2024-04-25_U.S._Fertility_Rate_Falls_to_Record_Low_How_Can_We_Invest_Money_To_Get_More_Babies
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00:00:30.080 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:31.280 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:32.920 | skills, insights, and encouragement you need
00:00:35.000 | to live a rich and meaningful life now,
00:00:37.200 | while building a plan for financial freedom
00:00:38.600 | in 10 years or less.
00:00:40.160 | My name is Josh Rasheeds.
00:00:41.040 | I am your host.
00:00:41.920 | Today, we begin with an article from Today
00:00:44.640 | in the Wall Street Journal.
00:00:45.680 | Dateline is April 25, 2024.
00:00:49.240 | US fertility rate falls to record low.
00:00:52.960 | Fewer babies were born in the United States in 2023
00:00:56.680 | than any year since 1979.
00:00:59.920 | Here's the first paragraph or two.
00:01:01.640 | American women are giving birth at record low rates.
00:01:05.040 | The total fertility rate fell to 1.62 births per woman
00:01:08.840 | in 2023, a 2% decline from a year earlier.
00:01:13.320 | Federal data released Thursday showed.
00:01:15.200 | It is the lowest rate recorded
00:01:16.600 | since the government began tracking it in the 1930s.
00:01:20.160 | The decline reflects a continuing trend
00:01:21.920 | as American women navigate economic and social challenges
00:01:24.760 | that have prompted some to forego
00:01:26.960 | or delay having children.
00:01:29.240 | A confluence of factors are at play.
00:01:31.160 | American women are having fewer children later in life.
00:01:34.160 | Women are establishing fulfilling careers
00:01:36.040 | and have more access to contraception.
00:01:39.240 | At the same time, young people are also more uncertain
00:01:41.680 | about their futures and spending more of their income
00:01:44.280 | on home ownership, student debt, and childcare.
00:01:47.720 | Some women who wait to have children might have fewer
00:01:50.600 | than they would have otherwise for reasons
00:01:53.160 | including declining fertility.
00:01:56.200 | The actual total number of babies was in 2023,
00:01:59.680 | the United States tracked and registered
00:02:01.560 | 3,591,328 births.
00:02:06.560 | That is 2.1% fewer than in 2022.
00:02:12.360 | And the total fertility rate has declined
00:02:14.680 | to 1.62 children per woman,
00:02:18.520 | down from 1.66 in 2022.
00:02:23.520 | Now, if this is your first time thinking
00:02:26.720 | and talking about fertility rates, then welcome.
00:02:30.200 | Welcome to the conversation.
00:02:31.640 | This conversation is one of the most neglected
00:02:35.440 | in our society, and yet it probably won't stay that way
00:02:39.880 | for very long because this is the issue
00:02:43.960 | that is going to be making the biggest macro impact
00:02:46.800 | in our lives over the coming decades.
00:02:49.240 | The statistics and the data are really, really bad.
00:02:55.520 | And I want to take just a couple of minutes
00:02:58.040 | and talk to you about this.
00:02:59.640 | I've been talking about this
00:03:00.920 | on Radical Personal Finance for a few years,
00:03:03.000 | but it's been my experience that most people, even today,
00:03:05.760 | have no idea how bad things are
00:03:08.880 | and how bad things could get.
00:03:11.920 | Put simply, we today, all around the world,
00:03:15.920 | are below replacement rates,
00:03:18.520 | with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa,
00:03:20.320 | and in many of our societies,
00:03:22.240 | substantially below replacement rates.
00:03:25.320 | And the reality is, simply, we don't have any idea
00:03:28.720 | how low these rates can go.
00:03:31.280 | In every place that we have data,
00:03:33.560 | there is not yet a bottom.
00:03:35.600 | There may be, someday, an actual bottom to the data.
00:03:38.760 | I hope so.
00:03:39.920 | But the reality is, right now,
00:03:41.960 | in wealthy industrial countries all around the world,
00:03:45.240 | we do not know where the bottom is.
00:03:48.160 | Total fertility rates can be as low as,
00:03:50.280 | in Seoul, South Korea,
00:03:51.280 | there's something like 0.54 babies per woman.
00:03:56.000 | Now, let's put this into actual data,
00:03:58.880 | or actual statistics that you can see with your eyes,
00:04:01.160 | and then I want to scare you just a little bit
00:04:03.600 | with the trend line that we are on.
00:04:07.280 | First, demographers, most of us have heard
00:04:09.520 | that you need an average of about 2.1 babies per woman
00:04:13.320 | in order to have a steady, stable population.
00:04:16.400 | The 2.1 basically involves a man and a woman
00:04:19.640 | replacing themselves with about a 0.1%,
00:04:23.240 | not percent, but 2.1 relates to the margin of error
00:04:27.320 | for loss of life early in childhood,
00:04:30.280 | babies lost, things like that.
00:04:32.200 | So you need 2.1 babies per woman.
00:04:34.240 | Let's make it simpler and say it's two babies per woman,
00:04:37.960 | just simply to replace ourselves as a population.
00:04:41.840 | I want you now to stop
00:04:43.240 | and to think about your reference group,
00:04:45.880 | the peers that you have,
00:04:46.960 | the community that you're involved in,
00:04:48.800 | co-workers, neighbors, friends, social groups,
00:04:52.080 | community groups that you're a part of,
00:04:53.800 | your church, your local parent-teacher association,
00:04:58.120 | whatever it is that you're involved in.
00:05:00.520 | I want you to think about every woman that you know.
00:05:03.600 | In order for the population of your peer group to be steady,
00:05:08.120 | every single woman that you know has to have
00:05:12.240 | at least two children.
00:05:14.400 | Every woman you know has to have at least two children
00:05:20.360 | to maintain population.
00:05:22.840 | Now, many of us know many people who don't have two children,
00:05:26.720 | who have fewer or none at all.
00:05:28.360 | So for every woman you know who has one child
00:05:31.160 | throughout her lifetime,
00:05:32.800 | you should know another woman who has three
00:05:36.880 | to match them up.
00:05:39.040 | For every woman you know who has zero children,
00:05:42.520 | you should know at least one other woman
00:05:44.360 | who has four or more.
00:05:46.560 | And I think if you'll stop and you'll think about
00:05:50.360 | your family, your extended family, people that you know,
00:05:53.160 | you'll quickly realize that your community
00:05:55.560 | is probably below replacement rate,
00:05:57.960 | and in some cases, substantially below.
00:06:00.680 | Because when we think about the women that we know,
00:06:03.720 | for most of us, the averages are substantially below that.
00:06:07.160 | Now, here's what's even more scary.
00:06:08.960 | The rate of decline of these fertility rates
00:06:15.120 | doesn't have currently a bottom.
00:06:18.840 | I heard an analyst the other day give this statistic.
00:06:22.120 | He said, if you look at the rate of fertility decline
00:06:24.640 | in the United States between the year 2010 and 2020,
00:06:29.640 | and you extrapolate or project that rate of decline
00:06:33.400 | continuing going forward,
00:06:35.480 | and if you assume that there's one generation
00:06:38.600 | every 30 years, what that means is that in the future,
00:06:43.600 | under those assumptions, for every 100 Americans
00:06:47.080 | that are alive today,
00:06:49.280 | you would have 4.3 great-grandchildren.
00:06:55.280 | So a population of 100 Americans who are alive today
00:07:01.720 | will have 4.3 great-grandchildren
00:07:05.360 | if our society-wide population decline continues.
00:07:10.360 | Most people are unaware of the fact
00:07:13.520 | that virtually all of the world,
00:07:16.660 | for example, all of the Americas,
00:07:18.280 | North America, Central America, South America,
00:07:20.320 | the Caribbean, all of the Americas
00:07:22.800 | are under replacement rate.
00:07:25.160 | Most of the big countries of the world,
00:07:26.960 | China, far below replacement rate.
00:07:29.480 | India, now below replacement rate.
00:07:32.440 | Basically, the countries that are at or above
00:07:37.440 | replacement rate are pretty much all found
00:07:40.440 | in Sub-Saharan Africa.
00:07:41.840 | That's it.
00:07:44.000 | All of the rest of our societies are all in decline,
00:07:47.800 | and the rate of decline is varying.
00:07:50.480 | The worst rates of decline are centralized on megacities,
00:07:55.080 | especially megacities in Asia.
00:07:57.200 | Like I said, I think that in the last year,
00:08:00.840 | the South Korean total fertility rate for the city of Seoul,
00:08:03.920 | not for all of Korea, but for the city of Seoul,
00:08:06.240 | which is, of course, the largest city,
00:08:08.400 | was a double-digit decline year over year
00:08:11.000 | to something like a 0.54 total fertility rate.
00:08:16.000 | This is going to be the issue for the coming decades.
00:08:19.520 | It's going to affect every area of your life and my life,
00:08:23.780 | all of our governmental systems,
00:08:25.560 | all of our welfare state systems,
00:08:28.120 | all of our economic growth projections.
00:08:30.240 | It's all going to be driven by demographics.
00:08:34.640 | And while we don't know what that's gonna look like,
00:08:37.120 | 'cause after all, the numbers could change,
00:08:39.280 | the reality is that we don't see
00:08:43.200 | any evidence of them changing yet.
00:08:46.160 | The problem is most people are not clued into this
00:08:48.280 | for two reasons.
00:08:49.120 | Number one, there's been a strong campaign
00:08:51.840 | for at least 50 years, a strong propaganda campaign
00:08:55.240 | that has been almost entirely anti-natal, anti-children.
00:09:00.240 | The most famous, of course, was Paul Ehrlich's book,
00:09:03.600 | "The Population Bomb," in which he predicted global famine
00:09:07.820 | and disease and poverty due to too many people.
00:09:11.040 | And that's become basically the zeitgeist of our time,
00:09:14.040 | that idea that the world has too many people
00:09:16.000 | and it's gotta change.
00:09:18.120 | Most people are decades behind the demographic reality
00:09:21.400 | that we're living in today.
00:09:22.800 | And it's understandable, however,
00:09:25.000 | why they are, because while birth rates are low
00:09:28.240 | and heading lower all around the world,
00:09:30.920 | total population is high and continuing to increase
00:09:34.340 | for, I think, about a decade at least.
00:09:37.080 | The problem is that that increase in population size
00:09:40.280 | on a global basis is not coming from the fact
00:09:42.760 | that we're having more babies.
00:09:44.300 | On the contrary, it's due to extending lifespans
00:09:47.940 | for old people.
00:09:49.120 | And so our world is getting bigger and bigger
00:09:52.720 | in terms of population with more and more old people,
00:09:55.520 | but we're not having babies.
00:09:56.760 | And here's the problem.
00:09:57.600 | We've been not having babies for a very long time.
00:10:00.560 | And so not only in many countries
00:10:02.340 | do we not have babies today,
00:10:04.560 | we don't have even enough women of baby-bearing age
00:10:08.280 | to have babies.
00:10:10.680 | And we don't have enough children, enough young girls,
00:10:14.080 | teenage girls, who are going to be able to even have babies
00:10:18.320 | to replace ourselves in most cases.
00:10:20.880 | And so many countries of the world
00:10:22.480 | are already in a demographic winter
00:10:24.280 | and there's no solution apparent for it.
00:10:28.040 | Governments all around the world
00:10:29.200 | are trying solutions of various kinds
00:10:31.280 | to try to stem the tide and change the numbers,
00:10:34.160 | but so far there is not a single sustained
00:10:37.400 | and enduring success story that we can point to
00:10:40.300 | of a wealthy industrialized country
00:10:43.320 | being able to change demographics.
00:10:45.640 | I'd like to do my best to start a conversation
00:10:49.480 | here at Radical Personal Finance.
00:10:51.400 | And while it's unlikely that you or I
00:10:54.040 | can change the demographics of our country,
00:10:56.840 | probably or possibly we can start to change
00:11:00.800 | the demographics of our community.
00:11:03.280 | And perhaps we can have some rippling influence
00:11:07.800 | that would result in us having more babies
00:11:09.840 | within our own communities, within our own societies.
00:11:12.960 | At the very least,
00:11:14.040 | I hope that we can make this change within our own families,
00:11:18.680 | within our own children, grandchildren,
00:11:20.640 | and on down the road.
00:11:22.080 | And I wanna talk today about how we can invest money
00:11:25.360 | into making that happen.
00:11:28.280 | There's tremendous paradox with regard to money.
00:11:31.400 | The reality is most of us don't value money itself,
00:11:37.520 | but what we value is what money is good for,
00:11:43.360 | what money can buy for us.
00:11:46.700 | The problem is that money itself
00:11:49.680 | is what is easily measured.
00:11:51.120 | Because money is expressed in financial terms
00:11:55.800 | and we have a clear understanding of how much we have,
00:11:59.240 | what the current amount of it is,
00:12:01.580 | then we can manage it very effectively.
00:12:04.380 | Peter Drucker famously said
00:12:05.900 | that what gets measured gets managed.
00:12:09.280 | And I think that's true, what gets measured gets managed.
00:12:11.640 | And we live in today in a modern world
00:12:13.940 | in which we can measure money and wealth
00:12:17.080 | very, very effectively,
00:12:18.280 | more effectively than at any time in human history.
00:12:20.720 | Go back 500 years and imagine you're some great,
00:12:23.960 | wealthy Lord of the manor, wealthy Lord of the estate.
00:12:27.800 | You've got a great castle, you've got lands,
00:12:30.000 | you've got all of this wealth.
00:12:31.500 | Would you be able to actually measure your wealth?
00:12:35.720 | If we could just judge by Jane Austen's writings
00:12:39.440 | more recently than 500 years ago,
00:12:41.720 | about the best that a man could do to measure his wealth
00:12:44.060 | would be to measure his income,
00:12:45.820 | how much income his estate could provide for him.
00:12:48.140 | And that's a useful measurement because income is spendable.
00:12:51.100 | But the actual value of the estate, the net worth,
00:12:54.280 | what we today in accounting terms
00:12:55.700 | would call a man's net worth, was very hard to measure.
00:12:59.340 | You couldn't do back then what you can do today
00:13:01.300 | with your fancy estate and go on Zillow and get a Zestimate
00:13:05.500 | telling you with pretty decent accuracy what it's worth,
00:13:07.820 | what you could sell it for today.
00:13:09.860 | You couldn't have all of your investments
00:13:11.620 | and all of your companies marked to the market
00:13:13.420 | with a specific monetary value on a daily basis.
00:13:17.520 | Back then you just had a rough estimate of,
00:13:20.900 | am I wealthy or not?
00:13:22.380 | Today, we can know the exact dollar figure
00:13:25.820 | that represents wealth.
00:13:26.740 | The problem is, is that the only thing that matters?
00:13:30.400 | It's pretty obvious that the goal of a man's life
00:13:35.380 | should not be when he lays his head in his casket
00:13:38.460 | to have the most zeros behind his net worth figure
00:13:42.500 | that his accountant draws up for his final tax returns.
00:13:45.340 | That's a pretty stupid measurement of a life.
00:13:47.640 | But because it's easily measurable,
00:13:51.000 | that's what we tend to optimize for.
00:13:53.220 | I have a personal hobby of trying to come up
00:13:54.920 | with other forms of optimization,
00:13:57.460 | other things that we could measure
00:13:59.940 | that would indicate more useful metrics
00:14:03.240 | of life satisfaction, some version of a happiness score.
00:14:07.160 | Now you might do that on a daily basis
00:14:08.800 | by tracking your emotions with some app.
00:14:11.480 | You might do that by tracking the number of minutes
00:14:13.820 | that you spend in leisure time,
00:14:15.620 | or the number of books that you read,
00:14:17.000 | or the number of widgets that you produce
00:14:19.880 | with your hobby of making stuff,
00:14:22.360 | the number of dates that you go on with your spouse,
00:14:24.720 | or the hours that you visit with your parents,
00:14:28.000 | or the number of children's games that you attend.
00:14:30.800 | One of my personal metrics
00:14:32.000 | that is kind of interesting and informal
00:14:34.200 | is I optimize for the fatness
00:14:37.280 | of my children's annual photo books.
00:14:40.120 | My wife makes for each of our children each year
00:14:42.960 | a photo book containing basically the adventures
00:14:45.760 | that that child has gone through
00:14:47.840 | in this year with our family.
00:14:49.720 | The interesting thing about taking pictures
00:14:51.280 | is that ordinarily we don't take pictures
00:14:53.060 | of the day-to-day commonplace happenings of our life,
00:14:57.200 | the humdrum events of life.
00:14:59.080 | I didn't walk into the office today
00:15:01.220 | and take a picture of my microphone as I began a podcast.
00:15:05.120 | But we take pictures of things
00:15:07.160 | that are out of the ordinary.
00:15:08.840 | So they don't have to be too out of the ordinary.
00:15:11.800 | I might just go to the park and buy a kite today
00:15:14.240 | and take my children to the park and fly a kite,
00:15:15.940 | but that's worthy of taking pictures.
