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> Have them early if possible.

The two most important factors in having successful children are: 1. having two parents and 2. having older parents at child birth.

There’s a ton of data on this. Maybe it’s correlation only, but it also makes sense. Parenting is too difficult for a single person. And waiting until you’re established and stable will give your kids a better environment for growth.

The age might very well be correlation, not causation.

Wealthy 50-years-olds having their firstborns, then promptly leaving them vast inheritance — boom! you get “successful” children merely because they got quite a boost. Meanwhile, you don't see not-so-wealthy 50-years-olds having new kids because they had them already at 25 and that was enough.

Also, there is a whole host of implications from having kids earlier. Like, you being just 30 when they go to school — or young adults having 65-year-old parents to care of when they'd be rather establishing their own life.

I’m not just talking about wealth…

Look at our prison population and you’ll find people raised by a very young single parent.

Look at people that graduate from university and you’ll see the opposite.

It strongly correlates with just about any measure you can think of. And it is true across race, gender, immigration status, etc.

If I gave you my mom’s phone number, do you think you could call and chat with her about this for a bit?

If stability arrives only in your mid to late 30s, leaving only a handful of fertile years (assuming no prior medical problems picked-up in younger life) then it stands to reason that a women will be far less successful at producing a large family than one in say, her early 20s. For men, I would agree with you. But then the calculation is rather different.

It's a pretty delicate balancing act, and one that's getting harder because of the increasing complexity of modern society.

The issue is that differentiated careers - ones where you are hard to replace, your company will pay you more than commodity wages, and they'll give you time off for a sick kid because replacing you will cost more than just letting you take a day off when necessary - require a long period of time to become differentiated and hard to replace. That could be spending your 20s in med school and residency, or in law school and being an associate, or bouncing between lower-level engineering jobs before you get the experience needed to tackle big projects. But in most fields, it does take up most of your 20s, which means you really only get stability, trust, and the ability to downshift for family life in your 30s.

Ideally, on a societal level, you should be able to raise a family on one of those "commodity" wages. But that's not happening, largely because many of the necessities of life - housing, health care, and education - have become differentiated professions where owners and practitioners can get premium wages. We need to allow shantytowns and village doctors again before we can have large amounts of people having kids in their 20s.

> two most important factors in having successful children are: 1. having two parents and 2. having older parents at child birth.

This ignores the genetic confounding.

The reason "older parents" have "successful kids" is because those same parents have genes which make their kids successful. Decades of twin studies have shown that parenting really doesn't matter, but parents do (because of the genes they impart).

Parenting younger in life is a much better experience for everyone. The real problem is that nobody is stable anymore at a younger age.

Is it really? What makes it better? My mother was 22 when I born. I went through a lot of pain as a child because of her an my dad’s emotional issues (I don’t blame them, they were young.) It took me until my late 20s to really work through some of the crap I went through as a child. Compare that to my cousin who’s parents were in their mid to late 30s. He’s had a much more stable life than I had. He’s already got a much better head start in life than me, and I think a big component of that was the maturity of his parents.

How much of an input did your parents have in your mom's selection of her husband?

Very good point. Back in the day in my culture you had multi generation families living in the same house. This helps everyone, parents get more people to help, the children grow around respective role models (uncles, grandfather, etc. for boys, aunts, grandmother, etc. for girls), etc. It still exists for some people, but less common.

Today things are so messed up, the economy, the push in secular cultures to even destroy the nuclear family, all this is taking a toll on society. Eventually it might be too late to recover.

As far as age is concerned, just doing a Google search shows there's a ton of data both in support and against having kids at various ages. There is no single dimension called "success", there are all kinds of health, economic, and educational considerations and they're all impacted in different ways by age. Furthermore it also looks like where the study was conducted plays a big role, which leads me to think this is more of a correlation than a causation. Studies in Europe seem to focus a lot more on health in which case being younger seems to be the best time to have kids. Studies in the U.S. seem to focus a lot more on crime and educational attainment, in which case being older seems to be the best time to have kids.

Waiting to have kids is the worst advice you can give someone. It’s a very difficult thing to have kids to begin with (contrary to what the “abstinence only” crowd would have you believe) and waiting can be the difference between having kids and heartbreak.

> contrary to what the “abstinence only” crowd would have you believe

Sounds like a straw man fallacy. My faith both advocates for abstinence before marriage, and getting marriage as soon as it viable (physically, mentally, financially, etc.).

I agree with this. I wasn’t ready to have kids at 30. I had my son at 33. Only now am I entering some stability in my career. I am very fortunate to have made wise decisions in my youth that shaped my trajectory. I made the most of the opportunities I had. I’ve squandered many too.

I don’t actually wish I had my son earlier. I’m happy with our current situation. I’m able to give him access to a plethora of resources and attention so he can flourish. He’s turning 4 this year. I wish I could make more of him because I think this world is better with him in it, than not.

No, I said “early if possible” only because we cannot change the realities of biology. My wife is the same age as me, and we can likely have 1 more before she’s “done.” If we could have 3 or 4 with ease, we would.

An alternative solution would be for men to marry young. It’s a reasonable solution. But my wife’s age and maturity is a huge benefit too. She wasn’t ready to be a mom at 25 or 30.

It’s a difficult dilemma and balancing act.

Older parents are good for financial health. Less so for biological health.

Humans have done a pretty good job of overcoming the planet's carrying capacity through social and technological means. At some point, human's current organization and ability hits a limit and there is a period of stagnation, or regression. To me, and to others, these are not hopeful times. In the world that I live in, the best means I have to support myself also disconnect me from real community.

