Is 5 Kids Really Easier & Cheaper Than 2?

Where to Live Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tq9rY1TCs49XHckWtzOowYz_xHXFnRpOZq8r0lE5JSQ

Should you have more kids? We discuss the REAL costs of additional children and why it gets dramatically cheaper after the first few. We also cover why private school, travel, restaurants, etc. are overrated for kids. Having a big family forces you to live more reasonably!

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] The incremental cost of each additional kid.

Cause I think people might be really surprised. There was a study done on this and it shows, I think it's like after four, every additional kid costs on average about a thousand dollars a year. So not a lot.

In an article called The Marginal Cost of Children in the New York Times Archive. . By the time you get to kid three, you have fallen from a cost of. around 15, 000 a year for one kid to, well under 3, 000 a year.

And so you can see how you get down to like 1, 000 extra a year, or 800 extra a year when you get like four, kid number five, the costs just drop really dramatically.

Malcolm Collins: And, and the waste that you have when you're having a few kids, keep in mind, you still need to buy all the s**t, you know, whether or not you're having a ton of kids or a few kids.

So, you know, the next time you have a kid, it's no baby toys, it's, it's no, you know, no, no, no toddler toys.

Simone Collins: No new swings, or highchairs, or bibs, or plates, [00:01:00]

Malcolm Collins: or bottles, or sippers, or Every time we buy something for one of our kids, that's being used by like a huge chain of kids after them

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Anyway. Hello, Simone! It is wonderful to talk to you today! So, we did this video on dinks, right? And we're like, dinks are actually good, right? Because They are we don't want these people having kids, they're not going to be good parents, probably not good for the gene pool so, let's march them into their sweet good night all by themselves.

Now, this But we got some

Simone Collins: interesting, we got some interesting comments on that video, and, and one I wanted to do a conversation about.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I see this with other people, right? Like, the core point we made in the Dink video, or one of the points that we made, Is that you know, while we pity dinks, the people we pity more than dinks is people with only one or two kids, because it's all of the cost of kids and none of the real benefits of kids.

Well, you get some, I mean, you get like the, the shallow masturbatory feeling of I have a kid that the dinks don't get and like, you get to experience them and spend time with them, which is nice, but you don't [00:02:00] get like the genetic or cultural effects, right? You know, you're not really. contributing to a solution in a big way.

And, and it's actually harder. We argue like, like, and for us, it's very obviously harder. It is, it is much harder to have fewer kids than more kids.

Simone Collins: Totally. And we're stressful and

Malcolm Collins: way more stressful. And we need to talk about why this is the case. And in many ways, you know, we immediately saw it in the question that they're asking us about this.

It's like, well, I have two kids, but like, I don't know how I'm going to afford.

Simone Collins: I'll read the comments. There were, there were two comments. It sort of inspired this. So one person said, I have two kids, but I think I need to make more money before I go for number three. My mother in law is already very against her daughter having another.

So I was waiting to my economic situation changed to go for, for three. But should I, I know I want three because that's above replacement level. But what are the economics of kid numbers at three, four, five and crazy numbers like 10 and then someone else also answered, I want. More of this conversation to currently have to, but would love for, but don't want to reduce the quality of life for the children.

I [00:03:00] have IE vacations, private school, et cetera. It's just a very interesting conversation. That's the

Malcolm Collins: answer there. And this is, this is why higher numbers of kids become much easier because when you get to the higher number of kids. You realize that a lot of these things that you thought was necessary for your kids quality of life was really more about your own personal vanity than the kids actual Or societal

Simone Collins: decoupling.

Yeah, I think this understanding that private school, for example, is really good for your kids or necessary for your kids, or that, like, vacations where you fly somewhere are good for your kids or necessary for your kids. Like, I remember this, like, your Like you had relatives who were making this huge deal about flying their sons to Italy and how they were going to expose them to so much culture.

And this was going to be so formative for them. And they were all young teens at that age. They were like, yeah, you know, they're old enough to really appreciate it culturally. And they went and like, all they wanted to do [00:04:00] was eat at the hard rock cafe. Yeah. Every freaking day. They're just like, please just let me eat at the hard rock cafe.

Like, I don't really want to be here. Like they were not enjoying it. They didn't get anything out of it. And so this idea to us that like, Oh, well air travel and like really expensive.

Malcolm Collins: Well I think what is important to remember is, was travel is travel became associated with status for a period of time.

Cause of course, you know, if you can afford to travel, you're wealthier, you're higher status. And so people. Use it to affirm for their self, their high status was, I think, out really reflecting on whether or not it's this great beneficial thing to them. We talk about is, and I think that there are specific life stages where travel brings you a great deal of satisfaction.

And unfortunately, these are also your formative stages of life. So they're also when you're likely to be. Yeah, you know, I'd say like late teens through college and then like two years out of college, like that range is when you are in, you know, from an evolutionary standpoint, that's when you're leaving [00:05:00] your family, of course, you're going to be biologically rewarded for engaging in exploratory behavior that is most expanding your, your concept of the world, but also going out and surveying new lands and everything like that, because this is, You know, people who had this instinct to go out and do this during that period of their life would have spread further and had more offspring ultimately than people who didn't.

So it makes sense. This is a hard coded segment of our life. But the problem is that it's also around the age when many people are solidifying their identity. So in the same way that during that age, often people will think that kids are gross. Like when they're a teenager, they have this, like, biological instinct.

Young kids are gross because they're biologically hard coded to as a teenager, not be interested in young kids. You know, they're trying to find a partner and start having kids, right? So they see the young kids is gross and they don't want to be overly involved in child care. That makes perfect sense, right?

But they're building their identity then, and so then they, they work into their identity young kids are growing without realizing that that's like a cycling pre coded genetic thing for [00:06:00] that specific age range. And it's the same with traveling, you know, and travel during that time, you know, like y