00:15:17.280 | That's a moment that can be captured in time,
00:15:19.320 | and it's worthy of taking pictures.
00:15:20.720 | So what we do is we get all of our pictures together
00:15:23.520 | from the year, and then each year my wife makes a photo book.
00:15:25.720 | And some photo books are rather slender and lean.
00:15:28.400 | Some photo books are rather fat.
00:15:30.560 | And I like the fat ones because it tells me,
00:15:32.880 | hey, there was enough texture and variety in this past year
00:15:37.360 | to make for a really interesting photo book for my children.
00:15:40.320 | And it's my hope that with those nice fat books,
00:15:42.720 | they'll have more pictures that they can go back
00:15:44.280 | and look at and enjoy and appreciate and recognize that,
00:15:47.000 | hey, this was a really great adventurous year
00:15:48.980 | that I had with my family.
00:15:50.280 | But that's not the only metric
00:15:53.560 | that perhaps we should consider.
00:15:55.700 | There are many others.
00:15:57.360 | Here's one I would like to offer
00:15:59.520 | that I think is a reasonable metric
00:16:03.080 | by which to judge your success.
00:16:06.000 | Not for everybody, but it's a reasonable one.
00:16:09.380 | How many great-grandchildren will you have?
00:16:15.560 | - I wanted to make sure my kids were ready
00:16:17.480 | for the new school year and felt confident in class.
00:16:20.340 | That's why we joined IXL,
00:16:22.400 | the award-winning online learning program
00:16:24.520 | so many other parents recommended to us.
00:16:27.160 | On IXL, my kids can practice
00:16:29.520 | everything they're learning in school,
00:16:31.280 | including math, language arts, science, and more.
00:16:35.280 | They get detailed explanations of every concept,
00:16:38.200 | plus positive feedback and motivating awards
00:16:40.760 | as they master new challenges.
00:16:43.160 | As a parent, I am amazed by how IXL always adjusts
00:16:47.460 | to the right level of difficulty for each of my kids.
00:16:50.640 | It even recommends specific skills for them to practice,
00:16:53.960 | helping them build the foundations they need
00:16:56.240 | and get ahead when they're ready.
00:16:58.280 | And with the IXL app,
00:16:59.960 | my kids can keep learning on any device,
00:17:02.520 | anytime, anywhere.
00:17:04.560 | If you're looking for a fun and effective way
00:17:06.800 | to give your kids a little extra boost this school year,
00:17:09.920 | you have to join IXL.
00:17:12.240 | Visit ixl.com today to get started.
00:17:15.340 | - Have you ever thought about it?
00:17:18.520 | How many great-grandchildren will you have?
00:17:22.040 | Now, chances are decent
00:17:24.440 | that you probably will never meet them all.
00:17:26.680 | But ideally, throughout your life,
00:17:28.360 | you should see some indications
00:17:30.040 | of the trajectory that you're on.
00:17:32.560 | And I think that's a pretty interesting metric
00:17:34.580 | for us to consider.
00:17:35.760 | How many great-grandchildren
00:17:38.680 | you have
00:17:41.240 | is a reasonable life goal.
00:17:44.200 | And what I like about this life goal
00:17:46.160 | is it's a very positive life goal
00:17:49.280 | that cannot be coerced.
00:17:52.320 | I don't like goals of coercion.
00:17:53.960 | I don't like things that you can force people to do
00:17:56.800 | 'cause you can bend the world to you in some way.
00:17:59.800 | I like goals that require you to grow as an individual,
00:18:02.400 | me to grow as an individual.
00:18:04.440 | And if I desire to have a significant number
00:18:07.600 | of great-grandchildren who have issued from my loins,
00:18:10.840 | then I need to be the kind of guy
00:18:12.520 | who builds a family culture
00:18:14.800 | and where that is possible.
00:18:18.180 | After all,
00:18:19.680 | I can't
00:18:20.520 | coerce the number of children
00:18:23.840 | that I have.
00:18:25.080 | I could do my best to plan for them,
00:18:26.460 | but I can't force it.
00:18:27.720 | Some events of having children are outside of my hands,
00:18:31.120 | outside of your hands, no matter who we are.
00:18:33.720 | But let's assume that I am able to have children.
00:18:37.480 | If I'm able to have children,
00:18:39.080 | I can't coerce my children to have children.
00:18:42.600 | I have to inspire them to have children.
00:18:46.660 | And even if I could coerce my wife to have children,
00:18:50.400 | which I can't,
00:18:51.480 | and even if I could coerce my children to have children,
00:18:53.960 | which I can't,
00:18:55.000 | I certainly could not coerce my grandchildren
00:18:58.980 | to have children.
00:19:00.040 | But what I can do is I can focus on investing into my family,
00:19:05.960 | inspiring and encouraging and leading my wife,
00:19:11.240 | inspiring my children,
00:19:12.760 | giving them a vision and facilitating their family formation
00:19:16.400 | and then building a culture
00:19:17.760 | that ideally would pass down through the ages
00:19:21.000 | where my children would go beyond me
00:19:22.520 | and their children beyond them and so on down through the ages
00:19:26.100 | to the level of my great-grandchildren.
00:19:28.080 | And I would have to do with all of that
00:19:30.880 | by inspiration and leadership
00:19:33.140 | rather than by coercion or manipulation.
00:19:35.920 | Now, here's what's interesting.
00:19:39.480 | If you put numbers to this,
00:19:41.960 | then it can make it measurable.
00:19:44.640 | And I don't know that this is a great thing
00:19:46.600 | to put numbers to,
00:19:47.480 | but it's interesting to put numbers to non-financial goals
00:19:51.840 | and see how the math works out.
00:19:53.360 | So let's assume that a guy like me,
00:19:55.880 | let's assume that I have an ambition
00:19:58.120 | to have 100 great-grandchildren.
00:20:01.920 | Round number, 100 sounds like a lot to me.
00:20:04.540 | What would be necessary for me
00:20:07.440 | to have 100 great-grandchildren?
00:20:10.840 | Well, at the moment I have five children.
00:20:14.880 | Now, I can calculate the total fertility rate
00:20:18.380 | that would be needed in my own family
00:20:20.960 | in order for me to have that number of great-grandchildren.
00:20:25.640 | It's pretty simple to calculate.
00:20:27.120 | And I've done the math.
00:20:28.320 | I won't drag you through the whole formula for it,
00:20:31.680 | but in essence, basically it's an exponential formula
00:20:36.680 | that starts with the current number of children that I have.
00:20:41.680 | If each of my children and each of their children
00:20:45.760 | had on average 4.47 children,
00:20:50.280 | total fertility rate of 4.47 children,
00:20:53.280 | then the math would work out
00:20:54.760 | that I would have 100 great-grandchildren.
00:20:56.920 | I have five children.
00:20:58.280 | If they averaged across those five children,
00:21:00.400 | again, four and a half children each,
00:21:01.680 | some have three, one has seven,
00:21:03.320 | one has five, one has six, et cetera,
00:21:05.600 | then it would work out to four,
00:21:07.220 | if it worked out to 4.47.
00:21:08.800 | And if that continued on through my grandchildren,
00:21:12.080 | then I would have 100 great-grandchildren.
00:21:15.200 | It's a rather interesting thought experiment to go through.
00:21:18.360 | The interesting thing about that number
00:21:20.200 | is that I think that's a very feasible number.
00:21:23.080 | I already have five children, so it's easier for me.
00:21:24.960 | If I had six or seven,
00:21:26.120 | then it would be a lower number needed
00:21:28.520 | to arrive at that 100 mark.
00:21:30.960 | But the most important thing would be
00:21:32.640 | how could I help my children to have enough children?
00:21:36.280 | By the way, in today's world,
00:21:38.740 | this goal is, I've never heard a motivational speaker
00:21:43.000 | say that this is a goal that anybody should set.
00:21:45.720 | I've listened to a lot of motivational speakers.
00:21:47.920 | I've read a lot of books
00:21:48.760 | where people talked about net worth goals
00:21:50.240 | and things that you should be focusing on
00:21:52.760 | in terms of your net worth
00:21:53.800 | and how much money you need for retirement.
00:21:55.520 | I've never heard somebody say,
00:21:57.360 | you should have a goal for how many grandchildren you have
00:21:59.400 | or how many great-grandchildren you have.
00:22:01.480 | But although this is unusual in today's world,
00:22:04.660 | I don't believe that it's unusual throughout human history.
00:22:07.720 | If you go and you spend time reading through ancient texts,
00:22:10.440 | you will find that the ambition
00:22:12.520 | that many men and women had was to have many descendants.
00:22:17.220 | The wealthiest and most powerful throughout human history
00:22:20.500 | have often had many descendants.
00:22:22.680 | And the promise of having many descendants
00:22:26.860 | was an inspiring promise
00:22:29.820 | for many men of renown throughout history.
00:22:32.060 | I don't have the pride and arrogance
00:22:35.420 | to somehow believe that the last century
00:22:40.020 | that has indoctrinated you and me with an antinatal mindset
00:22:44.860 | should somehow be more important
00:22:46.820 | than the multiple millennia
00:22:48.700 | of which we have recorded human history
00:22:50.420 | that has a different mindset.
00:22:52.060 | And I would encourage you to think about your goals
00:22:53.860 | and recognize that there's wisdom
00:22:56.540 | in the ambitions of our forebears.
00:22:58.700 | So consider it.
00:23:01.720 | What's so interesting also, quick note on this,
00:23:03.720 | 'cause I did the calculations, I thought it'd be fun.
00:23:06.060 | What's interesting is, with every,
00:23:08.740 | because fecundity or total fertility rate
00:23:13.260 | is something that can be changed
00:23:15.700 | and is an exponential factor,
00:23:19.480 | the numbers can change massively with just a small amount.
00:23:22.520 | I should spend probably another 30 minutes
00:23:26.220 | scaring you with the statistics on the negative side.
00:23:28.940 | I'm choosing not to do that,
00:23:30.480 | but there are resources you can go and look for
00:23:33.040 | that would shock you
00:23:34.380 | with how scary this population decline is.
00:23:38.120 | I don't like to use the word collapse,
00:23:40.420 | generally speaking,
00:23:41.260 | because it's a word that's fraught with emotion.
00:23:44.420 | However, this is an area in which it is proper
00:23:48.800 | to talk about population collapse.
00:23:51.200 | I often wanna be a little bit more soft-spoken in my words
00:23:56.540 | and I talk about population decline,
00:23:58.340 | but it's proper to use the word collapse in this
00:24:02.420 | because the exponential effects of population growth
00:24:06.520 | can be amazing on the positive side
00:24:09.680 | and they can be amazing or shocking on the negative side
00:24:13.940 | with how quickly a population can absolutely collapse.
00:24:16.820 | It's really remarkable.
00:24:18.260 | So here are just my numbers.
00:24:20.360 | So I told you I have five children,
00:24:22.340 | and if I had a goal of having 100 great-grandchildren,
00:24:25.420 | then that would require a total fertility rate
00:24:27.860 | of 4.47 children per child of mine
00:24:32.860 | to have 100 great-grandchildren.
00:24:36.100 | Now, the reason I mentioned that number
00:24:37.340 | is that that's a significant number,
00:24:39.540 | but it's not out of sight.
00:24:40.860 | I'm not trying to say that somehow my children
00:24:42.380 | should have 18 children each.
00:24:44.540 | The goal is not just to have as many children as possible,
00:24:47.000 | but I'm the youngest of seven.
00:24:48.700 | I have five children.
00:24:50.300 | I don't think that 4.47
00:24:52.020 | is an unreasonable total fertility rate.
00:24:54.500 | I would say that in my social circle,
00:24:56.720 | having four children is pretty average.
00:24:59.300 | That there are, I know I have a handful of friends
00:25:01.300 | who have two or three.
00:25:02.500 | I don't have many friends in my social circle
00:25:04.940 | who don't wind up having any,
00:25:06.580 | but then I know various ones who have six or seven,
00:25:08.740 | and so four is a pretty average.
00:25:10.420 | Four is kind of the number that is the median,
00:25:15.420 | the most common number among people in my circle.
00:25:20.500 | But here's what's interesting.
00:25:23.580 | Let's assume that I wanted to have
00:25:27.160 | 200 great-grandchildren.
00:25:29.560 | Check this out.
00:25:31.720 | Let's assume that I wanted to have
00:25:32.560 | 200 great-grandchildren,
00:25:33.960 | and I assumed that I could get the total fertility rate
00:25:37.280 | of my lineage down to up to five,
00:25:40.280 | an average of five across the population.
00:25:43.660 | How many children would I need to have?
00:25:45.520 | The answer, by the way, is not that many.
00:25:47.420 | It's eight.
00:25:48.480 | If I had eight children,
00:25:49.640 | and then my children went on
00:25:51.480 | to have a total fertility rate of five across,
00:25:53.720 | there might be 200 great-grandchildren.
00:25:56.320 | Now, if I have four, you can do the math yourself.
00:25:58.640 | It's kind of fun to run the math
00:25:59.860 | and just see how small impacts,
00:26:02.960 | when they're exponential, can make a difference.
00:26:04.560 | But the point I was making with 4.47
00:26:06.320 | is that's about double the self-reported
00:26:09.440 | total fertility rate that women in the United States
00:26:12.400 | seem to say that they want to have.
00:26:14.920 | So the number of children
00:26:18.160 | that women in the United States want to have,
00:26:20.040 | depending on the data that we look at,
00:26:21.400 | is between two and three children per woman,
00:26:24.000 | a total fertility rate.
00:26:25.280 | That includes the people who want four, that includes zero.
00:26:28.080 | But the total fertility rate that women desire to have
00:26:31.400 | on self-reported surveys seems to be between two to three.
00:26:35.120 | The current total fertility rate in the United States
00:26:37.060 | is down at that 1.62 number as of the most recent data.
00:26:42.060 | So if we were to change this,
00:26:44.880 | we would have to create a different culture,
00:26:47.480 | and we would have to create
00:26:49.160 | a significantly different environment,
00:26:52.680 | and we would have to solve the problems
00:26:55.440 | that are causing people to not even have the number of,
00:26:59.340 | causing women to not even have the number of children
00:27:01.240 | they say they want,
00:27:02.260 | or to even actually want to have more.
00:27:07.800 | And I find this a fascinating thought experiment,
00:27:11.040 | and I think this is, I hope this is worthy of your time.
00:27:13.840 | So let's talk about the different steps
00:27:15.600 | and talk about ideas as to how we could potentially
00:27:20.000 | invest money into your great-grandchildren.
00:27:25.000 | And recognize that all of this,
00:27:27.160 | I'm repeating this for the third time,
00:27:28.480 | 'cause I really want you to get it clear.
00:27:30.000 | All of this has to come from a positive,
00:27:32.360 | inspirational perspective of leadership.
00:27:35.240 | You cannot coerce or manipulate.
00:27:37.860 | Maybe you could manipulate something,
00:27:40.280 | you could establish an enormous trust fund
00:27:42.520 | and require that the disbursements from the trust fund
00:27:46.240 | are based upon certain number of children.
00:27:48.640 | I don't think that's smart.
00:27:49.720 | I think that our, at least 80% of our focus
00:27:52.840 | should be on the positive things that we could do
00:27:54.640 | to inspire within our own family,
00:27:57.880 | and then to facilitate using money
00:28:00.400 | whenever anything possible
00:28:01.640 | to help our children to have children.
00:28:04.060 | So let's talk through the process
00:28:05.680 | of your great-grandchildren.
00:28:08.000 | The first initial barrier for many of my listeners
00:28:12.240 | to having great-grandchildren
00:28:13.840 | is for you to find someone with whom you can procreate.
00:28:18.060 | And this is astonishingly difficult today.
00:28:22.360 | I grant the difficulty of this.
00:28:25.240 | There are legions of young men and young women
00:28:27.460 | who desire to marry, desire to have children,
00:28:31.000 | and who, at least so far, have been unable to find
00:28:34.440 | a suitable spouse with whom they can procreate.
00:28:40.400 | I have some ideas that I think will help with this.
00:28:42.360 | I'll deal with that in a separate podcast episode.
00:28:44.960 | I'll share, you can gain a few ideas from this episode,
00:28:48.220 | but we do need to fix this.
00:28:49.820 | Right now, in 2024, relationship formation
00:28:52.400 | among young people is not working
00:28:54.440 | the way that it should be working,
00:28:55.760 | and it's not working the way that it used to work.
00:28:58.600 | Young people are not marrying
00:29:00.400 | at the rates that they formerly did.
00:29:02.400 | Young people are not coupling up
00:29:04.920 | at rates that they formerly did.
00:29:06.600 | Young people are not having sex
00:29:08.600 | at the rates that they formerly did.
00:29:10.600 | Now, for above-average men and women,
00:29:12.600 | women and men who are highly attractive,
00:29:15.200 | then those numbers are not so bad.
