, mainly for music lessons. The values we worked to instill were self-reliance, compassion, practicality, and stability. We added to the quality of public education through encouraging reading, asking questions, and keeping a close watch on the educational quality of the schools and teachers and helping out whenever we could. Instead of signing our kids up for a lot of "enriching" classes and activities based on what we thought they should do, we encouraged them to find their own passions, and supported those passions financially only as needed. For example, we paid for music lessons for our kids interested in music, because neither my wife or I are musically skilled. When my oldest became interested in movie-making in middle school, we provided him a used video camera, blank tapes (this was back in the early 2000s), cheap editing software, and technical advice as needed. When they wanted to learn something we could teach, like cooking or answers to general questions, we made sure we were available to do those things. All-in-all, we tried to keep it low pressure and self-guided, aside from some clear boundaries that evolved as they grew older and more responsible, and some expectations that we monitored and corrected when needed, including that they would do their best in school, and that they would behave at all times like civilized human beings who raise the overall happiness of the world by being here instead of reducing it. (For example, not tormenting siblings, acting properly according to the context, such as in a restaurant or public gathering, being polite and treating others with respect, not breaking things, especially things that don't belong to them, etc.) Some of the results are already in. My oldest spent over three years in a youth gap-year volunteer service organization after high school, first as a participant, then as an intern, then as an employee. Now he is completely self-sufficient in his first year as a full-time student at a community college, with the intent of transferring to a four-year university and getting a credential to teach history to high school students. He sings and plays in a band at a church, and is engaged to a very nice young lady he has known since middle school. My middle son went straight to the University of Chicago after high school, where he is pursuing an economics major, possibly with a minor in physics. Almost all the expenses (including housing and meals) are being paid through scholarships and grants through the University. We are kicking in a small amount (several thousand a year, mainly for health insurance), and he is paying about $4000 a year + books and incidental expenses through a combination of loans and part time work. He has a 3.8 GPA so far. My daughter is a sophomore in high school and she is mainly interested in art, so besides the normal high school classes, she is taking an art class at school and participating in the art club, along with drawing at home. We have been lucky to have healthy, reasonably intelligent kids. Our main expenses for them have been food, routine medical care, the cost of a larger living space, extra gas for taking them places, and occasional fun stuff like going to a theme park or movie (which we enjoyed too!). It was all stuff we could achieve on an average American family income, including some periods of unemployment. I think when deciding whether to invest time or money, time is better for the kids, more fun for the parents, and definitely builds a better relationship both immediately and in the long term. I think the question of whether or not to have kids should not be addressed from a financial standpoint. Instead you should ask yourself: "Is being successful in my career more important to me than raising happy children who can contribute to society?" If the answer is yes for both husband and wife (and I think a long-term, legally-committed relationship between the parents is a major factor in raising happy kids), then maybe you shouldn't have kids. No problem. The world needs dedicated people who pour all into their work. If one of the parents is willing to put raising kids above career (I don't mean to not work, just to put the kid's well being above career success), then having kids might be a great idea. In our case, initially I worked a lot and my wife spent a lot of time with the kids, now she is working a lot, and I'm spending a lot of time. Personally, I think my wife and I made the right decision to have kids. The joy far outweighs the hassles, and more than pays back the expenses. Plus there is the potential added bonus of grandchildren!
anigbrowl 14y ago
From his shareholders' point of view, the joy of haing children isn't fungible unless they live in close proximity to their investment. Of course, there's an argument tht being happy will make Merrill more productive, but that presupposes he likes children.
taylonr 14y ago
I think it goes with the territory. In a lot of senses, this guy gave up his personhood and became a corporation. The things we take for granted as individuals he puts before the board. For example, he was able to convince them that he wanted to date the second girl, but that's not something any of us have likely had to deal with. The one exception being if you're still at home and you try to convince your parents you want to date a specific person. In that context, the statement was a little chilling, but no more so (to me) than all the other decisions. The entire thing was chilling to me.
xtracto 14y ago
I do not see any issue with that statement. In a pragmatic way, it is completely true. Children are a financial drain, they take lots of resources from parents (time, money, etc). The fact that for some people it is 100% worth it is a separate issue. I've got friends who are suffering because money is not enough (having to work two jobs living here in Mexico), but they won't change their children for a 'more confortable' life. For some people, children are worth more than all the resources they would spend... a thousand times. For me, someone who doesn't want to have children, it is not worth it (maybe not now at 31... maybe in the future I'll change my mind, who knows). So I agree with the reasoning that having children will only imply funneling resources to something that won't just give me any satisfaction.

