The Stats: Asians Hate Raising Kids ... Why?

Simone discusses why Asians reportedly find less joy in parenting compared to other ethnic groups, connecting this to the ultra-low fertility rates in many Asian countries. She delves into specific cultural practices, such as Korea's postpartum spas and elaborate first birthday ceremonies, as well as her and her partner's unique parenting styles. Using statistics and personal anecdotes, the video explores the complex interplay of cultural expectations, parenting joy, and societal pressures in Asian contexts.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, it's Simone. I'm excited to be talking to you today. Today, we are going to be talking about why Asians seem to hate being parents. And the statistics are really clear. Like Asians do not get as much joy for being parents as other ethnic groups. They do not like being around kids as much as other ethnic groups.

They do not find it as rewarding as other ethnic groups. And you see this across Asian groups. And in addition to that. You see, no, you see this correlated heavily, I think, in part with why so many Asian countries have ultra low fertility rates or their level of income. I mean, if you're saying why, why are they so low fertility rate? Well, you know, it might have something to do with them not liking being parents that would obviously affect things.

And this is actually brought to my attention by Simone, which I thought was really interesting. The second thing we're going to dig into is interesting customs focusing on Korea as an example here because it is the lowest fertility of these countries. So we're [00:01:00] going to look at what it feels like to be an average Korean or what Koreans are saying in the polls right now.

And then we're going to go from that to some of the ceremonies that shocked me, these ultra expensive ceremonies that Koreans have to have. Although it's

Simone Collins: telling you about like first birthdays, things like that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, first birthdays, the postpartum. I didn't realize what percent of Koreans went to these like special postpartum spas.

It's like 80 percent or something. It's really hot.

Simone Collins: It's huge. And when one of their proposed pronatalist policies is to provide more coverage for payment for those, because people are like, well, this is so expensive. How can I afford it? But then no one else goes to them. This is a you thing. But whatever.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And Just before we go through all the stats, I'll also get to my explanation for why. So you don't need to, to, to stay and wait and wonder here. Why am I going to say, I think that the genetic thing could be part of it. See our episode is low East Asian fertility genetic.

There is an [00:02:00] evolutionary reason why it may be lower which would also tie to parenting joy.

But the second thing that I think it might be And I think this is probably the bigger thing is I think that we should divide the parenting on an axis, you know, like that political access chart. Oh, every time I hear

Simone Collins: access, I just think hot crazy. It's the only graph I ever think of. Oh, the hot crazy

Malcolm Collins: axis?

Yes, of course. The economic liberal, the you know, the conservative. Ah, yes,

Simone Collins: yes,

Malcolm Collins: yes, yes. So I think all parenting styles fall broadly on an axis of how high touch they are versus how low touch they are. Okay. And how loving they are versus how ruthless they are.

Simone Collins: Oh, so like helicopter to free range, tiger mom to Hippie dad.

Yeah. So,

Malcolm Collins: so, so, if you're talking about the various quadrants, the quadrant that is high touch and ruthless would be tiger mom. Yes.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You [00:03:00] see this in other Asian parenting, high touch, but very loving would be gentle parenting. Low touch, but very loving is a hippie parenting. Oh no, sorry.

Simone Collins: We're wait, we're, we're low touch, but loving.

Malcolm Collins: No, we're low touch, but quite ruthless for a lot of people telling kids that love is something that they have to earn. We don't even do birthday parties for them, Simone. We actually do what they actually

Simone Collins: enjoy because we really love them, which is we do their favorite activity of the day.

And then we take them to a store and they get to get anything they want. That's way better than you don't

Malcolm Collins: allow me to take the kids to store barely ever that on their birthdays. At least I do! Oh, on one day a year, they get to go to a store and choose one item under 15.

Speaker: I know you're not like other females. You like to think about things. You have opinions. Is that a compliment or an accusation? It's a fact!

Malcolm Collins: The point here being, Simone, is compared to [00:04:00] Most other people, and I would even say because I encourage our kids to fight, I encourage them to roughhouse, as you should compare, I, I think many would, people would see us, well, maybe not as aggressive or intentionally cruel as tiger parents.

We do things that are harsher than some of the things that Tiger parents do. So like when I look at my own upbringing. I referenced things like my parents being like, I was like, well, what if I get kicked out of school? Like, what if things get hard for me? And they're like, well, don't come home. I was like, wait, what?

Like, you're my parents. It's supposed to love me unconditionally. And they're like, everybody only loves you conditionally. And I would treat my kids the same way. If they're not, Thriving if they're not living up to their potential as a collins then they don't deserve any support and even tiger moms gives her kids support when they're struggling so it's a but what I was going to argue here before we got very derailed Is I think that the high touch plus high risklessness category of parenting It's very hard to enjoy because you are doing all of the hardest parts of parenting and I think it's the [00:05:00] lowest fertility parent group, whereas I think our parenting group, the ruthless and low touch parenting group is the highest fertility of all the parenting groups because it's, it's both effective and requires very little time, but.

Let's go into this. So if we're talking about just the broad statistics here, like enjoyability, all right while black parents find being a parent enjoyable 39 percent of the time and Hispanics 39 percent of the time as well, Asians is only 13%.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they're not having fun. In whites,

Malcolm Collins: it's 18%. This is by Pew, by the way.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and this is their, their big caveat here was this is only for English speaking Asian parents. It doesn't necessarily speak for parenting in East Asia. But when you look at birth rates in East Asia, you're like, well, I mean

Malcolm Collins: No, actually, remember the study that we looked at? That was how important are various things to you in your life and it compared European countries and East Asian countries and in European countries, like, in the top, like, 3 was [00:06:00] always like family and South Koreans,

Simone Collins: especially put material wealth over.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, no, in fact, of where they rank things, if you look at the countries on earth that rank family the lowest in terms of the satisfaction it gives them, the