00:29:18.060 | But we can't just focus as a society
00:29:20.220 | on the top 10% of men and the top 10% of women.
00:29:23.440 | We need to build a society that works for most people.
00:29:27.240 | And this can be really, really difficult.
00:29:29.760 | I think where I really started thinking about this
00:29:31.820 | was a number of years ago,
00:29:33.600 | when I was doing private consulting work with clients.
00:29:37.000 | I ended up having two separate women,
00:29:39.880 | unrelated to each other,
00:29:41.500 | who both hired me as a financial consultant,
00:29:45.400 | and both of them had chosen to procreate
00:29:49.720 | without a relationship with a man.
00:29:53.060 | Both of these women, as far as I could tell,
00:29:57.880 | seemed like wonderful, attractive women,
00:30:00.960 | physically attractive, they were highly accomplished,
00:30:03.560 | career-driven, they did well.
00:30:05.840 | I, of course, didn't spend enough time with them
00:30:08.200 | to make a deep assessment of their personalities,
00:30:10.480 | but they just seemed like lovely, attractive women to me.
00:30:13.380 | And those two women,
00:30:14.880 | neither of them had been able to find a suitable man
00:30:18.040 | that they wanted to spend their lives with.
00:30:20.280 | And so, as single women,
00:30:22.280 | they had both conceived and born children,
00:30:25.920 | planning for a lifetime of single motherhood.
00:30:28.640 | I thought, is there any worse indictment of a society
00:30:31.800 | where a woman who seems attractive and everything like that
00:30:36.800 | isn't able to choose a man who's working for her?
00:30:40.540 | And we all know lots of men who've not been able to,
00:30:43.160 | normally men don't go and intentionally choose
00:30:46.240 | to procreate without a woman involved,
00:30:49.480 | but maybe their stories are out there.
00:30:51.360 | But it just was pretty eye-opening to me
00:30:53.460 | of how difficult things are.
00:30:54.560 | So we need to be really working on changing these things.
00:30:58.460 | But that is a significant barrier,
00:31:00.400 | is simply for you finding someone
00:31:02.400 | with whom you can procreate.
00:31:04.400 | Now, the next barrier for you
00:31:06.200 | to have many great-grandchildren,
00:31:08.020 | for you to have a hundred great-grandchildren,
00:31:10.440 | is for you to have children.
00:31:12.320 | And there are a few things that you need to think about here
00:31:14.840 | in your own thoughts.
00:31:16.880 | Most of the financial considerations I'm gonna talk about
00:31:19.120 | in the context of your children and their children,
00:31:22.720 | but there are some basic things
00:31:24.560 | that you need to think about.
00:31:26.760 | If you've been able to build a relationship with someone
00:31:29.840 | with whom you desire to procreate,
00:31:31.680 | you need to solve fertility problems.
00:31:34.680 | And there are a variety of levels of fertility problems.
00:31:39.040 | The first level is just simply basic biological fertility.
00:31:42.880 | A man's biological ability to reproduce
00:31:45.680 | and a woman's biological ability to reproduce.
00:31:50.240 | Right now, for men of my generation,
00:31:53.280 | our sperm count is,
00:31:54.720 | if I understand what is reported properly,
00:31:57.360 | something like half of the sperm count
00:32:00.080 | of my father's generation.
00:32:03.080 | It is, excuse me, testosterone levels.
00:32:06.160 | Our testosterone levels are half
00:32:08.240 | of what the testosterone levels
00:32:09.480 | of my father's generation was.
00:32:12.680 | So sperm count, but more importantly,
00:32:14.640 | testosterone is in shockingly bad shape.
00:32:17.760 | And so there's a whole area of exploration
00:32:20.000 | that men need to be exploring to maintain high testosterone
00:32:24.680 | and to maintain high sperm count.
00:32:26.920 | There are a lot of things that you can do.
00:32:28.960 | Endocrine disruptors are probably a big issue.
00:32:31.480 | You need to keep your genitals cool.
00:32:33.760 | So anytime I see a guy sitting there
00:32:35.320 | with his laptop on his lap, I plead with him,
00:32:39.080 | "Please, don't do that."
00:32:40.800 | There's all kinds of factors that need to be factored in,
00:32:43.200 | but you need to get your testosterone checked
00:32:45.760 | and you need to increase your testosterone,
00:32:48.560 | if at all possible,
00:32:49.720 | with whatever the appropriate medical help is.
00:32:52.560 | Many women today have basic problems
00:32:55.300 | with biological fertility as well.
00:32:57.700 | I'm not as knowledgeable in that area,
00:33:00.760 | but it is across our society,
00:33:03.120 | just basic biological fertility
00:33:04.760 | is something that has to be controlled for.
00:33:06.640 | And if you desire to procreate and you desire to reproduce,
00:33:10.360 | then that needs to be a consideration.
00:33:12.740 | When I was younger, before I was married,
00:33:14.560 | people would make jokes, usually about a woman,
00:33:17.240 | and they would say, "Oh, she's a woman
00:33:18.480 | "with good childbearing hips."
00:33:20.400 | That was the joke.
00:33:21.560 | And when I was young and in college,
00:33:23.440 | I dismissed that as sexist, offensive sexist language,
00:33:27.580 | basically like, "Why would you say something like that?
00:33:30.400 | "Why could you do that?
00:33:31.220 | "That doesn't sound nice."
00:33:32.140 | I never said I was going out in the world
00:33:34.220 | looking for a woman with good childbearing hips.
00:33:38.300 | As it turns out, I was blessed with a woman
00:33:40.460 | who has good childbearing hips.
00:33:43.020 | And when I've looked back at my ignorance
00:33:47.460 | when I was in college,
00:33:49.100 | I now am a little bit startled at how stupid I was
00:33:53.340 | to fall prey to the idea that,
00:33:56.240 | well, I still today would never talk
00:33:59.140 | about a woman's hips in that way.
00:34:00.520 | I wouldn't use that language
00:34:01.540 | 'cause I find that language offensive.
00:34:03.800 | The truth that was behind that cultural aphorism
00:34:08.800 | is something that's important.
00:34:12.220 | And I derive an enormous amount of my satisfaction as a man
00:34:16.760 | from my family and from my children
00:34:19.060 | and from my wife's ability to have children.
00:34:21.980 | And in hindsight, I was the fool at 20
00:34:24.740 | for just dismissing that as totally unimportant.
00:34:27.940 | And so I think that things like fertility
00:34:30.880 | and screening a spouse or screening yourself
00:34:33.720 | on the basis of fertility is something that,
00:34:37.180 | well, awkward to think about or talk about,
00:34:40.240 | is probably something that will play a factor,
00:34:43.260 | play a role in our future.
00:34:45.140 | Because these basic issues have an enormous impact
00:34:50.780 | on men's and women's lives
00:34:52.900 | and they have an enormous financial impact.
00:34:54.660 | One of the biggest expenses that I see
00:34:56.740 | in financial planning from wealthy people
00:35:00.300 | is often fertility treatments.
00:35:02.140 | And when your babies cost you tens of thousands of dollars
00:35:05.100 | for each baby, you're gonna really think
00:35:07.600 | about that quite a lot.
00:35:09.060 | And yet some of that can hopefully be avoided
00:35:11.420 | with better practices, with our children
00:35:13.820 | and protecting them from that and protecting ourselves
00:35:16.940 | as much as possible
00:35:17.820 | from basic biological fertility issues.
00:35:20.300 | The next barrier for you to have many great-grandchildren
00:35:23.380 | would be what I call just philosophical infertility
00:35:26.420 | or philosophical fertility.
00:35:28.660 | If you wanna have grandchildren and great-grandchildren,
00:35:31.580 | you need to marry somebody who desires children.
00:35:33.980 | Both men and women in today's world are broadly infected
00:35:38.980 | by a strong antenatal ideology, philosophy, and reality.
00:35:45.660 | And don't think much that you're gonna change many people.
00:35:50.060 | And so if you are young and you're doing something
00:35:53.140 | like setting a goal of having many great-grandchildren,
00:35:56.900 | you really should start off on your best foot
00:35:59.120 | by marrying someone and pursuing somebody
00:36:02.220 | who is not philosophically infertile.
00:36:05.580 | Now, people can change, right?
00:36:08.460 | I'll just share my own dad's, my own father's story.
00:36:11.700 | My parents had two children
00:36:13.460 | and kind of classic two-children story.
00:36:17.700 | How does the rhyme go?
00:36:19.980 | A girl for me, a boy for you,
00:36:21.260 | and praise the Lord, we're finally through, right?
00:36:23.660 | Boy and girl, done.
00:36:24.940 | That was my dad's philosophy.
00:36:27.540 | He did not want to have more children.
00:36:29.180 | And then when his second child
00:36:31.740 | was something like eight years old,
00:36:33.620 | over a long period of change,
00:36:36.540 | he came to adopt a different philosophy.
00:36:39.580 | And it was a very difficult change for him.
00:36:41.820 | My mom had wanted more children, but my dad didn't.
00:36:43.900 | But eventually he came to be on board
00:36:46.420 | with wanting to have more children
00:36:47.620 | and dedicating his life in that direction,
00:36:49.220 | and he had five more.
00:36:50.860 | And as the youngest of seven, I'm grateful that he did,
00:36:52.940 | 'cause I wouldn't be here if he had not changed.
00:36:55.820 | People can change.
00:36:57.300 | Men and women can change.
00:36:59.020 | But you should focus on filtering
00:37:01.780 | for people who want to have children
00:37:04.060 | if that's something that you want to do.
00:37:06.300 | And probably similar for those
00:37:07.700 | who don't want to have children,
00:37:08.900 | that you just don't want to have
00:37:11.340 | a significant difference in your perspective.
00:37:15.700 | I think that also though,
00:37:17.500 | beyond just simply being open to children,
00:37:20.420 | it's important that you build
00:37:22.220 | an awareness of the fact that the data would indicate
00:37:28.900 | that in general, you're probably gonna have
00:37:30.900 | a better and happier life with children than without.
00:37:35.620 | Now you can go and look into this yourself,
00:37:38.020 | but people who have children,
00:37:40.660 | you know this intuitively if you just think about
00:37:43.500 | the things that people value later in life.
00:37:46.460 | They're in today's antenatal society
00:37:49.380 | where many, many people shoot their TikToks and whatever
00:37:54.380 | about how great life is without children.
00:37:58.580 | You can see that side and those arguments
00:38:00.740 | against having children.
00:38:01.660 | And those arguments are today very persuasive
00:38:03.980 | for many young people.
00:38:05.060 | Many young people are not having children
00:38:08.020 | due to livestock considerations.
00:38:10.100 | If you talk to older people,
00:38:11.260 | and if you look at the sociological data on older people,
00:38:15.220 | then you'll find that family life and children become,
00:38:20.220 | in general, a very important part
00:38:22.900 | of a man or woman's satisfaction with life.
00:38:25.860 | I saw it put this way.
00:38:26.700 | There was a Twitter conversation going on,
00:38:29.660 | and the data was showing about the percentage of adults
00:38:32.900 | who had children and the question they were asked
00:38:35.340 | among Americans 45 and older.
00:38:37.300 | If you had to do it over again,
00:38:38.500 | how many children would you have
00:38:39.820 | or would you not have any at all?
00:38:42.180 | And Americans were asked about that.
00:38:44.060 | And I won't try to read the whole chart to you.
00:38:46.100 | But basically what you can look at
00:38:48.420 | is that 7% of parents over 45 wouldn't have kids
00:38:53.340 | if given a redo on life.
00:38:55.220 | So 7% of people who are older than 45 who have children
00:38:58.540 | would not have children if given a second opportunity.
00:39:01.580 | But 50% of childless people would have children
00:39:05.380 | if they were given another opportunity at life.
00:39:08.660 | And a guy that I follow put it this way.
00:39:10.780 | He says, "You're in your late 20s.
00:39:12.020 | "You're ambivalent about children.
00:39:13.620 | "Here's the probability for any given person,
00:39:15.900 | "but not for a specific person.
00:39:18.100 | "Have children, 93% satisfaction rate.
00:39:20.940 | "Don't have children, 50% satisfaction rate."
00:39:24.220 | So if you know that you wanna have children,
00:39:29.980 | you can pretty much have a 93% confidence
00:39:32.300 | according to that particular study
00:39:34.220 | that that's probably the right move.
00:39:36.100 | On the other hand, if you don't wanna have children,
00:39:38.620 | just know that there's probably about a 50% likelihood
00:39:41.260 | that you're gonna regret that decision
00:39:42.620 | and then make your decisions yourself.
00:39:45.500 | So think about philosophical fertility for yourself
00:39:48.260 | as you're making big life decisions.
00:39:49.940 | And then age-related fertility.
00:39:52.100 | Just simply the biggest problem happening
00:39:54.660 | in reproduction data and fertility data
00:39:58.660 | is that young people are not having children.
00:40:00.900 | - You've always had what it takes to make it happen.
00:40:04.940 | And we know the right tools can make it easier.
00:40:07.460 | At Strayer University, we're always thinking about new ways
00:40:10.580 | to set you up for success.
00:40:12.500 | That's why we give you a brand new laptop
00:40:14.700 | when you enroll in a bachelor's program.
00:40:16.780 | So you can start off on the right foot and keep striving.
00:40:20.580 | Visit strayer.edu to learn more.
00:40:23.060 | Eligibility rules, restrictions, and exclusions apply.
00:40:25.620 | Connect with us for details.
00:40:26.980 | Strayer University is certified
00:40:28.460 | to operate in Virginia by Shell.
00:40:30.060 | - If you want to have children,
00:40:34.540 | you should begin to have children when you are young,
00:40:38.500 | as young as possible.
00:40:39.740 | And if you want to have more than one or two children,
00:40:42.460 | you should definitely begin to have children
00:40:44.500 | when you are young, as young as possible.
00:40:46.900 | Most men and women are utterly ignorant
00:40:49.340 | of the impact of age on a woman's fertility.
00:40:52.900 | At the age of 30, a woman has lost 90%,
00:40:57.340 | nine zero, 90% of the eggs that she was born with, 90%.
00:41:02.340 | Doesn't mean that a woman cannot reproduce
00:41:05.180 | after the age of 30.
00:41:06.660 | But the ignorance that men and especially women have
00:41:11.300 | on their ability to procreate at advanced ages,
00:41:16.300 | meaning past 30, is pretty shocking.
00:41:19.020 | It's really shocking.
00:41:20.620 | And there is a high overconfidence
00:41:23.940 | in the effectiveness of fertility treatments,
00:41:26.140 | and there is a strong underappreciation across our society,
00:41:30.660 | just flat out ignorance of how easy it is
00:41:33.820 | for couples who are in their 30s and beyond
00:41:36.780 | to conceive children.
00:41:39.100 | The problem is that we all get splash news stories
00:41:41.540 | across our screen of so-and-so
00:41:43.140 | who's 47 years old, had a baby.
00:41:45.100 | Yes, and it was almost certainly with an egg donor,
00:41:49.480 | if she's a celebrity.
00:41:50.720 | People do have children at later ages, it is possible.
00:41:56.060 | But the data on it indicates that it's very difficult,
00:41:59.260 | often very expensive, and it is not in any way assured.
00:42:03.060 | So if you desire to have children,
00:42:05.700 | then this should be a priority for you when you are young.
00:42:09.160 | Now let's assume that you're able
00:42:12.180 | to solve these basic problems.
00:42:14.140 | You're able to meet and attract a spouse
00:42:16.380 | who wants to procreate, who wants to procreate with you.
00:42:19.720 | You get married, and now you are thinking
00:42:22.640 | about the next generation.
00:42:23.920 | You're thinking, how could I spend money
00:42:26.340 | in the direction of this goal of many great-grandchildren?
00:42:30.440 | How could I do that?
00:42:31.920 | I think it's really, really important
00:42:33.320 | to think about the culture that you build
00:42:35.400 | within your family, remembering that we can't coerce
00:42:38.680 | or manipulate our children to have children.
00:42:41.360 | We need to think about what are the factors
00:42:43.240 | that are gonna make it likely
00:42:44.520 | for them to want to have children.
00:42:46.820 | One great interest of mine, just in personal conversation,
00:42:49.900 | is whenever I meet somebody who doesn't want
00:42:52.580 | to have children, I try to understand why.
00:42:55.260 | Try to understand what that person is looking for.
00:42:57.420 | And although I come across as opinionated
00:43:01.220 | and whatnot on the internet, certainly, that's my job,
00:43:04.100 | but in real life, I don't go through life judging people.
00:43:07.220 | I'm genuinely interested, and I'm really fascinated
00:43:10.100 | by people who, from my perspective,
00:43:11.820 | would seem to have had a great lifestyle growing up,
00:43:15.120 | but who don't want to have children.
00:43:16.880 | They just, it's not of interest to them.