Living in the Bay Area, there is no real sense of permanence. Many people are here because salaries are so high, but if they don't stay high they will need to leave. Many people are pushed out because the area has become so unaffordable. Many of my closest friends live day to day not knowing if their visa will be renewed. A friend at my company just relocated to Vancouver because he didn't luck out in the visa lottery. I have several friends who are looking to leave because they cannot provide stability for their children. I myself am renting. I would like to stay here permanently, but the houses on my street have doubled in price (not value) over the last two years. I still may be able to afford to buy one, but the idea of paying more than 10k/month for an 1300 square foot house is hard to swallow.

California of course has tried to address these problems, and has been trying to address them for a long time. Overall, these efforts have been a failure sometimes doing more harm than good (see prop 13). California hasn't even been able to build a functioning high speed rail system even though it has been fully funded for over 20 years. The society that made these places does not seem to be the society that we need to fix their problems.

We have many people, with many ideas. We don't need more people to keep having new ideas. We just need to provide a stable environment for the people that we do have, and give them the space to express themselves.

Edit: btw, if it is true that new ideas are what we need, then the best way forward is adoption. What better way to get a new idea into a desirable place?

What's the end game? Even if we continue to grow population now, we can't forever. At some point we have to reach a solution for a population equilibrium.

> Have more children. Have them early if possible.

Pretty complicated when the housing market and labour market are such that, on average:

* You don't own a house (= less money)

* You only have a fixed-term contract (= low financial stability, banks less likely to lend you money)

* To get a job, you will likely have to move away from family/relatives (= no support network)

* You & your partner likely have to work full-time (= less time for child care)

How are we not a cancer on the planet, though? We are literally responsible for the 6th largest mass extinction in history, based on greed for fossil fuels, animal products & rearing unnecessary children who serve the Need Machine (life/DNA) needlessly, and this is with all the knowledge and technology we have, in fact the more we had and the more we destroyed to get here.

We are like addicts to the drug of life, too scared of admiting we have to stop spawning other addicts as a mean to an unreachable end. We do not accomplish anything by "creating a need and satisfying it". We do not accomplish anything by creating every problem and solving some of them (or even all of them).

Life is a cancer on this planet. Life is extractive of the natural resources. Name a single life form that leaves the planet “better” than if it had not been there?

Is your preference that Earth be devoid of life? Looks like Mars or Venus? And nothing of consequence exists there?

That’s obviously not what you meant, but it’s the natural extension of your argument.

If you think about it, the planet doesn’t give a shit if we live or die. It is not sentient. Neither does the Sun, nor the Milky Way, or the other galaxies. Whether we live or die, blow the planet up or not, is irrelevant to it all.

Somehow, humanity was given a gift. By God or the universe, but you have to admit that it’s pretty miraculous. And the fact that you and I are debating each other about the merits of humanity’s continued existence over the Internet is pretty wild too. But again, it is insignificant to the overall timeline of the universe.

Given that it’s all meaningless, why not spend your time here giving it meaning? If you believe we are a cancer, why not spend your time ensuring that you are not that cancer?

Furthermore, children are a fantastic way to continue contributing to society’s search for meaning. If you don’t want to have children, to me that indicates that you don’t feel you provide value.

I’m here to tell you that you do. And that you’d probably be a good parent, that would produce a child that also provides value.

Or not. Your decision. :-)

This is a take that I hadn’t really thought about, so thank you for writing this.

You’re welcome. Lots of negative comments and downvoting on my comment, so I’m glad at least one person understood what I was trying to say.

We are just coming out of a pandemic that is not actually over and has wreaked havoc on our health and economy. It’s pretty indisputable that the world and future sucks in a lot of ways right now.

But if the world is going to end (I.e. climate change, WW3, population decline), would you rather go out with a whimper, or your head held high knowing you did your best to build that bright and positive future we all want?

Have no children. Never have them.

Unless you’re wealthy and/or live in an are insulated from the effects, you’re signing kids up for a world that is going to be drastically different and worse due to climate change.

> Have more children. Have them early if possible.

People can't afford to do either.

I know. We need to do better to help everyone with this problem. But I prefer to face these difficulties with an optimistic mindset, rather than resign myself to being powerless against the grim reality.

> Have them early if possible.

Children raising children has got to be one of the biggest jokes that nature plays on us.

> Have more children. Have them early if possible

and condemn them to overcome all the mistakes young parents (and possibly economically challenged parents, with many more mouths to feed) make also due to lack of experience

That's a grim take.

We wouldn't be here if our ancestors didn't face hardship.

Our evolutionary cousins (eg. gazelle) are still being born and hunted on the savannah and many will get eaten alive. I think we've got it pretty good, all things considered.

When I had no money I didn't wish that I'd never been born. My parents didn't have college degrees or loads of resources.

Wishing for an ideal environment to raise children is pretty much a modern invention that doesn't correlate to history and nature.

Life isn't as bad as the news and the zeitgeist keep telling us. People are paid to make us feel this way.

> That's a grim take

reality is grim

> Our evolutionary cousins (eg. gazelle) are still being born and hunted

because they have no choice.

We do.

> When I had no money I didn't wish that I'd never been born

"make a lot of poor kids. They won't wish to never be born"

doesn't sound like good advertisement to me...

> My parents didn't have college degrees or loads of resources

That's why they had a lot of kids.

I am not talking about "reverse darwinism" which is BS, but about the fact that even the gazelle you talked about know that focusing on a few individuals is the key to helping your offspring. They make a lot of them, so that some of them sill survive.

It's very simple logic.

> Wishing for an ideal environment to raise children is pretty much a modern invention that doesn't correlate to history and nature.

We agree on this: you have to be young and reckless to not consider all the things that could go wrong before actually doing them.