Pkeod 14y ago

YMMV. Not everyone wants kids, plenty of people are already having kids, many people who do have kids regret it entirely, and many people correctly recognize that you can't live your dreams and raise your kids right. It's not just a financial lens for many people it's a time lens too. Having kids whose lives you very probably won't even be allowed to be a part of is a reality for many guys too. Even if you have kids in marriage the reality is you will probably get a divorce, the kids will go to the mother, and you will pay. Why risk it if you know you can avoid it? Having kids it's a guarantee of joy or satisfaction. Writing books, creating epic things can give just as much joy and satisfaction. 10 year at a time male birth control is coming so vasectomies will no longer be necessary. http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/vasalgel-home http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/vasalgel-home http://reddit.com/r/childfree http://reddit.com/r/childfree

rayiner 14y ago
This is why India is ultimately destined to overtake the western world. Either directly or from within. Having had occasion to debate about this on /r/childfree, I feel like a lot of their arguments are based on one of the following fallacies: 1) That there are "too many people." That may be true in parts of Africa, but in the developed world, the positive economic contribution of each additional person still vastly outweights the cost of their incremental strain on natural resources. 2) That depopulation in the future doesn't affect people in the present. If you're thinking of investing in a startup, what does it do to your calculus if you know that your customer base won't be any bigger in 20 years than it is today, and will be older? 3) There is no positive externality to having kids. Your average person is going to contribute millions of dollars in labor and social value (how much would you pay to save the life of a loved one?) over his or her lifetime. 4) Failure to look at the value of alternatives in incremental terms. The question isn't: what is the value of having kids versus doing a startup, it's: how much does having kids reduce my probability of doing a startup, and what is the weighted value of that relative to having kids. 5) Failure to account for the correlation between parent-child incomes. I'd say 90% of the kids from my high-income suburban middle school are now making median or above incomes. Maybe 7-10% are in the top 1% of income for their age bracket. High income people create a larger positive externality when they have kids. 6) Failure to weight the value of alternatives by probabilities. Your average person has very few alternative courses of action that is going to generate as much economic value as raising kids. Your high income person has has a greater probability of doing these things, but writing a best-selling book or founding a successful startup is far from guaranteed. So the relevant question is not: what has higher external social value, doing a startup or having a kid, but rather which of those has higher social value weighted by the probabilities that your startup will have any real success (low), or by the probability that your kid will achieve at least median economic success (quite high). This is of course not to argue with anyone who chooses not to have kids. Nobody needs to justify personal decisions like that. But to the extent that they do try to justify it (and that's largely what /r/childfree is--people who feel the need to justify their decision), it's useful not to rely on fallacious reasoning to do so.
- Pkeod 14y ago
  /r/childfree is still a useful place for people to gain some perspective - that there are actually people who never want kids and have mostly good, personal reasons for this. Not everyone cares about the fact that other countries will likely dominate in the future. Hey, good for them. For individuals who weigh the risks and rewards in our society it is easy to make the judgement having kids does not make sense. A lot of things we do in modern society is that individuals value their own welfare more than the welfare of the group, and are unwilling to sacrifice in exchange for the group's future prosperity. I refuse to be a disposable slave. I value my time and my life, and I am worth more long term by not taking what seems to me as stupid risks.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    You make an important point, which is that the value of kids is a positive externality that is not easily captured for yourself. And that's certainly true with regards to kids: you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars raising them, but it's their employers and society at large that capture their millions of dollars in productive labor. If you care more about yourself than your tribe (and there's nothing wrong with that), it does indeed make sense not to have kids. My objection, again, isn't to people who choose not to have kids. My objection is to the people (and I think they make up the bulk of /r/childfree) who rely on specious arguments to justify their decision, and act like they're doing society a big favor in not having kids so they can focus on their music career.
- john_b 14y ago
  Given 1-4, and the fact that the investment in raising a child is almost entirely borne by the parents while the returns (financial, emotional, social, etc) are distributed more widely, sperm or egg donation programs seem like a logical alternative. It's probably the only circumstance in which you can actually make money (instead of spending it) in the process of creating a human. Genetic factors could also capture some of the correlation that would otherwise be present due to #5 in a nuclear family kind of environment. Since the value of children vis-a-vis retirement planning is no longer as significant as it once was several centuries ago, it seems to me that there are few good material reasons to have children for most middle and upper-middle class people. Very high income people can reap benefits via inheritance, but most people don't have enough wealth for that benefit to outweight the costs (both actual and opportunity) involved in raising children. This isn't to say that the non-material benefits of raising children cannot be significant. But these benefits are highly individual and should average out over a sufficiently large sample, so I'd expect large scale societal trends in childbearing to closely follow the financial cost/benefit analysis inherent in the decision.
fennecfoxen 14y ago
"Why risk it if you know you can avoid it?" That's a point. Also, a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries. ;)
- Pkeod 14y ago