00:43:19.320 | And I think one of the factors is often
00:43:22.120 | that they just didn't have a great childhood,
00:43:24.920 | that they don't look back with fondness
00:43:26.840 | on their own childhood.
00:43:28.920 | And I think that could be just a total death knell
00:43:30.800 | to, if your ambition is to have many great-grandchildren,
00:43:34.800 | you need to start by beginning
00:43:36.200 | with providing the best childhood
00:43:38.580 | that you're capable of providing for your own children.
00:43:41.580 | And that's gonna begin with the relationship
00:43:44.700 | that you have with your spouse.
00:43:47.120 | I think the first thing is you need to be preparing
00:43:49.040 | to have a house that is large enough
00:43:50.840 | to want to have children in it.
00:43:53.000 | If we look at global population fertility data,
00:43:58.880 | what you see is that not having children
00:44:02.320 | and/or having very few children is highly associated
00:44:07.680 | with living in a big city.
00:44:10.240 | Now, you could argue what the cause is.
00:44:13.420 | Is it a correlation or a causation?
00:44:15.440 | Is it a correlation of you're surrounded
00:44:19.620 | by other people who are busy professionals
00:44:21.820 | who moved to the city to make their fortune
00:44:23.380 | and you're just kind of infected
00:44:25.260 | by this social contagion of not wanting to have children?
00:44:28.760 | Or is the city itself causing your childlessness
00:44:32.020 | or your low fertility?
00:44:33.940 | And I would say probably both,
00:44:35.580 | as with most things of causation versus correlation.
00:44:38.220 | They're probably both involved.
00:44:40.240 | But as a man who travels the world
00:44:42.760 | with his wife and five children
00:44:45.560 | and who frequently stays in hotel rooms,
00:44:48.360 | I will tell you that life in a tiny studio apartment
00:44:51.840 | with five children is not pleasant.
00:44:54.640 | It's not something that is enjoyable.
00:44:56.800 | You're gonna need some space.
00:44:58.360 | You need some space to spread out.
00:45:00.600 | You probably don't need as much space as you think you do.
00:45:02.520 | You probably don't need a nine-bedroom mansion,
00:45:05.040 | but you do need some space.
00:45:06.760 | And I think this is one of the things
00:45:07.980 | that has been very helpful
00:45:08.940 | with maintaining the U.S.-American fertility rate
00:45:11.480 | as high as it has been,
00:45:13.100 | is that the United States is not such a country
00:45:16.760 | of big cities, but is rather a country of suburbs.
00:45:19.860 | While I would argue that suburbs
00:45:23.780 | are not always good for children,
00:45:26.200 | and in fact, I prefer my children not grow up in a suburb
00:45:28.340 | 'cause it causes them to be isolated from society,
00:45:30.740 | to be dependent on cars and things like that
00:45:32.740 | that don't give them much independence at an early age,
00:45:36.140 | truth is that having your own house that's big enough
00:45:39.260 | and that has a little yard has been much better
00:45:41.580 | for overall fertility in the United States
00:45:43.500 | versus living in the middle of a cramped city.
00:45:45.980 | So you need to plan ahead.
00:45:46.900 | You need to have a large enough house
00:45:48.540 | to want to have children in it.
00:45:50.500 | You also need to have a marriage relationship
00:45:52.300 | that is filled with sex.
00:45:53.740 | Children are created by sex between a husband and a wife.
00:46:00.060 | That's where they come from.
00:46:01.580 | And so you need to have a relationship
00:46:03.620 | that is built upon strong romantic attraction
00:46:06.140 | and where you have an active and vigorous sex life.
00:46:08.580 | And that requires a significant amount of planning
00:46:11.020 | and preparation to do well.
00:46:12.860 | And it requires you to probably communicate
00:46:15.500 | and make certain that you're marrying somebody
00:46:18.180 | who is open to sex and open to children.
00:46:21.700 | One of the things that when I was a young man,
00:46:23.580 | I was pretty naive about the sexual problems
00:46:26.260 | that people have in relationships.
00:46:28.180 | And I was shocked when I started interacting with people
00:46:31.860 | who would share with me confidentially
00:46:34.540 | about their non-existent sex lives within marriage.
00:46:38.540 | In one case, there was a friend of mine
00:46:40.940 | and a client who, I won't even recount,
00:46:44.860 | but it was just shocking to me,
00:46:46.740 | the barrenness of his bedroom with his wife.
00:46:50.060 | And that's something that is an enormous problem
00:46:52.100 | and it has to be dealt with.
00:46:53.380 | And so I say it in something of a shocking way
00:46:56.260 | to say that you need a marriage relationship
00:46:58.780 | that is filled with sex, but it's very, very important.
00:47:01.900 | It's very, very important that you create
00:47:03.460 | the kind of relationship and the kind of dynamic,
00:47:06.100 | and you choose the kind of person
00:47:08.660 | who wants to have sex with you.
00:47:10.580 | And then you need to have enough time
00:47:12.380 | to do that over time and not be opposed to children.
00:47:14.780 | If you go and you listen to people,
00:47:16.180 | especially from the Asian countries
00:47:18.100 | that have very, very low fertility rates,
00:47:20.620 | and you listen to them, they're all spending so much time
00:47:22.900 | busy working nonstop, working, working, working, working,
00:47:26.060 | working, working, working, that sex and sexual activity
00:47:28.900 | just doesn't seem to be a significant part of their life.
00:47:31.400 | They don't seem to care.
00:47:32.780 | And I've listened to interviews of Japanese people
00:47:37.140 | going around interviewing people in Japanese,
00:47:38.980 | and you listen to them and listen to how much
00:47:41.540 | married couples have sex, and it's shockingly infrequent.
00:47:44.800 | So I'm not a therapist, I don't wanna be one,
00:47:47.100 | I just wanna point out that this needs to be discussed,
00:47:49.820 | needs to be talked about, needs to be planned for,
00:47:52.020 | and you need to make certain that you're screening
00:47:54.540 | and that prior to marriage, that you're screening
00:47:57.980 | for somebody who's gonna be able to match
00:47:59.860 | your own sexual appetite, and that the relationship
00:48:03.540 | that you build is the kind of relationship
00:48:05.700 | that has the appropriate safety
00:48:08.660 | and the appropriate romantic attraction
00:48:10.660 | for there to be plenty of sex,
00:48:12.220 | 'cause children come from sex.
00:48:14.380 | You also need to make sure that you have
00:48:15.780 | enough disposable income to feel like
00:48:17.580 | children aren't a burden, and you need to plan financially
00:48:22.020 | to eliminate the obstacles to children.
00:48:24.460 | What are the obstacles?
00:48:25.900 | Well, obstacle number one often involves,
00:48:28.360 | if you listen to young people who don't wanna have children,
00:48:30.220 | say, "I'm not ready, I can't afford it."
00:48:31.780 | What are the obstacles?
00:48:33.100 | The first primary one involves debt, student loans.
00:48:38.100 | Being in debt is a pretty good contraceptive,
00:48:42.220 | keeps people from wanting to have children.
00:48:44.460 | So screen for that.
00:48:46.320 | Screen for that prior to marriage yourself.
00:48:49.220 | Don't marry somebody who's deeply indebted.
00:48:51.260 | If you're deeply in debt and you wanna get married,
00:48:53.580 | get rid of the debt.
00:48:54.940 | And you need to be aware of the fact
00:48:56.420 | that these are some of the psychological follow-on effects
00:48:58.700 | that are often not talked about
00:49:00.020 | purely in financial analysis.
00:49:03.500 | One of the reasons people don't pay off their student loans
00:49:06.040 | is because they see them as good debt.
00:49:08.720 | And in one sense, they are good debt.
00:49:11.820 | Sometimes financial loans can enable you
00:49:14.000 | to earn a significant amount of money.
00:49:15.860 | Often the interest rates on student loans are quite low
00:49:19.140 | compared to what you could earn
00:49:20.700 | with alternative investments.
00:49:21.880 | In many cases, financially,
00:49:23.820 | it makes sense for you to invest
00:49:26.500 | into things that are gonna out-return your student loans.
00:49:30.020 | I can't argue with that.
00:49:31.580 | If your student loans are at a rate of 3.5%
00:49:34.540 | and you can invest at a rate of 3.501%,
00:49:38.860 | then mathematically you should go and invest the money
00:49:41.660 | instead of paying off the loans.
00:49:43.780 | The problem is those student loans are in many cases
00:49:47.840 | a pretty effective contraceptive.
00:49:50.260 | And so if you wanna have children,
00:49:52.300 | you probably should consider clearing off
00:49:54.120 | those student loans.
00:49:55.540 | Because the freedom that you feel
00:49:57.500 | and the confidence that you feel
00:49:58.980 | with regard to being debt-free
00:50:02.340 | may give you the courage and the strength
00:50:05.780 | to go ahead and have children when you want to,
00:50:08.940 | especially at a young age when you're able to,
00:50:11.800 | as compared to the long-term future benefits
00:50:15.020 | of 82 years from now,
00:50:16.260 | you having a slightly higher net worth
00:50:18.340 | because you've just made the final payment
00:50:19.880 | on your student loans with your 3.501% returning investment.
00:50:24.880 | This is the problem with financial planning.
00:50:27.580 | We gotta balance math and we gotta balance life.
00:50:30.380 | And sometimes, and math always should inform life,
00:50:33.220 | but life is not a mathematical calculation.
00:50:36.220 | The second thing that often causes people
00:50:37.980 | to not have children is not owning a home.
00:50:42.140 | And so again, you should consider owning a home
00:50:44.500 | as quickly as you're able to
00:50:46.100 | and putting yourself in a situation
00:50:49.180 | in which that home is a relatively small fraction
00:50:54.180 | of your overall financial incentive
00:50:58.740 | and overall financial value.
00:51:00.580 | From a purely fertility-based analytical lens,
00:51:04.660 | a couple who buys a small home,
00:51:08.100 | maybe one of them bought the home
00:51:09.420 | and owned it before coming in,
00:51:10.940 | a small single-family home,
00:51:13.300 | has it debt-free and who has no debt,
00:51:16.060 | that couple is much, much more likely
00:51:18.500 | to welcome many children into their life
00:51:21.740 | as compared to a couple that lives in an apartment,
00:51:24.500 | has student loans,
00:51:25.460 | and is paying a rent payment every month.
00:51:27.340 | So you need to think about those
00:51:28.460 | and build a lifestyle where you can do it.
00:51:31.260 | And you wanna make sure
00:51:32.100 | that you have enough disposable household income
00:51:33.860 | just to feel like you can afford children.
00:51:37.380 | What is disposable household income?
00:51:38.980 | Well, first of all,
00:51:39.860 | it starts with the total amount of money that you earn.
00:51:43.180 | If you look at fertility rates,
00:51:44.460 | there is an inverse correlation
00:51:46.820 | based upon whether you are a man
00:51:48.700 | or whether you are a woman.
00:51:50.340 | Men, as men's income increases,
00:51:53.860 | the total number of children that men have
00:51:56.140 | increases concomitant with that rise in income.
00:51:59.820 | For women, it's the opposite,
00:52:01.260 | that as women earn higher wages, earn more wages,
00:52:05.180 | then the number of children that women have goes down.
00:52:07.940 | And I think that's intuitive.
00:52:09.420 | Note, by the way, that that is not the same analysis
00:52:13.240 | as women's overall income or overall household income,
00:52:17.540 | but it's based upon wages.
00:52:19.700 | Women who are wealthy,
00:52:21.340 | women who have a high household income
00:52:23.260 | and/or who are women who are wealthy,
00:52:24.740 | women who have royalties,
00:52:25.780 | women who have investment assets,
00:52:27.580 | they do not suffer a decline in fertility
00:52:30.300 | throughout their lifetime because of their high income.
00:52:32.900 | But women's wages are an indicator,
00:52:36.500 | making it more likely that a woman has fewer children
00:52:39.840 | if she earns higher wages.
00:52:41.740 | Whereas men, it's the other side.
00:52:43.280 | But total income is only one component of that.
00:52:46.840 | We need to focus on disposable income.
00:52:48.840 | And disposable income is income that is available,
00:52:52.200 | basically margin in your budget.
00:52:54.280 | And disposable income is something that is controlled
00:52:57.380 | based upon your expenses,
00:52:58.920 | based upon what you are committed to.
00:53:01.360 | So you can have a household income of $100,000,
00:53:04.860 | but if your household expenses are, say, $90,000,
00:53:09.000 | then that couple is not gonna feel financially confident
00:53:11.520 | to have children.
00:53:12.360 | How could we do anything more?
00:53:13.700 | On the other hand,
00:53:14.540 | if the couple had household expenses of $60,000,
00:53:17.360 | then now that couple is gonna feel
00:53:18.700 | much more confident to have children.
00:53:20.740 | So you need enough disposable household income
00:53:22.740 | to feel like children are not a burden.
00:53:25.340 | And finances are an important component of that.
00:53:28.260 | So if you're in debt, get out of debt.
00:53:29.740 | If you can buy a house, buy a house.
00:53:31.480 | If you can do it with a low amount of money, do it,
00:53:33.540 | and that's going to be more likely for you
00:53:35.160 | to be able to have children.
00:53:36.560 | You need to develop the personal parental skills
00:53:40.620 | that will help your family life to be joyful.
00:53:43.700 | One big obstacle to people having children
00:53:47.520 | is if you feel like you can't even handle the children
00:53:49.460 | that you have right now.
00:53:50.660 | Generally speaking, I never set out to have five children.
00:53:54.620 | That wasn't a goal.
00:53:55.660 | I would've said, my wife and I,
00:53:57.700 | if you'd asked us 10 years ago,
00:53:59.900 | we would've said, okay, well, we'd like to have children,
00:54:01.980 | but we didn't have a number.
00:54:03.180 | I didn't plan to create a mega family.
00:54:05.100 | At the time, I didn't have an ambition
00:54:06.220 | to have 100 great-grandchildren.
00:54:07.960 | Just kind of happens one by one.
00:54:09.800 | But as with each child,
00:54:11.520 | you want to basically consider your life,
00:54:13.140 | and the goal is, the thing is basically, can we handle this?
00:54:17.000 | Like, are we in charge of our family?
00:54:19.640 | Are we in control?
00:54:21.060 | Are we managing this, or are we overwhelmed?
00:54:23.640 | 'Cause if you've got a couple that's just sinking
00:54:26.140 | under the burden of their children,
00:54:28.080 | then they're not going to want to have more children.
00:54:30.220 | And so we want to build skills and parental skills
00:54:33.200 | that are going to help family life to be joyful.
00:54:35.580 | Obedient children are a joy.
00:54:38.160 | Disobedient children are not.
00:54:40.820 | I don't like to compare children to dogs,
00:54:44.400 | but I think in this case, we could compare it to a dog.
00:54:46.940 | If you've got a dog, and your dog is beautifully behaved,
00:54:49.940 | and you tell your dog to come, and the dog comes,
00:54:52.400 | and you tell your dog to stop, and the dog stops,
00:54:54.900 | then for you, the dog is a blessing and a joy to your life.
00:54:58.660 | But if you've got a dog
00:54:59.580 | that just runs out the door at every turn,
00:55:02.380 | and that stands in the middle of the table
00:55:03.900 | and pees in your flower vase,
00:55:06.000 | then there's a good chance
00:55:07.300 | that you're not going to want any more dogs,
00:55:09.220 | and children are similar,
00:55:10.660 | is that the skill that you have as a parent
00:55:12.380 | to deal with children is going to make a big difference
00:55:15.940 | in the likelihood of your having more children.
00:55:18.620 | And this is one of the greatest tragedies
00:55:20.480 | in our current environment
00:55:22.520 | that causes people not to have children,
00:55:24.140 | is that you'll have a family that has one or two children,
00:55:26.140 | and the children are running their life.
00:55:27.620 | And they don't really have anywhere that they can go
00:55:29.460 | or anyone that they can talk to that they trust
00:55:31.060 | who can give them advice.
00:55:32.380 | We've had an enormous professionalization of child advice.
00:55:35.820 | If you went back a hundred years,
00:55:37.220 | there were not any books written on how to raise a child.
00:55:39.820 | Everyone grew up around children.
00:55:41.140 | You had a society, there's children all around,
00:55:42.860 | and everybody kind of naturally absorbs
00:55:44.420 | how to have children.
00:55:45.580 | In today's world, with the dearth of children,
00:55:47.680 | now we're going to have a baby,
00:55:48.620 | and we start going reading 15 books,
00:55:50.180 | and you have no way to filter
00:55:51.300 | and know whether the advice you're getting in the book
00:55:53.180 | is good or not.
00:55:54.580 | You just grab something that fits with you
00:55:56.740 | and connects with you, and you go on with it.
00:55:58.620 | And so people don't really have the experience,
00:56:02.900 | and then many people don't have the skills
00:56:05.160 | that in many cases, young fathers and mothers today,
00:56:09.540 | they don't have any model for skills dealing with children.
