I'll throw in some economic concepts (I was a philosophy and economics student) that may illuminate some issues here IMO.
Power laws - the larger the market, the higher the gains for "winning" a contest. Modern knowledge work and global economies, especially in America, have *far* stronger power laws than prior generations, and also compared to smaller countries (like Israel).
The ratio of marginal benefit / marginal cost (for grinding) is *much* higher for those of elite natural talent than for "normies." If you know, either instinctively or based on data, that you're very intellectually gifted, the payoff of studying an extra 20% more is massive. You can "win" the power law tournament, be a millionaire.
Further, given how dating markets work, because you will be so high status, your costs of delaying marriage/children are far lower. Women can freeze their eggs or do surrogates. Men can just marry younger women, who are happy to "marry up" to elite status men.
None of this applies to normies. The payoff of grinding is far lower, and the fertility clock is far more salient. This is why Vivek is so wrong. He's an elite minority, as are many of our children of highly positively selected immigrants. His life strategy may be rational for people like him. It's entirely irrational for most people.
Scale this up - this is why American cultural pluralism outperforms confucian societies like China, even when "asian" minorities perform so well within western countries. "The dose makes the poison" culturally.
Academic grinding does very well in a western society with cultural pluralism. You max on your skills, but others will keep the trains running, getting married, having kids.
Why are China and South Korea having fertility crises? Confucian culture sub-optimally demands academic hunger games to far too many people.
On a separate note, going back to economics. This is all a free-rider problem, and the only solution is one that fixes the "externalities."
No amount of attempts to make parenting "higher status" will fix the fact that having fewer kids improves your status in all of the big games of life. Even mormons are headed toward below replacement. Perhaps slower, but the gravitational force is still there.
The only *real* solution is one that is very hard politically, and therefore hasn't *yet* been tried. A massive reallocation of resources and infrastructure toward parents, who are performing a "public service" not that dissimilar to military service. Far larger than what European countries have tried.
Immigration can plug some gaps, but we're seeing the limits of it with assimilation chaos.
This was a fantastic comment, Jose. I sometimes wonder if people on the right, who clamor so much for meritocracy, really know what they are asking for.
So a few notes about Israel- national healthcare, childcare, mandatory military service, housing assistance. We would have had more children too!!
I am not as well versed as you in many of the details of economics, elites, etc but I can see that it is very very hard to make it economically feasible for all but the rich without 2 incomes.
For a very long time it was seen as controversial at all that everyone should be "taxed" to support many of the kinds of public infrastructure and programs we now take for granted as just part of civilization.
I legitimately think it's going to take a paradigm shift in how we "think" about fertility, families, and nation preservation before we can implement anything close to resolving the "free rider" problem of fertility; that there is always a gravitational pull toward having fewer children (than the prevailing norm) to get a little more education, work a little more hours, improve at whatever the thing is you get money and status from.
It is going to take big money - carrots and sticks. Much more than what Europe throws at it. There will be fighting. It will almost certainly mean a re-thinking of how much "the state" contributes toward retirement and later-life healthcare.
But it's a modern problem that we're going to have to reckon with. A lot of people thought that immigration was an easy fix. It does plug gaps, especially for a diverse society like America, but everyone - *especially* Europe - is realizing there are hard limits to how much immigration you can sustain without assimilation chaos.
Your thoughts on intensive parents *looking* like they care more is spot on. It’s really hard to be a parent who values play and downtime for kids in this culture! I’m writing a book about this, looking at cultural shifts and also interrogating my own motherhood. (My kids are grown.) No matter what you believe, it’s really challenging to disentangle ego from parenthood. But we really need be looking at *kids* and what they need.
The over parenting phenomenon as practiced by normies is interesting because it tends to focus on very specific things like grades, achievement and physical safety while completely ignoring other aspects of growth in children: such as social confidence, practical skills, the use of tech, work ethic, emotional resilience and the idea that one day the kid will too be a mother or a father.
It's truly a dead-end elite paradigm you've described.
Interesting post. The "elites," I suppose live in Manhattan and LA? Bastions of degeneracy. Of course, in our hedonistic culture, you won't see families and children. Honestly, the reason I have children is I actually take being Catholic seriously. Birth control is a mortal sin. You can't make family and downstream children appealing without a revival of true Christianity.
So many good threads tied together here. That series of tweet exchanges was incredible. I suppose not new information for those who follow these kinds of things (like Ivana's work!), but always fascinating nonetheless.
I remember fondly the section in Tim Carney's book Family Unfriendly that discusses Israel. It's wild that the social supports, family-welcoming ethos, and general vibe (status of family) are such that even the secular among them have more children than many religious folks in the western world.
*All that and their shared history and duty toward the continuity of their people, after repeated acts of violence and loss over time. More on Israel here, though this isn't the entire point of your essay. haha https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2024/09/95824/
And yeah, it's an interesting case study for sure. I probably should have incorporated Family Unfriendly here too, but at a certain point there's just so many different threads it turns into chaos haha.
I'll throw in some economic concepts (I was a philosophy and economics student) that may illuminate some issues here IMO.
Power laws - the larger the market, the higher the gains for "winning" a contest. Modern knowledge work and global economies, especially in America, have *far* stronger power laws than prior generations, and also compared to smaller countries (like Israel).