  Friends are the family you choose. I would rather go out and make good friends than hope my kids would become good friends. I do not have kids and I do not plan to. If I had kids I would want to raise them right, and I know that I really wouldn't be able to do what I want to do in life and that. Everyone dies alone.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Friends are nothing like kids. I wouldn't trade my life without even thinking about it for my friends. It's all hormonal response, sure, but ultimately anything that gives you satisfaction is ultimately just ways of manipulating your neurotransmitter levels. Having kids just happens to be one for which your body has a built-in response that gets you seriously drugged up.
    - Pkeod 14y ago
      It is our biological imperative to reproduce, but with humanity we can rise above our animal imperatives and impulses. I choose to avoid many things which push the biological buttons. How old are your kids? Even with the special bond parents can have with their children that's not a guarantee things will be good. I know awesome parents who have raised horrible people. I know awesome kids who turned into horrible people after they left the nest. Most people seem to eject their aging parents into nursing homes when they are too old, because people would rather live their lives than take care of their parents. Good friendships last forever and don't require you to change diapers in the early years while convincing yourself its all worth it for the few golden moments if you don't happen to be forced to miss them because of work or just chaos. Convincing me to want to have kids would first require me being convinced that I should want to ever get married. :)
      - 14y ago
thesis 14y ago
Wow... you seem very jaded... or negative. "many people who do have kids regret it entirely" "can't live your dreams and raise your kids right" "reality is you will probably get a divorce, the kids will go to the mother, and you will pay"
- Pkeod 14y ago
  In many polls when as if people would not have kids if they could do their life again they said they would not have kids. It's the truth. Raising children without being neglectful takes a serious amount of time and money. If you don't have the money you have to go and make the money and that means paying someone else to watch your kids to take the chance of them raising them for you. Yes, that's the reality. Statistics of divorce say so. Not only are you likely to get divorced, as there is usually more incentive to wives to ask for one, but if you live in a state which has alimony lives you could be stuck paying money. I'm not jaded or negative. I'm an an extremely realistic (data is emotional) person who is very excited to live life well and do a lot of great things - I live in the real world, but I'm also very optimistic with what I do choose to do.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Most people regret their lives regardless of their choices, because dissatisfaction and bitterness is a human genetic tendency. Most people rage against their mortality and blame everything for it.
  - joshuahedlund 14y ago
    Sources? Two can play the polling/statistic/studies/arguments game about children: http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/046501867X http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/0465...
    - Pkeod 14y ago
      Upbringing is much less important for development than genetics? No. Single mothers who raise kids in poverty with no father figure raise more daughters who have more kids without getting married or even involving a strong father figure (repeating the cycle), and more sons who become criminals or forever doing minimum wage jobs and going nowhere. Parenting > culture > genetics. Your genetic predisposition does not make you who you are. A person who is sheltered and not able to see the world is much worse off than a person who is given perspective about the world and able to expand their library of thoughts. Which of my opinions do you want me to show are informed by data?
loganfrederick 14y ago
"Plenty of people are already having kids" Arguably not true. Population growth rates have been decreasing in a variety of countries[1] and economists have found connections between economic growth and population growth[2]. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Generational-Storm-Americas/dp/0262612089 http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Generational-Storm-Americas... [2]: http://scholar.harvard.edu/kremer/publications http://scholar.harvard.edu/kremer/publications
- Pkeod 14y ago
  Out of my graduating highschool class, I only know of one woman who isn't now a parent. Will it soon be my civic duty to have kids? I'll still say no.
- rhizome 14y ago
  "Plenty" is not a fact that can be disproven, it's a value judgement, and that growth rates have been decreasing does not mean the world is running out of people. Also: economic growth based on an ever-increasing number of customers is not a sustainable policy.
DanBC 14y ago
Children have a human right to see both parents unless there is a risk of harm from on of the parents. This comes from the UN convention on rights of the child. (http://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30177.html http://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30177.html) America, along with Somalia and South Sudan, has not ratified the convention. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_ratification_of_the_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_ratification_of_the_Convent...)
- Pkeod 14y ago
  The reality in the US is a mother can move across the country while a father is forced to pay child support, if he moves he can likely lose his well paying job, and if he can't find a just as good job where he moves he could be put into jail for non-payment (debtor's jail!).
- deepdog 14y ago
  The reason we haven't signed the Declaration for the Rights of the Child is because the areas it addresses is a state issue. If the Federal government were to sign such a treaty it would become law. Which is a big no-no since the federal government can't intrude on state issues.
  - whatsreal 14y ago
    Could we have a referendum on the issue at the federal level, or would it require the states to individually ratify (through state governmental bodies or referendum) the right of an agent of the federal government to sign the treaty and allow it to become state-level law somehow? I don't know much about law, but I am a fierce advocate of state rights based mostly on the idea that it is far more feasible to have a democratic government that involves millions or tens of millions than one that involves hundreds of millions. This issue is however one place where my ideas trip up. It is kind of embarrassing that we are 1 of 3 (assuming the grandparent comment is correct) countries not to ratify the treaty and the other two are an (essentially) failed state and a brand new one that has to sort its internal self out before working on such things as UN treaties.
  - 14y ago
Evbn 14y ago
Uh, if you never get to see your kids, they aren't a time sink.