00:56:13.420 | They don't know how to do it.
00:56:14.820 | And that means that oftentimes their family life
00:56:17.180 | is not a joy, it's a burden, it's a tragedy.
00:56:20.940 | I saw this horrendous video recently
00:56:23.220 | of this mom walking around her house with her camera.
00:56:26.500 | And I think it was a mom, I watched it with the sound off,
00:56:29.280 | but she's walking around her house with a camera,
00:56:30.940 | and she's showing, and every room she goes into
00:56:33.460 | is a disaster zone.
00:56:34.940 | And there are just, there are toys everywhere.
00:56:37.600 | Every single floor is covered with toys.
00:56:39.780 | Everything is destroyed.
00:56:41.060 | The entire house is a wreck.
00:56:42.580 | That video would be the most powerful contraceptive
00:56:48.380 | you can imagine for just an average young man or woman.
00:56:52.000 | But it's not because you have to live that way with children.
00:56:54.500 | It's because of the mother and father's ineptitude
00:56:57.380 | as parents and their unwillingness to clean up their house.
00:57:00.920 | I have five children in my house.
00:57:02.640 | It's not ready to be photographed
00:57:04.520 | on the front page of "Martha Stewart Living" every day,
00:57:07.360 | but at every moment, because children get toys out,
00:57:11.500 | they play with them, things happen.
00:57:13.640 | You get involved in projects, and it's normal
00:57:16.760 | that there's going to be disruption to a house.
00:57:19.460 | If you wanna live in a museum,
00:57:20.780 | don't get married, don't have children.
00:57:22.680 | But the house is presentable by the end of the day.
00:57:26.780 | And it can be made presentable
00:57:28.520 | in 10 minutes of picking up things.
00:57:30.160 | And it's just a habit, it's a simple skill
00:57:32.120 | of picking things up and keeping a house picked up.
00:57:34.280 | And you can expand that to every area of parenting.
00:57:36.800 | Learning how to work with children
00:57:37.920 | is something that adds to go on.
00:57:39.360 | So developing skill acquisition
00:57:42.600 | needs to be a component of what parents do.
00:57:46.240 | Because you want your family life to be joyful.
00:57:48.160 | You want your children to grow up in a house
00:57:50.680 | that's filled with peace and harmony
00:57:53.440 | and love and tranquility.
00:57:55.600 | And they're not gonna see the Legos out on the floor
00:58:00.600 | as a disruption to that.
00:58:01.900 | But if they live in a hell hole,
00:58:04.240 | then they're not gonna wanna have children.
00:58:05.800 | And so you wanna think about that.
00:58:07.880 | If you wanna have children,
00:58:09.040 | a supportive community will be enormously helpful to you.
00:58:12.560 | And so you may have to create it yourself.
00:58:15.280 | You may not know anybody who wants to have children,
00:58:17.580 | but you wanna come around it
00:58:19.160 | and get yourself around a community of people
00:58:22.240 | who also like children and want to have children.
00:58:25.240 | You may have to amputate negative peer pressure,
00:58:28.260 | and that may even be family.
00:58:30.320 | In my wife and my family, we have family members.
00:58:33.340 | We have to steel ourselves against the opprobrium
00:58:35.460 | that we receive from certain family members
00:58:37.180 | due to our reproductive choices.
00:58:39.260 | Just deal with it.
00:58:40.140 | Just tell, yeah, we're not gonna tell that person
00:58:42.460 | we're expecting a baby.
00:58:44.260 | We'll just let them find out when the baby arrives.
00:58:45.900 | It's easier that way.
00:58:47.220 | And this is pretty normal.
00:58:49.060 | I know my parents, at one point in time,
00:58:52.520 | my mother's parents strongly offered,
00:58:56.620 | they were worried about how many babies
00:58:58.000 | my mother was having.
00:58:58.840 | They said, "Listen, we'll pay for you to be sterilized.
00:59:01.080 | "We'll pay for the surgery so you could be sterilized."
00:59:03.740 | My parents had to look them in the eye and say,
00:59:05.380 | "Get out of here.
00:59:06.500 | "You're not involved in this component of our life.
00:59:08.380 | "And if you continue to press on this, this is the end."
00:59:12.260 | And so sometimes you have to take a choice.
00:59:14.660 | Remember that you have the right to live your life
00:59:18.460 | the way that you want to live.
00:59:20.020 | And what's astonishing to me
00:59:21.580 | is that in the current wave and where we are
00:59:28.100 | is that there are kind of two sides to rights.
00:59:31.880 | There are enormous numbers of people
00:59:33.760 | who are scandalized about reproductive rights
00:59:36.560 | and will say, "You have no right to tell me
00:59:37.980 | "what I can do with my body
00:59:39.200 | "and what I can do with the baby that's inside my body.
00:59:41.800 | "These are my reproductive rights."
00:59:43.520 | That's the cultural ethic.
00:59:45.080 | But in many cases, those same people
00:59:47.440 | feel like they have the right to turn around
00:59:49.040 | and tell you that you can't have another baby.
00:59:52.420 | If you want to have a baby,
00:59:53.800 | that's between a husband and a wife, no one else involved.
00:59:57.480 | That's it.
00:59:58.320 | So deal with it in that context
01:00:00.560 | and shut out everyone else around.
01:00:02.320 | But you'll find that if there's a community around you,
01:00:04.200 | a supportive community will be enormously helpful to you.
01:00:08.160 | So those are just some thoughts in terms of yourself.
01:00:10.240 | Those are incomplete.
01:00:11.480 | But now I want to focus on
01:00:13.080 | how do we get the next generation?
01:00:15.560 | How do we get our children to want to reproduce
01:00:19.960 | and how do we facilitate that?
01:00:21.920 | So I've talked about the pleasure and the memories.
01:00:25.340 | If your children associate their own childhood
01:00:30.340 | with a pleasant family dynamic,
01:00:33.340 | then there's a decent chance that regardless
01:00:36.720 | of whether you indoctrinate them with a pronatal message,
01:00:40.340 | that they're going to want to continue it
01:00:42.260 | because they just naturally associate childhood
01:00:44.740 | with pleasant experiences.
01:00:47.500 | And if you have, your children are going to think
01:00:51.220 | that the environment that they're raised in
01:00:52.900 | is pretty much what's normal.
01:00:55.260 | In dealing with multiple children,
01:00:57.100 | so I talked about parental skill.
01:00:58.860 | Parental skills change over time.
01:01:00.580 | The cool thing is that children usually come one at a time.
01:01:02.980 | Sometimes they come two or three at a time,
01:01:04.380 | but most of the time, one at a time,
01:01:05.860 | and your skills can change.
01:01:07.100 | And it's really great.
01:01:08.380 | With one baby, you learn a whole set of skills.
01:01:10.020 | With the second baby,
01:01:10.860 | you learn a whole different set of skills.
01:01:11.860 | With the third one and the fourth one and the fifth one,
01:01:13.540 | they're just a different set of skills
01:01:14.860 | at every stage along the way.
01:01:16.460 | The cool thing, however,
01:01:17.300 | is that it's not only mother and father
01:01:19.540 | who are learning skills,
01:01:20.840 | but your children themselves are learning skills.
01:01:23.620 | And one of the reasons that low fertility rate countries
01:01:28.140 | have falling fertility rates
01:01:31.100 | is that the people in those countries
01:01:33.700 | can't even imagine how to be a parent of multiple children.
01:01:38.020 | Let's say that you grow up in a one,
01:01:43.020 | you're the single child in a Chinese family,
01:01:45.980 | and you don't really know anybody.
01:01:47.860 | You know a couple of people,
01:01:48.980 | one or two people who have two children.
01:01:50.740 | You don't know anybody who has six children.
01:01:53.300 | You don't know anybody.
01:01:54.900 | And all of your extended family has just one child.
01:01:59.160 | Well, the idea of having two children
01:02:01.140 | is something that you're gonna have no context for.
01:02:03.440 | You grew up as one child.
01:02:06.980 | You didn't even have brothers and sisters.
01:02:08.340 | You didn't have a younger brother or sister.
01:02:09.740 | You didn't see your parents interacting
01:02:11.860 | with children of multiple ages.
01:02:13.660 | You just have one child.
01:02:15.580 | That's all of your frame of reference.
01:02:17.300 | The idea of having two children
01:02:18.660 | is literally unimaginable to you.
01:02:22.140 | You take all of your ideas and input and philosophy
01:02:25.760 | from what you see on TV.
01:02:28.700 | And since what you see on TV or in a movie
01:02:30.860 | can be sensationalized one way or the other,
01:02:32.820 | either all glowing positivity or all scathing negativity
01:02:37.540 | based upon the agenda of the producer,
01:02:39.900 | then you don't really have any context for it.
01:02:42.140 | So it just becomes literally unimaginable to you.
01:02:45.060 | And the same thing continues to the generations.
01:02:47.540 | Cool thing is that your family can change that.
01:02:49.820 | And so I grew up with multiple siblings.
01:02:53.540 | And so the idea of having siblings around is totally normal.
01:02:56.500 | And then even if you're the youngest,
01:02:57.940 | like I was the youngest, in my growing up,
01:02:59.860 | my older siblings got married, had children,
01:03:01.420 | always around lots of children.
01:03:02.580 | So the idea of being around lots of children
01:03:04.340 | is a totally normal thing.
01:03:06.060 | And so that's one of the reasons
01:03:07.260 | you should focus on building a community,
01:03:10.020 | if at all possible, of other people who have children,
01:03:13.000 | because that'll form a frame of reference for your children.
01:03:16.140 | And you want children to think about their childhood
01:03:18.060 | and take pleasure in it.
01:03:19.500 | Back to Asia, I myself shudder
01:03:22.460 | when I see videos about Asian children's youth.
01:03:27.460 | And you find these videos,
01:03:29.020 | and basically as best I can tell,
01:03:31.820 | the children in many of those cultures in Asia
01:03:35.520 | live their lives chained to a desk,
01:03:37.460 | doing nonstop academic book work
01:03:41.180 | with threat of a teacher's ruler
01:03:43.620 | coming down on the back of their neck.
01:03:45.620 | Little bit of hyperbole, not much in that.
01:03:48.520 | The intense academic burnout.
01:03:50.740 | A guy in, I saw a guy in India recently
01:03:53.900 | posted his high school study schedule
01:03:56.660 | with this just insane degree of academic commitment
01:04:00.060 | to study, study, study, study.
01:04:01.860 | If that's your memory of childhood and it's all academics,
01:04:04.540 | just nonstop study, study, study, study, study, study,
01:04:07.740 | why do you wanna bring children into that?
01:04:09.580 | It's an utterly miserable life and a miserable existence.
01:04:12.500 | Yes, there's breaks.
01:04:13.500 | I'm not being too extreme with my views.
01:04:16.160 | I'm just drawing from the overall perspective.
01:04:18.860 | When I think of my childhood,
01:04:20.380 | I think of pretty much nothing but pleasure.
01:04:23.740 | Some of my most intense and appreciated family memories
01:04:26.540 | just involved traveling across the United States
01:04:28.460 | with my family and staying in national parks and state parks
01:04:32.660 | with a beat up old pop-up camper.
01:04:35.100 | And didn't cost my parents a lot,
01:04:36.940 | it just cost them some time and to go out and do that.
01:04:39.140 | But yet those family environments
01:04:41.300 | were so conducive to relationships.
01:04:43.180 | We would stay in campgrounds
01:04:44.240 | probably 'cause we didn't have much money,
01:04:45.820 | but also because you stay in hotels with your children,
01:04:48.100 | there's nothing for the children to do.
01:04:49.460 | Or you stay in a campground,
01:04:50.460 | it's just nonstop work or play, it's just all around.
01:04:53.620 | And so those family dynamics of just being together
01:04:57.700 | is most of my memory of childhood.
01:05:00.680 | Holiday gatherings, when you have holiday gatherings
01:05:02.900 | with lots of people, they're super fun.
01:05:04.980 | And our holiday gatherings were always big.
01:05:07.000 | It wasn't three people gather around a table,
01:05:09.880 | they're always enormous.
01:05:11.300 | And what's interesting about the fun of large families
01:05:14.140 | is that not only do you yourself have lots of children,
01:05:17.580 | but the marginal cost of having other people in your life
01:05:19.940 | is usually not that big.
01:05:22.220 | So imagine that you're a family of three, right?
01:05:24.100 | Two parents and a child.
01:05:25.920 | And you're gonna go out and invite four single people
01:05:30.920 | to join you for Christmas dinner.
01:05:33.240 | There's always a spinster that you know,
01:05:36.180 | an old lady who doesn't have a family.
01:05:38.100 | There's always some committed bachelor that you know,
01:05:40.660 | and there's always a Jewish guy
01:05:43.060 | and you know, just very, and a disabled person, right?
01:05:46.380 | I don't like to call them strays,
01:05:48.020 | but honestly, that's what I call them,
01:05:49.220 | just various strays.
01:05:50.700 | And so our family always collected the strays.
01:05:52.820 | Just imagine you're three people
01:05:54.140 | and you collect four strays for your Christmas dinner.
01:05:57.840 | That's an enormous imposition on your lifestyle.
01:06:00.160 | You probably don't even have enough plates.
01:06:01.940 | You don't have enough chairs.
01:06:02.980 | Your table's not big enough for it.
01:06:04.620 | And so it's a big deal.
01:06:07.620 | Well, growing up with seven children,
01:06:09.860 | we were always at least nine.
01:06:11.760 | And so for my parents to collect four or five strays
01:06:15.020 | for meals was just not that big of a deal.
01:06:18.140 | And so that makes a fundamental difference
01:06:22.620 | in the experience that someone has
01:06:24.620 | growing up in an environment where there's lots of people
01:06:27.340 | and people are associated with joy and with fun.
01:06:29.740 | And that just simple experience
01:06:31.940 | changes your perspective of life.
01:06:34.660 | And so you wanna work really hard
01:06:36.380 | to facilitate an enjoyable childhood
01:06:39.340 | so that your children will have this perspective.
01:06:42.860 | And so if you need to spend money
01:06:44.260 | to have a bigger dining room table,
01:06:45.940 | go buy a bigger dining room table.
01:06:47.440 | If you need a bigger house, go buy a bigger house.
01:06:49.060 | If you need a bigger car, get a bigger car.
01:06:50.840 | These things are things that you can do
01:06:52.620 | to basically create the party wherever you go.
01:06:55.700 | And just trying to share honestly and truthfully,
01:07:00.700 | in our current lives, in our current world,
01:07:05.780 | all of the infrastructure of life
01:07:07.800 | is designed around very small families.
01:07:10.980 | So I had a friend of mine growing up, good friend.
01:07:13.860 | They had two children.
01:07:14.980 | And they always had normal cars,
01:07:18.540 | but the cars were always 5C cars.
01:07:20.980 | And these were good friends of ours, lovely couple.
01:07:25.660 | No argument or judgment of any kind.
01:07:29.380 | I don't even know anything about their reproduction.
01:07:31.900 | I wouldn't judge anybody.
01:07:33.660 | But my observation was always, they always had four of them.
01:07:37.960 | And the four of them always filled up their cars.
01:07:40.240 | So they had two cars, five seat cars,
01:07:43.920 | and the four of them always filled it up.
01:07:46.080 | They were never with other people.
01:07:49.360 | They were never with other people.
01:07:50.520 | They never invited anybody to go with them.
01:07:52.880 | They never had room in their car for them.
01:07:54.640 | They never invited anybody to go with them.
01:07:56.360 | They never, they would go, they would go to an event,
01:07:59.380 | but they would always go in their own car.
01:08:02.680 | And when I can think about that
01:08:04.040 | with my own childhood growing up,
01:08:06.380 | my dad always had a 12-passenger van.
01:08:08.600 | He didn't need all the seats,
01:08:10.400 | but ours was always the party bus,
01:08:12.360 | bring in four or five other people with us.
01:08:14.600 | And it was just always the case.
01:08:16.080 | And so we grew up with lots of other people in our lives.
01:08:19.200 | And that simple logistical difference
01:08:23.400 | makes an enormous qualitative difference
01:08:26.600 | in your experience of life and your experience of people.
01:08:32.000 | I would be very surprised if my friends with the two children
01:08:35.600 | if any of their children went on to have many children,
01:08:38.560 | it's just not part of their culture.
01:08:41.120 | And they can make the decisions they want to.
01:08:43.560 | People can change.
01:08:44.400 | My dad was one of two and he had seven.
01:08:46.560 | So people can change.
01:08:48.480 | My point is that these cultural things matter.
01:08:50.960 | And in today's world,
01:08:51.840 | where you gotta have a bunch of car seats and whatnot,
01:08:53.880 | it keeps people from even being together.
01:08:56.400 | I hear sometimes from my clients and people I interact with,
01:08:59.320 | one of the big problems of socialization
01:09:01.000 | is unlike even 30 years ago,
01:09:02.840 | you can't have someone to go pick up your kids for you.