The ratio of marginal benefit / marginal cost (for grinding) is *much* higher for those of elite natural talent than for "normies." If you know, either instinctively or based on data, that you're very intellectually gifted, the payoff of studying an extra 20% more is massive. You can "win" the power law tournament, be a millionaire.
Further, given how dating markets work, because you will be so high status, your costs of delaying marriage/children are far lower. Women can freeze their eggs or do surrogates. Men can just marry younger women, who are happy to "marry up" to elite status men.
None of this applies to normies. The payoff of grinding is far lower, and the fertility clock is far more salient. This is why Vivek is so wrong. He's an elite minority, as are many of our children of highly positively selected immigrants. His life strategy may be rational for people like him. It's entirely irrational for most people.
Scale this up - this is why American cultural pluralism outperforms confucian societies like China, even when "asian" minorities perform so well within western countries. "The dose makes the poison" culturally.
Academic grinding does very well in a western society with cultural pluralism. You max on your skills, but others will keep the trains running, getting married, having kids.
Why are China and South Korea having fertility crises? Confucian culture sub-optimally demands academic hunger games to far too many people.
On a separate note, going back to economics. This is all a free-rider problem, and the only solution is one that fixes the "externalities."
No amount of attempts to make parenting "higher status" will fix the fact that having fewer kids improves your status in all of the big games of life. Even mormons are headed toward below replacement. Perhaps slower, but the gravitational force is still there.
The only *real* solution is one that is very hard politically, and therefore hasn't *yet* been tried. A massive reallocation of resources and infrastructure toward parents, who are performing a "public service" not that dissimilar to military service. Far larger than what European countries have tried.
Immigration can plug some gaps, but we're seeing the limits of it with assimilation chaos.
This was a fantastic comment, Jose. I sometimes wonder if people on the right, who clamor so much for meritocracy, really know what they are asking for.
So a few notes about Israel- national healthcare, childcare, mandatory military service, housing assistance. We would have had more children too!!
I am not as well versed as you in many of the details of economics, elites, etc but I can see that it is very very hard to make it economically feasible for all but the rich without 2 incomes.
For a very long time it was seen as controversial at all that everyone should be "taxed" to support many of the kinds of public infrastructure and programs we now take for granted as just part of civilization.
I legitimately think it's going to take a paradigm shift in how we "think" about fertility, families, and nation preservation before we can implement anything close to resolving the "free rider" problem of fertility; that there is always a gravitational pull toward having fewer children (than the prevailing norm) to get a little more education, work a little more hours, improve at whatever the thing is you get money and status from.
It is going to take big money - carrots and sticks. Much more than what Europe throws at it. There will be fighting. It will almost certainly mean a re-thinking of how much "the state" contributes toward retirement and later-life healthcare.
But it's a modern problem that we're going to have to reckon with. A lot of people thought that immigration was an easy fix. It does plug gaps, especially for a diverse society like America, but everyone - *especially* Europe - is realizing there are hard limits to how much immigration you can sustain without assimilation chaos.
This is all exactly right.
Super fascinating stuff all around here. Jose, any recommendations for further reading on this, esp from an economics perspective?
Your thoughts on intensive parents *looking* like they care more is spot on. It’s really hard to be a parent who values play and downtime for kids in this culture! I’m writing a book about this, looking at cultural shifts and also interrogating my own motherhood. (My kids are grown.) No matter what you believe, it’s really challenging to disentangle ego from parenthood. But we really need be looking at *kids* and what they need.
Happy to find your work!
"it’s really challenging to disentangle ego from parenthood"
love that line, bc yes that rings very true! Keep me updated on the book, when it's done I'll definitely read it!
Great essay! Thank you for elevating homemaker mothers and not using the term “stay at home parent”
Thank you!
Jim, I started out responding to your post, but then ended up writing a Substack post myself on the issue: https://thehomefront.substack.com/p/status-class-divide-and-homemakers
Dropping this interview here, talking about the status factor for parents generally. You'd both probably find it fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRCqzKQorHI
The over parenting phenomenon as practiced by normies is interesting because it tends to focus on very specific things like grades, achievement and physical safety while completely ignoring other aspects of growth in children: such as social confidence, practical skills, the use of tech, work ethic, emotional resilience and the idea that one day the kid will too be a mother or a father.
It's truly a dead-end elite paradigm you've described.
Thanks! And yeah, dead end but hard to resist. Everyday I feel like it's a mental tug of war over how much to intervene with my kids.
How much and in what ways.
Interesting post. The "elites," I suppose live in Manhattan and LA? Bastions of degeneracy. Of course, in our hedonistic culture, you won't see families and children. Honestly, the reason I have children is I actually take being Catholic seriously. Birth control is a mortal sin. You can't make family and downstream children appealing without a revival of true Christianity.
Thanks!
So many good threads tied together here. That series of tweet exchanges was incredible. I suppose not new information for those who follow these kinds of things (like Ivana's work!), but always fascinating nonetheless.
I remember fondly the section in Tim Carney's book Family Unfriendly that discusses Israel. It's wild that the social supports, family-welcoming ethos, and general vibe (status of family) are such that even the secular among them have more children than many religious folks in the western world.
*All that and their shared history and duty toward the continuity of their people, after repeated acts of violence and loss over time. More on Israel here, though this isn't the entire point of your essay. haha https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2024/09/95824/
Thanks for that link!
And yeah, it's an interesting case study for sure. I probably should have incorporated Family Unfriendly here too, but at a certain point there's just so many different threads it turns into chaos haha.