Rationally Speaking #144 - Bryan Caplan on "Does parenting matter?"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2015

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

Parents in the United States are spending more time and energy than ever to ensure that their children turn out happy, healthy, and successful. But what does the evidence suggest about the impact of their efforts? Economist Bryan Caplan (and the author of "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids") argues that, despite our intuition that parenting choices affect children's life outcomes, there's strong evidence to the contrary. Bryan and Julia discuss his case, and explore what that means for how people should parent and how many kids they should have.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.6	For more information, please visit us at NYCCEceptics.org.
0:35.6	Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:41.8	I'm your host, Julia Galef, and with me is today's guest, Brian Kaplan.
0:45.9	Brian is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
0:49.1	He's also a blogger for Econlog, and the author of many pieces for The New York Times, the Wall Street
0:55.6	Journal, the Washington Post, and also the author of the books, The Myth of the Rational Voter,
1:01.5	and Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.
1:04.1	Brian, welcome to the show.
1:05.6	Thanks for much for having me.
1:07.0	So today we're going to talk about a counterintuitive message in Brian's more recent book,
1:13.4	Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, as well as extensively on his blog. So the counterintuitive
1:18.4	message is for all the parents out there who are working hard every day to make sure that
1:23.5	their children grow up to be healthy, happy, and successful people. And in short, the
1:28.8	messages, stop trying. Your actions have far less impact on your kids than you think they do.
1:34.3	So today we're going to delve in to what that advice is based on and its implications for how you
1:40.2	should live your life. So, Brian, maybe we could set the stage by talking about why this advice is so counterintuitive.
1:49.5	Parents certainly seem to think that they can affect their children's life outcomes.
1:55.2	You talk a little bit in your book about how the amount of effort that parents put into parenting has gone up over the years.
2:02.5	Could you say a little about that?
2:04.4	Sure, yes. So sociologists have been measuring the way that people spend their time for about 50
2:08.4	years now. And what's quite striking is that if you go and take a look at the 1960s, which is
	...

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