01:09:05.640 | Because if you've got young children and used to be,
01:09:07.680 | you would work it out and say,
01:09:08.560 | "Hey, I'll drop the kids off at practice.
01:09:10.440 | Can you go pick them up?"
01:09:11.280 | No, I can't pick them up because I have a five seat car.
01:09:13.520 | Or even if I have a seven seat car, I don't have car seats.
01:09:16.360 | So car seats are an enormous contraceptive.
01:09:20.200 | I read a paper on it one time.
01:09:21.520 | And the guy was saying, he drew a statistical analysis.
01:09:24.280 | I can't remember all the details,
01:09:25.720 | but he drew the statistical analysis.
01:09:27.000 | Basically, could eliminating car seats
01:09:29.480 | dramatically increase fertility?
01:09:30.880 | And his mathematical argument was yes.
01:09:33.560 | I don't know if it's true or not.
01:09:34.760 | All I know is that my least favorite thing
01:09:36.400 | about being a father is car seats.
01:09:38.560 | I despise them.
01:09:40.560 | And I will be thrilled when the day comes
01:09:42.840 | where I don't have to do them.
01:09:43.680 | For now, it's a necessary cost,
01:09:45.240 | but that is my, I'm not being hyperbolic.
01:09:48.560 | That is my least favorite thing about being a father
01:09:50.680 | is having to deal with car seats.
01:09:52.320 | Back to the point.
01:09:54.200 | Infrastructure things that you can do with your life
01:09:57.040 | may help you to surround your children with others
01:10:00.160 | and may help you to have people around
01:10:05.160 | and have childhood be more of a joyous occasion.
01:10:09.560 | If you have two children,
01:10:10.680 | don't just automatically buy a four or five seat car.
01:10:13.400 | Consider getting the seven seat SUV.
01:10:15.240 | So at least on occasion, if there's four in your family,
01:10:18.360 | at least on occasion, you can get three extra people
01:10:21.080 | and bring someone else's children home.
01:10:23.080 | These little things matter.
01:10:24.840 | But you need to build an environment of pleasure
01:10:27.760 | around your children.
01:10:29.080 | Not nonstop frivolity.
01:10:30.600 | I'm not opposed to working.
01:10:31.720 | What I'm saying is that childhood should be a joy.
01:10:35.680 | Don't overburden your children with just nonstop work.
01:10:38.640 | Don't make your children hate school
01:10:41.280 | because they just do it all day, every day.
01:10:43.560 | It's not necessary.
01:10:44.820 | School and education seems to be
01:10:49.760 | a very, very effective contraceptive,
01:10:53.200 | a very, very effective way to destroy fertility rates.
01:10:56.920 | The more school that someone goes through, especially women,
01:11:01.920 | the more school that a woman goes through,
01:11:04.080 | the less likely it is that she has children
01:11:08.440 | or has many children.
01:11:09.760 | I'm not opposed to highly educated women.
01:11:13.200 | I'll talk about education in a minute.
01:11:15.280 | But we need to recognize the fact
01:11:17.000 | that if something is destroying your species survival,
01:11:22.040 | that you shouldn't just automatically accept it
01:11:24.440 | as an unqualified good.
01:11:25.980 | Your ideology needs to include expansion of the group
01:11:31.280 | and expansion of the tribe in order for it to be effective.
01:11:35.560 | And so we have to look and try to understand
01:11:37.560 | how do these things work.
01:11:38.800 | And intense schooling for too long
01:11:43.160 | is not something that is increasing birth rates.
01:11:48.840 | I think in addition to providing a joyful experience
01:11:52.840 | for your children,
01:11:53.820 | you should consider indoctrinating your children
01:11:58.360 | into experiencing the joy of family life.
01:12:02.100 | Children in general are going to rise to the ambition
01:12:05.900 | that you as a parent give to your children.
01:12:09.180 | You say to your child, you're gonna go to college.
01:12:11.860 | Guess what?
01:12:12.700 | There's a very high chance
01:12:13.760 | that your child will go to college.
01:12:15.640 | I went to college because we're the kind of people
01:12:17.720 | who go to college.
01:12:18.560 | My wife went to college
01:12:19.880 | because her dad said you're going to college.
01:12:21.640 | So she went to college.
01:12:23.160 | That was it.
01:12:24.000 | In general, it's pretty much the same thing.
01:12:27.560 | Families who are college educated,
01:12:29.380 | their children go to college
01:12:30.400 | because it is expected that their children
01:12:32.680 | will go to college.
01:12:33.880 | In many cases, children work a job
01:12:35.420 | because it's expected that you work a job.
01:12:37.040 | And this creates all kinds of issues in people.
01:12:38.760 | I have to leave my job and go be an entrepreneur.
01:12:40.560 | And it requires incredible self-determination
01:12:43.580 | for them to go and be an entrepreneur
01:12:44.740 | because their family was job-having people.
01:12:48.440 | On the other hand, it's entrepreneurial people.
01:12:50.320 | And entrepreneurial people,
01:12:51.760 | they tend to consider it normal to have businesses.
01:12:56.760 | Years ago, I was with Dan Miller.
01:12:59.560 | This is on the podcast in the archives.
01:13:00.920 | But I was with Dan Miller in Tennessee interviewing him.
01:13:03.560 | And he was talking about his daughter.
01:13:04.960 | And he was talking about the fact that with his children,
01:13:06.760 | he basically ruined his children to any kind of job
01:13:10.480 | because their entire lifetime,
01:13:13.400 | their father was always an entrepreneur.
01:13:15.740 | And they always knew what it was like to,
01:13:19.600 | they never knew what it was like to have a two-week vacation.
01:13:22.480 | They just did what they wanted to do
01:13:23.920 | 'cause that's what you do as an entrepreneur.
01:13:25.600 | You do what you want to do.
01:13:26.520 | Now, a lot of times, you do a whole lot of work
01:13:28.760 | that you don't want to do,
01:13:29.600 | but you pretty much live your life how you want to live
01:13:31.560 | when you have a business that you can control.
01:13:34.040 | And his point was that his children were either,
01:13:36.960 | some of them, they were entrepreneurs
01:13:38.280 | and very likely to be entrepreneurs
01:13:40.080 | 'cause it's hard to trade that in for the benefits of a job.
01:13:43.720 | I feel like I've pretty much destroyed
01:13:45.340 | my children's possibility of a job.
01:13:47.220 | I hope not.
01:13:48.060 | I hope they, I still want them to have jobs.
01:13:49.460 | But in terms of the lifestyle that we live as a family,
01:13:52.220 | I think my children would find it hard to imagine
01:13:56.340 | if what it would be like for a mother and a father
01:13:59.660 | to go away to a job every day.
01:14:02.620 | They've never had a mother who'd gone to a job every day.
01:14:04.820 | And so that's just kind of the expectation
01:14:08.260 | that I would, that they have about motherhood.
01:14:10.900 | And they've never had a father who had a job.
01:14:13.260 | They don't remember when I had a job.
01:14:14.960 | And while I work in an office, I'm pretty much always there.
01:14:17.980 | And so that's their entire frame of reality.
01:14:20.760 | Well, we can do this accidentally
01:14:23.580 | or we can do this intentionally.
01:14:25.620 | And what is happening is our current generation
01:14:29.380 | of young people is indoctrinated to not have children.
01:14:32.560 | We need to indoctrinate our children to have children.
01:14:36.460 | That word indoctrinate is something that causes
01:14:41.480 | a significant level of discomfort in people.
01:14:44.940 | We don't like the idea of indoctrination or propaganda,
01:14:49.380 | but in reality, I don't think we should be
01:14:52.880 | as uncomfortable with the word as possible.
01:14:55.620 | I'm sorry, as we are.
01:14:57.060 | I think that the concept that there would be
01:15:00.180 | some kind of neutrality in ideas is a myth.
01:15:05.180 | There is no neutrality.
01:15:07.380 | And so either you're going to indoctrinate your children
01:15:10.540 | with your beliefs and your vision and your philosophy,
01:15:14.300 | or someone else is going to indoctrinate your children
01:15:16.540 | with his beliefs and his vision and his philosophy.
01:15:19.860 | There is no neutrality.
01:15:21.060 | There is no neutral position really on anything.
01:15:23.900 | Now you can choose the level of pronatal indoctrination
01:15:31.020 | that you give to your children.
01:15:33.300 | Right now what we're seeing
01:15:34.580 | is there's an intense antenatal indoctrination.
01:15:37.540 | Imagine you grew up in China
01:15:39.100 | and imagine that there was a one-child policy in place
01:15:43.020 | for decades and decades and decades.
01:15:46.060 | And that if you had more than one child,
01:15:49.740 | there would be a forcible abortion.
01:15:51.740 | That indoctrination creates a society
01:15:55.500 | that can't reproduce itself.
01:15:57.860 | Now you could go to another extreme ideologically.
01:16:02.300 | You could indoctrinate your child
01:16:04.200 | that your ambition in life
01:16:05.660 | should be to have as many children
01:16:07.100 | as you possibly can have.
01:16:09.260 | And you would have a woman who's pregnant
01:16:11.500 | for 35 years of her life and has 32 children,
01:16:14.940 | or a man who has seven wives
01:16:17.100 | and seven children with each wife.
01:16:19.940 | That could be the kind of indoctrination
01:16:21.860 | that you could give.
01:16:23.420 | But that's not, those aren't the only options.
01:16:26.640 | You could indoctrinate your children
01:16:29.580 | with basically a friendly pronatalism,
01:16:32.380 | which is basically kind of how I would describe my position.
01:16:36.020 | I'm not a, I don't think that people
01:16:37.700 | should have as many children
01:16:38.600 | as they're capable of having.
01:16:40.060 | I don't think that, you know,
01:16:42.500 | I don't think that the goal
01:16:43.380 | is just to have as many children as possible,
01:16:44.740 | but I think that we should be welcoming
01:16:46.280 | and appreciative of children
01:16:47.280 | because they're an enormous good in life and in society.
01:16:50.980 | And that it should be between a husband and a wife
01:16:53.500 | and the intimacy of their own communications
01:16:55.340 | and the intimacy of their own bedroom,
01:16:57.000 | the decisions that they make,
01:16:58.140 | and no outside interference.
01:17:00.540 | That's kind of like a friendly pronatalism
01:17:02.260 | as I would describe it.
01:17:03.680 | Maybe I'll be more of some extremist in the future.
01:17:06.740 | I don't know, I don't think I will,
01:17:07.820 | but I can indoctrinate my children
01:17:10.900 | with a friendly pronatalism.
01:17:12.780 | And that's my ambition is to appreciate children
01:17:15.780 | 'cause children are the most valuable resource
01:17:18.380 | that we have in society.
01:17:20.540 | They are children, they are people.
01:17:22.740 | They are the ones who are going to solve
01:17:24.300 | all of the problems that we face right now
01:17:26.060 | and fix everything that's wrong with the world
01:17:27.860 | systematically day by day, generation by generation.
01:17:30.700 | They are an unalloyed good.
01:17:32.980 | Children are an unalloyed good.
01:17:34.860 | There is no, there is nothing bad about children.
01:17:39.120 | So children bring challenges.
01:17:41.260 | There's nothing bad about challenges.
01:17:42.740 | Challenges are good for us.
01:17:43.980 | And so the point is that you need to indoctrinate
01:17:46.660 | your children intentionally or someone else
01:17:48.860 | is going to indoctrinate your children intentionally.
01:17:51.700 | And your children are gonna be 16 years old
01:17:53.660 | thinking that they should delete themselves from the earth
01:17:56.660 | to save the planet and some other dumb philosophy.
01:18:03.220 | So why not just indoctrinate our children
01:18:05.500 | into believing that getting married and having children
01:18:09.380 | is a great thing to do?
01:18:10.980 | Every bit of sociological data
01:18:13.100 | is on the side of that being the right choice.
01:18:17.740 | And as long as we reserve appropriate levels of reserve
01:18:21.700 | to say that, hey, you may be different, right?
01:18:23.740 | You might be someone who doesn't want this, that's fine.
01:18:26.620 | But every bit of data indicates
01:18:28.860 | that this time-honored tradition of how to live your life
01:18:31.860 | and how to grow your family is a really powerful one.
01:18:35.340 | Every bit of data indicates that that's the right move.
01:18:37.620 | So let me indoctrinate you into what the data says
01:18:41.060 | and then allow for different decisions.
01:18:43.740 | If your child wants to go
01:18:45.140 | and spend 10 years living in Tibet, great, that's fine.
01:18:48.260 | I'm not gonna force you to,
01:18:49.260 | I'm not gonna drag you kicking and screaming
01:18:51.260 | into an arranged marriage
01:18:52.180 | and say you have to marry this girl right now.
01:18:53.900 | That would be absurd.
01:18:55.220 | But we shouldn't shy away from recognizing
01:18:58.100 | that we need to indoctrinate our children
01:19:00.940 | into the right beliefs that are most likely
01:19:05.340 | to leave them living happy, successful, fulfilled lives.
01:19:09.860 | And getting married and having children
01:19:11.700 | is an important component of that.
01:19:14.060 | We know that all the data is on our side.
01:19:17.340 | We also know, by the way,
01:19:18.460 | that for all the data that is not on our side,
01:19:20.780 | meaning statistical outliers,
01:19:22.020 | many people say the worst thing I ever did was get married.
01:19:23.860 | Worst thing I ever did was have children.
01:19:25.460 | We know that a lot of that was entirely avoidable.
01:19:28.300 | And so poor mate selection
01:19:30.620 | is the fundamental flaw in marriage.
01:19:34.580 | Not the institution of marriage, but poor mate selection.
01:19:37.900 | And we can control for that.
01:19:39.420 | We can adjust for that.
01:19:40.660 | We can teach our children that.
01:19:41.980 | And we need to indoctrinate our children
01:19:44.220 | into the importance of choosing a high-quality spouse.
01:19:48.340 | I talk about this with my children.
01:19:49.620 | I don't want them to be 18 years old
01:19:52.420 | and say I wanna get married
01:19:53.420 | and me saying don't marry that guy, he's a loser.
01:19:56.220 | I want my children at 18 or 20 or 25
01:19:59.180 | to be very discerning and to be thinking about
01:20:01.380 | what are the qualities that would make someone
01:20:03.380 | a good prospective husband, a good prospective wife.
01:20:06.580 | I need to be thinking about that.
01:20:07.940 | And I need to control my impulses
01:20:10.140 | and not be drawn to somebody who's bad for me.
01:20:12.780 | Oh, it just feels so good.
01:20:14.140 | This guy, he's toxic.
01:20:15.860 | She's toxic, but somehow I should pursue her.
01:20:18.300 | No, that's stupid thinking that leads to tremendous chaos.
01:20:22.820 | And don't let your children absorb that.
01:20:25.660 | It's stupid.
01:20:26.660 | You don't go after people who are bad for you
01:20:29.660 | and somehow think that if you just spend more time
01:20:31.380 | with this girl who's bad for me, but it feels so good.
01:20:34.580 | No, it doesn't work out.
01:20:36.420 | The movie ends right before the divorce.
01:20:38.820 | So don't go down that road.
01:20:39.980 | It's stupid.
01:20:40.820 | You need to indoctrinate your children
01:20:44.180 | to experiencing the joy of family life.
01:20:46.620 | We need our daughters to have ambitions to motherhood
01:20:50.460 | instead of only having ambitions
01:20:52.420 | to be a boss babe stem chick.
01:20:55.460 | It's important that motherhood be something
01:21:00.460 | that is appreciated in society.
01:21:04.380 | You and I can be the ones to change the culture around this,
01:21:09.340 | not the entire culture.
01:21:10.900 | There's gonna be a whole lot of boss babes stem chicks
01:21:13.140 | created by our culture right now.
01:21:15.460 | But you and I can start it.
01:21:17.380 | I always find it interesting that I go on Netflix
01:21:20.740 | and Netflix has an entire category of girl power movies.
01:21:24.940 | There's no category for boy power movies.
01:21:27.060 | There's no category for motherhood movies.
01:21:30.460 | There's just a category for girl power movies.
01:21:33.340 | And so we need to change that.
01:21:35.020 | We need to lionize mothers
01:21:38.580 | and we need to cause our appreciation of motherhood
01:21:43.420 | and mothers to be transformed
01:21:45.900 | so that motherhood is transformed
01:21:47.540 | into a high status occupation.
01:21:50.620 | I want my daughter to be married to a man like me.
01:21:55.060 | That's my first responsibility as a father.
01:21:57.580 | I need to be the kind of man that sets the example for her.
01:22:01.260 | That's my responsibility.
01:22:02.900 | But I want her to marry a guy like me.
01:22:04.860 | I think objectively speaking
01:22:07.300 | that my wife has a pretty great life.