tripzilch 14y ago

Well think about the other side then, kids growing up in a family where daddy is owned by shareholders. Corporations don't usually make babies. So who would be ultimately responsible for these children?

Samuel_Michon 14y ago

Of course it's chilling. It takes all emotion out of the equation. He allowed others to make him a vegetarian, Republican, even to try homosexual relations. This is so way beyond an experiment that I suspect there's a clinical term for his affliction. That said, in less developed countries having many children is a form of retirement planning, so I'm not sure he's even right about them being a bad investment.

deleted 14y ago
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pavel_lishin 14y ago
It doesn't seem to different from someone in a long-term BDSM relationship. (I have no idea what the actual term is, not my scene). The only difference is that except instead of one Master, he's got as many as are willing to buy shares. If this is what he's into, I ain't in any position to judge - except where it hurts other people who didn't consent, such as McCormick.
- icebraining 14y ago
  The article is obviously a shallow source of information about the situation, but it seems to me that she got hurt more by the changes in her expectations (e.g. wanting to have children) than by his experiment. That said, I agree that it was selfish of him to start that game without fully getting her on-board.
scythe 14y ago
That clinical term would be narcissistic personality disorder: he's more concerned with appearances (doing what investors say) than outcomes (does he actually want to do it). That is: the reality of what he does matters oh-so-much less than what other people think of it. Do you think this guy would publicly admit to having sex with another guy if he couldn't disclaim responsibility to his investors? But hold on: >A reminder for others: shareholders don't dictate what's tabled. We can only vote on what's proposed, the implication being that K5M is fine with either outcome. His friend's words. Here's Wired: "Feeling the weight of investor expectations, Merrill spent a drunken night “fooling around” with him. " Note that I'm not saying he's bisexual; I'm not a mind-reader. I'm just pointing out the obvious difference between who made the decision in the story and who made it in reality. So everyone is wondering how this will end, here's your answer: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/04/the_near_death_of_a_salesman.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/04/the_near_death_of_a_s...

carlob 14y ago

This seems rather shortsighted, children are a drain, but an asset too. I think one should view them as spinoffs, and of course shareholders will have equity in them. What? You can't sell stocks of your children?!

eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Not yet.
- angersock 14y ago
  There was an interesting book about this, The Unincorporated Man. Fellow basically gets put in cryostasis and wakes up in future where everyone is a stock venture like this article. There's some fun ideas in there. Parents in the story get something like a customary 25-50% of the child's shares at birth.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    It still works that way, just indirectly. It's called FICA taxes.

jgeorge 14y ago

No downvote from me, but it depends on what moves you. Not everyone experiences the joy and satisfaction that comes from having children. Doesn't mean they're wrong, it just means their priorities differ from yours.

dmm 14y ago

A life devoted to family is antiquated. After all, what revenue can be extracted from a man whose primary source of satisfaction are his commitments and devotion to his wife and children? A man who compulsively watches youtube(tm) videos on his ipad(tm) all night can be show many more ads than one who spends the evening reading to his kids. Modern life is a constant assault of sophisticated propaganda(advertisements) imploring us to identify as consumers of brands and to be materially dissatisfied.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Consume? You think we get to consume? What arrogance! What luxury! The New Capitalist Man shall require no consumption, none at all, only his Work! He shall need only his Work and Work without end, for the self-sacrifice of toil is the one thing that can bring true liberty! He shall pray each morning to his one god, "Work makes free!" /rant ;-) EDIT: /prophecy
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  That's amusing but really wide of teh mark. cosndier how heavily automated many businesses are these day, and becoming more so. Labor is a shrinking factor in the equation, and ideally one that many capitalists would like as close to zero as possible - after all, machines don't go on strike or sing protest songs about their working conditions or demand variety or fulfillment from their labor. On the other hand, without demand, you can't sell your product, so as long as people are around then you have an interest in making them want your product.
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    The lack of demand for work is the entire reason why the worker has to work harder. Got to offer more than the competition, after all!
- icebraining 14y ago
  I think you're confusing national-socialism with capitalism. The former are professed enemies of the latter.

shadowrunner 14y ago

Someone who views children as a financial drain shouldn't be a parent anyway. The heart needs to be into it.

samstave 14y ago

He was clearly unloved by his parents.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

I thought it was like a 10 yr old talking about how silly it would be to buy a car. After all they cost a lot of money and hey you can get anywhere on a bike. That kind of discussion doesn't have any understanding or appreciation for the actual situation. Its a view looking from the present into the future versus a view in the present looking to the past. But you can't miss what you've never experienced. So some decisions look correct when viewed from one direction in time and incorrect when viewed from the other. So far the number of people I know who have never had kids and wish that they had, exceeds the number of people I know who have had kids and wished that they didn't. Its not scientific of course, just another anecdote. Since I get a lot out of having had kids and raised them I feel sorry for people who won't have an opportunity to experience that, but I recognize that their experience could just as easily not be a positive one.