01:22:09.500 | It's not perfect, it's not easy,
01:22:12.140 | but I would say that on a scale of zero to 100,
01:22:16.420 | it's pretty stinking good.
01:22:18.820 | I'm probably not a 10 as a husband, right?
01:22:21.900 | I'm not a 10 out of 10.
01:22:22.820 | There's guys out there that are richer than me,
01:22:24.660 | better looking than me,
01:22:25.940 | have better abs than I do, smarter than me.
01:22:28.740 | But in terms of the overall package,
01:22:30.620 | my ambition in life is to be a dream husband for her.
01:22:34.380 | And I wanna model what that looks like,
01:22:36.900 | not only for my good, for the health of my relationship,
01:22:40.300 | but for my daughter to aspire to.
01:22:42.780 | And I think that being a mother
01:22:45.980 | is a pretty great lifestyle choice for my wife.
01:22:50.980 | What does it mean for me to be a great husband?
01:22:54.900 | Well, it means adequately providing for my wife,
01:22:58.060 | providing the luxuries that I'm able to provide,
01:23:00.540 | retiring her from the job market
01:23:03.420 | so she can sleep in every day,
01:23:05.660 | sexually satisfying her,
01:23:07.700 | providing a strong social group for her,
01:23:09.780 | providing her with children,
01:23:11.060 | supporting her and her goals and ambitions
01:23:13.900 | and the things that are fulfilling to her.
01:23:15.980 | And as the father of my family, that's my responsibility.
01:23:19.740 | My wife's goals and ambitions are mine.
01:23:21.620 | I take them on as the father, as the leader of my family.
01:23:25.460 | And all of our family planning
01:23:27.780 | gives priority to those things.
01:23:29.820 | Now she's got her own set of duties.
01:23:31.420 | She's got her duties to be an excellent wife to me.
01:23:33.740 | She owes me loyalty and support
01:23:35.740 | and my callings and ambitions.
01:23:37.820 | She needs to create a home environment
01:23:39.500 | that provides me with peace and comfort and joy.
01:23:42.220 | She should seek to sexually satisfy me,
01:23:44.620 | to take good care of our children,
01:23:45.900 | to be a loyal partner in life.
01:23:47.740 | So there's a beautiful harmony between these things.
01:23:50.620 | But the point is that being a mother
01:23:53.740 | should be an attractive thing
01:23:58.740 | and we can model that for our daughters.
01:24:02.300 | Now, I don't myself like making abrasive remarks
01:24:06.180 | or being abrasive or taunting people,
01:24:09.060 | but what we need to do is we need to show this to the world
01:24:11.700 | and we need to raise it up.
01:24:13.020 | Because what happens is we spend so much time
01:24:14.700 | apologizing for the drunk husband
01:24:16.580 | that says, "Well, I'm gonna get me a beer,"
01:24:17.900 | and is abusive and whatnot.
01:24:19.220 | And that's such a meme that a lot of times
01:24:23.220 | our daughters and young women
01:24:25.380 | are just living their lives scared.
01:24:28.180 | They're scared that every man is drunk and abusive.
01:24:31.340 | Every man doesn't care about them.
01:24:33.620 | Every man is gonna use them and grind them up.
01:24:35.660 | And that is just not true.
01:24:37.700 | It may be that the most visible men,
01:24:39.740 | the people who are most obvious in society,
01:24:43.420 | the guys who get the most views on their toxic TikTok,
01:24:47.340 | maybe they're really toxic.
01:24:50.420 | But those of us who are not need to be equally strong
01:24:55.420 | in marketing what is good and what is satisfying,
01:24:59.460 | what is beautiful about our lifestyle.
01:25:02.620 | My favorite brand of content in the world is mother content.
01:25:06.780 | I wanna see it 100X.
01:25:09.420 | I wanna see, there's this lady,
01:25:11.140 | I don't know her name, but I'm aware of her.
01:25:15.060 | There's this lady,
01:25:15.900 | I think she lives out in Wyoming or something like that.
01:25:18.300 | She makes these Instagram things of her cooking
01:25:21.820 | this just insane food.
01:25:23.660 | And she's at this wood stove,
01:25:25.700 | and she's at this wood stove
01:25:28.100 | surrounded by little children in an apron
01:25:29.740 | looking like a 1935 housewife,
01:25:32.740 | barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen,
01:25:34.500 | and making this just like elaborately homemade food
01:25:37.660 | from all of the stuff that was grown on her property
01:25:40.340 | and whatnot.
01:25:41.740 | And the commenters love to point out
01:25:44.620 | that she's cooking on a $30,000 wood stove,
01:25:47.140 | because I don't know,
01:25:48.220 | either she or her husband is the heir or heiress
01:25:51.140 | to this vast fortune.
01:25:53.420 | And I love it.
01:25:54.260 | I love it.
01:25:55.100 | I am so grateful that woman exists.
01:25:57.140 | I hope that she gets millions and millions of followers
01:25:59.740 | because her lifestyle is attractive.
01:26:02.380 | She's surrounded by all these children,
01:26:03.900 | and she's cooking on a wood stove,
01:26:05.300 | and it's just pure luxury,
01:26:06.980 | but it's different than toxic luxury.
01:26:11.300 | We need more of that because,
01:26:13.140 | and we need more of it in public,
01:26:14.380 | in view of young men and women.
01:26:16.840 | It's hard for me to talk about my private life sometimes
01:26:22.300 | because I don't enjoy the backlash of the internet.
01:26:25.660 | I don't enjoy fighting with people
01:26:26.900 | who just wanna come and make fun of me
01:26:29.020 | of things that I hold dear.
01:26:30.860 | I also don't really wanna put my children on the internet.
01:26:32.980 | I've thought many times I should show.
01:26:35.620 | I mean, we do slide shows and family movies
01:26:38.540 | of all the places that we go.
01:26:40.220 | We visited 16 countries last year,
01:26:42.220 | and so I have a little movie that I made of each country,
01:26:44.700 | and we go through it with my children,
01:26:47.060 | and we kind of relive the memories,
01:26:49.020 | and we talk about these.
01:26:50.540 | I love my life.
01:26:51.700 | My life is awesome.
01:26:53.180 | It's not perfect, but it's awesome.
01:26:54.520 | It's really good.
01:26:56.000 | And I sometimes think like I should share more of that.
01:27:00.140 | And I'm doing that here in this context.
01:27:02.220 | And I want you to do that.
01:27:03.540 | I want you to share your life.
01:27:05.260 | I want people to see and to understand
01:27:08.140 | that your life doesn't end because you have children.
01:27:12.260 | It's not like you just can't travel the world
01:27:13.900 | because you have children.
01:27:15.260 | And maybe someday I'll decide
01:27:17.540 | that it's right for me and my family
01:27:19.060 | to put movies out online.
01:27:21.060 | But for now, I just try to support people that do it
01:27:23.580 | and just say that you create your reality.
01:27:26.620 | And it's not as though you have either a bad life.
01:27:30.380 | You create it.
01:27:34.220 | And I want to share the message
01:27:35.740 | that I'm sharing with you now
01:27:36.900 | that children are really great.
01:27:39.300 | One of my favorite memes that I saw recently
01:27:41.500 | about motherhood was this.
01:27:44.780 | I forget what the image was.
01:27:45.940 | But it's like, girls, get this.
01:27:49.260 | It's like OnlyFans, but you've got only one fan,
01:27:53.820 | and he's a subscriber for life,
01:27:56.020 | and you bear his children,
01:27:57.180 | and he pays all the bills for the rest of your life.
01:27:59.540 | Like, it's great.
01:28:00.500 | It's like OnlyFans, just one fan,
01:28:02.380 | and it works out for life.
01:28:03.820 | And it sounds ridiculous, but we need more of that.
01:28:06.100 | Because you got a whole generation of OnlyFans girls
01:28:09.260 | going around and doing everything they can
01:28:11.580 | to get naked for random men on the internet
01:28:13.260 | to pay their bills.
01:28:14.740 | And if they were just willing to be a great wife and mother,
01:28:19.740 | they would find a great guy
01:28:22.380 | who will appreciate her getting naked for him,
01:28:26.780 | and he'll pay all her bills.
01:28:28.540 | It's a pretty simple contract, and it still works.
01:28:31.340 | So let's be those who encourage our daughters
01:28:35.900 | to have ambitions to motherhood
01:28:38.180 | instead of only having ambitions
01:28:40.820 | to be boss babe stem chicks.
01:28:43.940 | We also need to build stronger men.
01:28:46.020 | Hi, I'm Chris Gethard, and I'm very excited
01:28:47.700 | to tell you about "Beautiful Anonymous,"
01:28:49.180 | a podcast where I talk to random people on the phone.
01:28:51.940 | I tweet out a phone number.
01:28:53.180 | Thousands of people try to call.
01:28:54.620 | We talk to one of them.
01:28:55.460 | They stay anonymous.
01:28:56.460 | I can't hang up.
01:28:57.420 | That's all the rules.
01:28:58.460 | I never know what's gonna happen.
01:28:59.980 | We get serious ones.
01:29:01.460 | I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison.
01:29:03.380 | I've talked to people who survived mass shootings,
01:29:05.660 | crazy funny ones.
01:29:06.620 | I talked to a guy with a goose laugh,
01:29:08.060 | somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends.
01:29:10.500 | I never know what's gonna happen.
01:29:11.940 | It's a great show.
01:29:13.100 | Subscribe today, "Beautiful Anonymous."
01:29:15.820 | Men who have ambitions for family
01:29:17.780 | and who are willing to do the hard work necessary
01:29:21.380 | to attract and deserve a high-quality woman.
01:29:25.380 | As a man and as a father,
01:29:27.380 | you are going to bear enormous burden and responsibility,
01:29:31.940 | and you'd better be ready to handle it.
01:29:34.460 | Now, the good news is that burdens and responsibilities
01:29:37.340 | in the natural course of family life
01:29:39.020 | and in business life and in most life,
01:29:41.060 | they grow progressively.
01:29:43.500 | They grow little by little,
01:29:44.900 | and as you bear one little bit of responsibility,
01:29:47.500 | you become stronger and you bear the next one
01:29:49.740 | until you turn around and you're 30 years old
01:29:51.580 | or you're 40 years old or you're 50 years old,
01:29:53.660 | and you are a giant of a man.
01:29:55.940 | That's the way that life is supposed to work.
01:29:58.460 | But you do need to be ready to handle
01:30:00.380 | the ones that you encounter.
01:30:02.180 | So you need to be a man who is in control over emotions.
01:30:05.140 | You need a man who is filled with kindness
01:30:06.940 | and consideration for other people.
01:30:09.260 | You need a man who has a strong earning ability
01:30:11.540 | and a strong work ethic.
01:30:13.500 | Women are not wrong for wanting a man
01:30:15.980 | who makes a lot of money.
01:30:17.580 | Women are absolutely right to desire a man
01:30:20.400 | who makes a lot of money.
01:30:21.660 | So you have to develop your work ethic
01:30:25.100 | and your earning ability,
01:30:26.100 | and you have to do it intentionally.
01:30:28.340 | You can develop a strong moral character
01:30:30.540 | with a minimum of vice.
01:30:32.160 | One of the great complaints I have about our popular culture
01:30:37.780 | is we celebrate vice.
01:30:41.100 | We celebrate things that are destructive.
01:30:43.220 | What has destroyed over the years more marriages
01:30:48.780 | than something like alcoholism?
01:30:51.940 | Having a drunk dad is a pretty good guarantee
01:30:55.180 | that you don't wanna have children,
01:30:56.460 | you don't wanna be a dad.
01:30:58.060 | And yet alcohol has destroyed enormous numbers of families.
01:31:03.060 | And yet in our popular culture, what do we celebrate?
01:31:07.420 | Drunkenness.
01:31:08.340 | And I complained about this a number of years ago
01:31:12.700 | when I was at a professional conference.
01:31:14.460 | And I haven't been to any kind of industry conferences
01:31:17.000 | for a few years now, so maybe it's changed.
01:31:18.740 | I hope it has.
01:31:19.900 | But it used to drive me crazy.
01:31:21.200 | You go to an industry conference,
01:31:22.380 | I would go to a podcasting conference
01:31:23.860 | or a FinCon or something like that.
01:31:25.980 | And you get up on the second day
01:31:27.500 | and the first speaker on the second day,
01:31:29.180 | hey guys, what a great party that was last night.
01:31:31.380 | I'm amazed that you're here and can anybody remember it?
01:31:33.540 | And just this constant cultural celebration of drunkenness
01:31:36.500 | which destroys families.
01:31:38.060 | Don't do that.
01:31:40.580 | Gambling, the generosity in all of its forms
01:31:44.180 | has to be gotten rid of.
01:31:45.740 | And so you need to develop, as a man,
01:31:47.460 | you need to develop strong moral character
01:31:49.500 | and get rid of vices.
01:31:50.980 | And you need to develop the ability
01:31:52.540 | to inspire confidence and trust.
01:31:55.780 | The decision that a woman would make
01:31:58.340 | to bear your children as a man
01:32:00.540 | or to be willing to be your wife
01:32:04.780 | and even consider being a full-time mother,
01:32:07.240 | in order for that to happen,
01:32:08.660 | you have to inspire confidence and trust.
01:32:13.660 | You have to be the kind of man who can inspire her in that
01:32:20.560 | because she is consciously choosing
01:32:23.100 | to make herself vulnerable if she makes that decision.
01:32:28.100 | The vulnerability that a woman endures with that is enormous.
01:32:34.140 | It is properly fear-inducing.
01:32:37.660 | And so she has to make a good decision about you
01:32:41.660 | and be confident in that decision.
01:32:44.020 | And I think that one of the biggest impacts here
01:32:46.020 | is that men themselves have become very antenatal.
01:32:50.680 | Instead of having a vision of a hundred great-grandchildren
01:32:54.460 | and your descendants being as many
01:32:55.720 | as the sands of the seashore,
01:32:57.780 | a lot of men rejoice in the extra money
01:33:05.600 | that their wife can bring in for them.
01:33:08.060 | They push her to bring in more money
01:33:11.760 | so they can buy a nicer set of golf clubs.
01:33:14.240 | It's just toxic guys
01:33:16.260 | that create the environment around themselves.
01:33:18.860 | Here's a, I'm gonna read to you verbatim,
01:33:20.640 | just this beautiful message
01:33:21.780 | that I received from a listener of mine.
01:33:23.940 | And we were talking about this in a different forum.
01:33:26.740 | And this listener wrote to me and she said,
01:33:29.080 | "Overall, the greatest impact to support these women
01:33:30.940 | "has been the shift in priority.
01:33:31.980 | "It's not just women, it's their husbands too.
01:33:34.780 | "So many women need the push to give up their career
01:33:37.260 | "and the biggest catalyst is their husband.
01:33:39.460 | "So many men are fearful of losing the second income
01:33:42.180 | "that they put pressure on their wives
01:33:43.740 | "to work full-time out of the home.
01:33:45.900 | "Then the wives put pressure on themselves to come home
01:33:48.500 | "and do the second full-time job
01:33:50.020 | "of motherhood and homemaker,
01:33:51.280 | "hence one or two kids or zero.
01:33:54.440 | "In addition, when a husband supports his wife
01:33:56.720 | "to shift her priority to being a homemaker,
01:33:59.260 | "she has time to meet other moms
01:34:00.600 | "and participate in programs like M-O-P-S
01:34:02.760 | "and thus be more encouraged, supported,
01:34:04.600 | "and as a result, feel free to have more children.
01:34:07.440 | "It's also difficult for these women
01:34:09.020 | "when they get married later
01:34:10.460 | "because they've been supporting themselves
01:34:12.080 | "for so long.
01:34:13.260 | "It can be scary to be unemployed.
01:34:15.800 | "I speak from experience.
01:34:17.420 | "When my husband asked me to stay home, I was terrified.
01:34:20.900 | "I had been supporting myself for 10 years up to that point
01:34:23.860 | "and now I was being asked to not do what I had known
01:34:26.880 | "and to be fully reliant on his income."
01:34:29.460 | So this is an important thing.
01:34:32.260 | You need to understand that for a woman to believe in you,
01:34:35.820 | you need to be worthy of being believed in.
01:34:38.780 | There's this, if we look at the current mismatch
01:34:43.780 | in the dating environment,
01:34:46.980 | there's an element of truth in a lot of the things
01:34:50.880 | that are really frustrating
01:34:52.060 | and really angering to a lot of people.
01:34:54.920 | And so filter the current content you hear
01:34:58.280 | of the complaints and the frustrations.
01:35:00.520 | Filter the current content that you hear
01:35:03.080 | and recognize that it has an application.
01:35:05.720 | I'll just give two examples, one for women, one for men.
01:35:08.680 | There's this meme online in popular culture
01:35:12.680 | about what do you bring to the table?
01:35:14.260 | That men are now asking women,
01:35:16.220 | "What do you bring to the table?"