davidroberts 14y ago

I have three kids, one in high school and two in college. They are expensive, but like many other things, you can decide how you want to divide the expense between time and money. Take education for example. You can send them to expensive private school, you can send them to public school, or you can home-school them. Private school puts a lot of education in other people's hands, but you can choose a school which holds your values and works to inculcate them in your children. Public school is free, but you have little control over value education, and the overall quality can be pretty crappy. You can improve this by living in a less desirable home in an area that has good schools for the same price as a nicer home in an area with bad schools. (Housing prices tend to following public school quality very closely.) You can also make up for it by spending time with your kids, filling in the gaps in their education and instilling values you consider important, or you can farm this work out part-time through youth organizations and lessons from private providers at some expense, but probably less than a fulltime private school. Home schooling gives you complete control over education, but requires an immense amount of time and the quality is capped by your own teaching skills unless you farm out some of the education as mentioned for the public school. My family selected the public model with a heavy emphasis on adding value through our own time, with some investment in private education, mainly for music lessons. The values we worked to instill were self-reliance, compassion, practicality, and stability. We added to the quality of public education through encouraging reading, asking questions, and keeping a close watch on the educational quality of the schools and teachers and helping out whenever we could. Instead of signing our kids up for a lot of "enriching" classes and activities based on what we thought they should do, we encouraged them to find their own passions, and supported those passions financially only as needed. For example, we paid for music lessons for our kids interested in music, because neither my wife or I are musically skilled. When my oldest became interested in movie-making in middle school, we provided him a used video camera, blank tapes (this was back in the early 2000s), cheap editing software, and technical advice as needed. When they wanted to learn something we could teach, like cooking or answers to general questions, we made sure we were available to do those things. All-in-all, we tried to keep it low pressure and self-guided, aside from some clear boundaries that evolved as they grew older and more responsible, and some expectations that we monitored and corrected when needed, including that they would do their best in school, and that they would behave at all times like civilized human beings who raise the overall happiness of the world by being here instead of reducing it. (For example, not tormenting siblings, acting properly according to the context, such as in a restaurant or public gathering, being polite and treating others with respect, not breaking things, especially things that don't belong to them, etc.) Some of the results are already in. My oldest spent over three years in a youth gap-year volunteer service organization after high school, first as a participant, then as an intern, then as an employee. Now he is completely self-sufficient in his first year as a full-time student at a community college, with the intent of transferring to a four-year university and getting a credential to teach history to high school students. He sings and plays in a band at a church, and is engaged to a very nice young lady he has known since middle school. My middle son went straight to the University of Chicago after high school, where he is pursuing an economics major, possibly with a minor in physics. Almost all the expenses (including housing and meals) are being paid through scholarships and grants through the University. We are kicking in a small amount (several thousand a year, mainly for health insurance), and he is paying about $4000 a year + books and incidental expenses through a combination of loans and part time work. He has a 3.8 GPA so far. My daughter is a sophomore in high school and she is mainly interested in art, so besides the normal high school classes, she is taking an art class at school and participating in the art club, along with drawing at home. We have been lucky to have healthy, reasonably intelligent kids. Our main expenses for them have been food, routine medical care, the cost of a larger living space, extra gas for taking them places, and occasional fun stuff like going to a theme park or movie (which we enjoyed too!). It was all stuff we could achieve on an average American family income, including some periods of unemployment. I think when deciding whether to invest time or money, time is better for the kids, more fun for the parents, and definitely builds a better relationship both immediately and in the long term. I think the question of whether or not to have kids should not be addressed from a financial standpoint. Instead you should ask yourself: "Is being successful in my career more important to me than raising happy children who can contribute to society?" If the answer is yes for both husband and wife (and I think a long-term, legally-committed relationship between the parents is a major factor in raising happy kids), then maybe you shouldn't have kids. No problem. The world needs dedicated people who pour all into their work. If one of the parents is willing to put raising kids above career (I don't mean to not work, just to put the kid's well being above career success), then having kids might be a great idea. In our case, initially I worked a lot and my wife spent a lot of time with the kids, now she is working a lot, and I'm spending a lot of time. Personally, I think my wife and I made the right decision to have kids. The joy far outweighs the hassles, and more than pays back the expenses. Plus there is the potential added bonus of grandchildren!

anigbrowl 14y ago

From his shareholders' point of view, the joy of haing children isn't fungible unless they live in close proximity to their investment. Of course, there's an argument tht being happy will make Merrill more productive, but that presupposes he likes children.

taylonr 14y ago

I think it goes with the territory. In a lot of senses, this guy gave up his personhood and became a corporation. The things we take for granted as individuals he puts before the board. For example, he was able to convince them that he wanted to date the second girl, but that's not something any of us have likely had to deal with. The one exception being if you're still at home and you try to convince your parents you want to date a specific person. In that context, the statement was a little chilling, but no more so (to me) than all the other decisions. The entire thing was chilling to me.

xtracto 14y ago

I do not see any issue with that statement. In a pragmatic way, it is completely true. Children are a financial drain, they take lots of resources from parents (time, money, etc). The fact that for some people it is 100% worth it is a separate issue. I've got friends who are suffering because money is not enough (having to work two jobs living here in Mexico), but they won't change their children for a 'more confortable' life. For some people, children are worth more than all the resources they would spend... a thousand times. For me, someone who doesn't want to have children, it is not worth it (maybe not now at 31... maybe in the future I'll change my mind, who knows). So I agree with the reasoning that having children will only imply funneling resources to something that won't just give me any satisfaction.