01:35:17.920 | And of course the woman always responds,
01:35:19.340 | "Well, I am the table.
01:35:20.840 | "If you don't like that, if I'm not good enough for you,
01:35:22.780 | "then just move on, buddy."
01:35:24.600 | And what you should hear if you are a woman,
01:35:27.540 | you should hear men saying like,
01:35:29.000 | "Wait a second, why do I need you?
01:35:31.020 | "What benefit do you bring to my life?"
01:35:33.740 | That's a fair question to ask.
01:35:36.200 | And what has happened is that many women
01:35:38.760 | have been trained by our society
01:35:41.280 | to bring everything to the table
01:35:42.940 | for the man who signs their paycheck
01:35:44.760 | and nothing to the table for the man
01:35:48.000 | who gives them their life.
01:35:49.300 | That's the distinction.
01:35:52.720 | And so you need to ask yourself,
01:35:54.440 | "What do you bring to the table?"
01:35:55.960 | If you are a woman.
01:35:57.000 | "What do you actually provide to a man
01:35:59.540 | "that would cause him to wish to marry you
01:36:02.080 | "and have children with you?"
01:36:03.560 | If that's something that you desire.
01:36:06.360 | Similarly, on the flip side, it goes towards men.
01:36:10.800 | Women tend to want a man who is strong,
01:36:13.920 | who is tall, who is good looking,
01:36:16.080 | and who earns good money.
01:36:18.460 | Well, guess what, buddy?
01:36:20.360 | You gotta be those things.
01:36:22.740 | You gotta be the kind of man who can provide for your wife.
01:36:27.600 | You can't be the guy who has no ambition,
01:36:29.840 | just sitting around, I don't like to use the cliche,
01:36:33.640 | but it's true, just sitting around
01:36:34.560 | playing video games constantly
01:36:35.800 | and not able to provide for a woman.
01:36:37.760 | What do you have to offer her?
01:36:40.200 | You don't deserve her 'cause you can't offer her anything.
01:36:43.800 | So I'm not gonna go further down that,
01:36:46.040 | but you need to think about that
01:36:47.120 | and recognize that in every cliche,
01:36:50.240 | there's an element of truth.
01:36:52.040 | And if you listen through it carefully,
01:36:55.000 | you can develop yourself to attract and inspire
01:36:58.160 | the kind of relationship and lifestyle
01:37:00.400 | that you desire to have.
01:37:02.360 | We also need to increase respect for men who are fathers,
01:37:05.500 | not just men who are rich.
01:37:08.000 | So for our sons,
01:37:11.640 | fatherhood should be something that has social respect.
01:37:15.860 | In our financially driven age,
01:37:19.620 | what today we tend to do
01:37:21.880 | is we tend to raise men on a pedestal
01:37:24.220 | based upon how much money they earn,
01:37:26.540 | how many followers they have,
01:37:27.920 | or some other similar metric.
01:37:30.160 | And we don't differentiate men who have those things
01:37:34.560 | from men who are strong fathers and men of character.
01:37:38.320 | And I don't know how to do it, but we need to do that.
01:37:42.280 | I was blind to this when I was younger.
01:37:45.080 | I was a big Tim Ferriss fan.
01:37:47.000 | I was a big, well, I won't name all the names,
01:37:50.520 | but I was blind to it.
01:37:52.520 | Sorry for picking on Tim.
01:37:53.520 | I usually give a long list, but it's not necessary.
01:37:55.360 | I was blind to this.
01:37:56.520 | I thought, I wanna be like this guy.
01:37:57.840 | I wanna be like this guy.
01:37:58.680 | I wanna be like this guy.
01:37:59.520 | And today I look at them and I'm like,
01:38:00.560 | I don't really wanna be like any of them.
01:38:02.280 | I appreciate them for the wisdom that they have,
01:38:04.960 | but I wanna be like that guy over there
01:38:08.000 | who has five children and he's a pillar in his community.
01:38:12.360 | He's a leader in his local city.
01:38:16.160 | He's an elder in his church.
01:38:17.880 | He is a businessman who runs an honest business.
01:38:21.560 | And he may not make as much money as so-and-so over there
01:38:24.560 | who's destroying society does,
01:38:26.720 | but I'm not gonna raise up so-and-so
01:38:29.560 | because he makes more money
01:38:30.920 | and his work is destroying society.
01:38:32.680 | I'm not alleging that Tim Ferriss is destroying society.
01:38:35.800 | What I'm saying is we need to filter that.
01:38:38.080 | And we need to be very careful of who we ourselves admire
01:38:41.360 | and then who we encourage to be admired in the world.
01:38:46.240 | And it's not easy to do.
01:38:48.240 | It's not easy to do,
01:38:50.720 | but we need to figure out new ways to do that.
01:38:53.400 | And we need to bestow status on men who are fathers,
01:38:58.000 | both biological fathers,
01:38:59.480 | just simply due to their being fathers,
01:39:01.640 | and then the fullness sense of the word,
01:39:03.160 | the word that we all, the sense that we all aspire to.
01:39:06.040 | Being a father should be a high-status occupation.
01:39:10.120 | One of my favorite things from the Bible
01:39:13.440 | is that a man's qualifications
01:39:15.600 | for public Christian ministry
01:39:17.560 | are all based upon his being a father.
01:39:22.640 | If you look at the qualifications
01:39:24.680 | for a leader, an elder, and Titus, and Timothy,
01:39:27.680 | it's based upon his family.
01:39:31.080 | Because if a man can't govern his own family,
01:39:33.360 | how can he govern the house of God?
01:39:35.320 | I wish for a culture.
01:39:36.800 | I desire a culture in which we take that farther.
01:39:39.840 | We always need to be cautious
01:39:44.760 | that we don't exclude men and women who don't marry,
01:39:49.680 | who don't have children.
01:39:50.600 | I think that we could take it in the wrong direction.
01:39:53.280 | But we should appreciate men who demonstrate themselves
01:39:57.360 | as strong and capable men in the intimacy of their home,
01:40:01.120 | where their children respect them and admire them,
01:40:03.680 | and their family is well-run and is happy and contented.
01:40:07.280 | And then we should promote them
01:40:08.600 | to other positions of responsibility,
01:40:10.600 | 'cause they've learned a lot.
01:40:12.040 | Hopefully, these qualitative factors
01:40:16.720 | will help our children want to build families
01:40:19.680 | and dynasties of their own.
01:40:21.760 | But they're still going to need our financial support.
01:40:24.360 | And I think that we can do a lot
01:40:27.160 | to support our children financially
01:40:29.760 | so that they can themselves go on and repeat the process.
01:40:34.760 | If these qualitative factors are present,
01:40:39.400 | I don't think that the money is strictly necessary.
01:40:47.040 | What I mean is, if you're raised
01:40:49.640 | in a loving, caring environment to parents who are paupers,
01:40:54.600 | and yet they instill values in you,
01:40:57.360 | you have a contented home life filled with joy and happiness,
01:41:01.080 | you can solve everything else yourself.
01:41:06.960 | There are many poor children
01:41:09.920 | who have been raised in great circumstances,
01:41:14.000 | though those circumstances reflected financial poverty,
01:41:17.520 | who have gone on and gone to college
01:41:19.520 | and gotten great jobs and continued on.
01:41:22.160 | On the other hand, there are lots of people
01:41:24.200 | who are raised in wealth
01:41:26.160 | who grow up in a toxic family environment
01:41:28.560 | and don't go on to reproduce, grow the family,
01:41:32.840 | and you have just mass chaos and catastrophe
01:41:35.320 | in the family line.
01:41:38.120 | So if you could only have one or the other,
01:41:40.400 | I would beg you to have the qualitative factors.
01:41:43.120 | But as a listener of Radical Personal Finance,
01:41:45.120 | the data shows me that you have above-average resources.
01:41:48.600 | So my question is, can you spend that money
01:41:52.280 | to help these qualities pass on through the age?
01:41:57.280 | We all know you can.
01:42:01.640 | One thing that I hear very frequently from wealthy people
01:42:05.920 | is that they so appreciate that their parents paid
01:42:08.000 | for their college education so they could start debt-free.
01:42:10.400 | We'll talk more about that in a moment.
01:42:12.560 | And so they wanna do the same thing for their children.
01:42:14.280 | This is a good expression of spending money on children
01:42:17.200 | where it really pays off
01:42:18.160 | because now your children can get married sooner.
01:42:20.280 | They don't have to pay off a bunch of student loan debt.
01:42:22.520 | Your children can have children sooner
01:42:24.880 | 'cause they're not deeply in debt.
01:42:27.120 | There's lots of things that you can do,
01:42:28.440 | but let's expand it a little bit.
01:42:29.880 | Let's break it apart.
01:42:31.200 | So as parents, recognize that there are individual steps
01:42:34.160 | to family formation for our children.
01:42:36.840 | Family formation means first attracting a spouse.
01:42:42.760 | In some cultures, it might mean being able to attract
01:42:46.280 | someone with whom you can arrange a spouse,
01:42:48.040 | but in our culture, it's pretty much the children
01:42:50.200 | need to be the ones attracting the spouse.
01:42:52.320 | So your child will need to be able to attract a spouse,
01:42:57.320 | ideally at a young age.
01:42:58.960 | Your child will need to be able to select his or her spouse,
01:43:03.960 | then marry the person, and then have children
01:43:08.040 | and continue down the line.
01:43:09.800 | And so let's break it apart into those component parts
01:43:12.400 | so that we can think about ways that we could influence that.
01:43:16.080 | The first component of attracting a spouse
01:43:17.920 | is if at all possible, we want to help our children
01:43:21.960 | to be highly attractive.
01:43:25.320 | I use that word broadly,
01:43:26.520 | and I want you to fill in what that means,
01:43:28.280 | but we wanna help our children to be highly attractive
01:43:30.800 | in every sense of the word.
01:43:32.720 | That includes physicality.
01:43:34.160 | We want our children to be in great shape,
01:43:36.440 | not to be fat, not to be weird, not to be skinny,
01:43:38.640 | not to be diseased.
01:43:39.480 | We want our children to be strong,
01:43:41.800 | healthy specimens of young people.
01:43:44.080 | So anything you can do to help that happen
01:43:46.240 | is really valuable.
01:43:48.080 | I was with a family recently and they said,
01:43:50.280 | we're not gonna tell our children
01:43:51.640 | what sport they have to play, but you gotta play a sport.
01:43:54.540 | It's necessary that you play a sport.
01:43:56.120 | You're always gonna play a sport.
01:43:57.160 | Well, that's a really great way to help your children
01:43:59.880 | to be active at all times and develop the physicality
01:44:03.480 | that goes with this.
01:44:05.960 | John Taylor Gatto, the well-known educational,
01:44:09.360 | well, the well-known educator
01:44:10.880 | and then commentator on education.
01:44:14.280 | He had 12 qualities of elite,
01:44:17.920 | basically the elite private schools teach their children
01:44:21.560 | or ways, things that the elite teach their children
01:44:24.120 | coming from all the finest boarding schools in the world.
01:44:26.600 | And one of those things that elite families
01:44:30.000 | always teach their children
01:44:31.040 | is a strong involvement in athletics
01:44:34.200 | because they know that athletics is the primary way
01:44:38.360 | of developing physical grace that is necessary
01:44:41.640 | to be a strong and attractive human being.
01:44:43.920 | I think he makes a good argument.
01:44:45.000 | I really appreciate it.
01:44:45.840 | I have his, I keep his 11 and I go through,
01:44:47.600 | I think it was 11 or 12, I don't remember,
01:44:48.880 | but he goes through all these qualities
01:44:50.080 | and I go through it constantly and say,
01:44:51.240 | how am I doing on my own education for my children?
01:44:55.240 | I may not have my children at Le Rose,
01:44:58.480 | but I can still bring a Le Rose education to my children
01:45:03.080 | if at all possible.
01:45:04.000 | And so athletics are an important thing.
01:45:05.760 | You wanna be strong, you wanna be in great shape.
01:45:07.400 | You want your children to be physically attractive.
01:45:10.040 | Today's world, we could just put that under for men,
01:45:12.080 | the looks maxing movement.
01:45:13.800 | Health, hygiene, style, personality, confidence,
01:45:16.560 | all of these things are important.
01:45:18.760 | When I look back at myself as a young man,
01:45:21.320 | I didn't even, I never thought
01:45:22.680 | about my physical attractiveness.
01:45:24.400 | Sounds ridiculous to say it,
01:45:25.860 | but I think a lot of people don't.
01:45:27.680 | Young men and maybe women do more, but as a man,
01:45:30.880 | most young men, I don't think much
01:45:32.760 | about physical attractiveness
01:45:34.160 | and yet physical attractiveness matters.
01:45:36.520 | And physical attractiveness is something
01:45:40.160 | that will ultimately allow your child to have access
01:45:45.160 | to a broader pool of potential spouses
01:45:50.320 | than otherwise he or she would.
01:45:52.720 | And it's everything.
01:45:54.080 | So when you're spending money on your child's braces,
01:45:57.060 | that's a good move.
01:45:58.480 | If you got weird teeth, my teeth,
01:46:00.760 | 'cause I didn't wear my retainer,
01:46:01.960 | my teeth have gotten all crooked and it bothers me.
01:46:04.200 | And so I'm probably gonna go ahead
01:46:05.240 | and start correcting mine here in the coming months
01:46:09.520 | and years and see if I can get them fixed.
01:46:11.680 | And so it's, whether you're an adult
01:46:14.600 | or whether you're younger, if you've got weird teeth
01:46:16.760 | and they're all weird shaped, then get them fixed.
01:46:18.780 | We can get them fixed.
01:46:20.140 | Many aspects of physical health
01:46:22.180 | and physical beauty can be changed.
01:46:25.520 | There's, you know, for men, well, for men and for women,
01:46:28.520 | one of the great problems that's facing our young people
01:46:31.760 | is they've got weird jaw formation.
01:46:34.120 | And you've got all these like men and women
01:46:35.960 | who have these sunken faces and their jaws are all set back
01:46:39.100 | and they're not strong and handsome
01:46:40.400 | and confident and beautiful.
01:46:42.560 | And there's a couple of things related to it.
01:46:45.000 | First of all, some of it could be genetics.
01:46:46.840 | A lot of it could be just related to the food
01:46:48.800 | that people are having, too many carbohydrates,
01:46:50.420 | too much sugar, even not enough chewy meat.
01:46:53.020 | So go ahead and buy the Greek gum
01:46:55.440 | and give it to your children to help them to chew a lot.
01:46:57.580 | Feed chewy cuts of meat.
01:46:59.520 | Do mewing exercises to help your children
01:47:01.800 | to develop strong jaws, get proper orthodontia
01:47:05.360 | so that your children's faces are properly constructed.
01:47:09.540 | If you've got fat children, get them on fat.
01:47:12.000 | If you have lots of acne, help them to stop.
01:47:15.120 | I think that there's a,
01:47:16.720 | I've abandoned a philosophy that I used to have.
01:47:20.060 | And the philosophy was this.
01:47:21.880 | I don't think that we should judge people by circumstance.
01:47:24.920 | So let me back up for a moment.
01:47:28.880 | I don't believe that we should judge people
01:47:31.040 | by external traits that can't be controlled.
01:47:36.040 | So if you meet a guy or a girl who has a really ugly face,
01:47:41.800 | I don't think that it's appropriate to judge that person
01:47:45.960 | for having an ugly face.
01:47:48.080 | And I don't think that,
01:47:49.600 | and I don't think we should ever do that.
01:47:51.720 | Beauty, the beauty that we most value
01:47:54.880 | should always be the beauty that comes from within,
01:47:56.880 | from virtue, from character, from an inner beauty,
01:47:59.240 | from an inner righteousness.
01:48:00.440 | That's the beauty that we should value.
01:48:02.440 | And so I don't want to go through life judging people
01:48:06.080 | based upon the beauty of someone's face.
01:48:09.360 | On the other hand,
01:48:10.220 | I think it's entirely reasonable to judge people
01:48:12.480 | for circumstances they can control.
01:48:14.700 | So if a man or woman is super fat,
01:48:17.380 | that can generally in almost all cases be controlled.
01:48:20.460 | If someone is just ugly because of things
01:48:23.280 | that could be easily changed, right?
01:48:25.200 | Then maybe that's an appropriate place to say,
01:48:29.040 | this is saying something about your character.
01:48:31.560 | The problem that I have is that I think that beauty
01:48:34.680 | is properly characterized as an expression of health.
01:48:39.200 | And I changed my opinion on that a couple of years ago
01:48:42.600 | from reading the book that I promoted various times,
01:48:45.680 | and I'm blanking on the name and I'm blanking on the author,
01:48:47.680 | Dr. Catherine, someone or other.
01:48:51.160 | And she convinced me that beauty
01:48:56.640 | is a pretty decent substitute for health,
01:48:59.280 | that the things that we call beautiful
01:49:01.600 | have to do with attractiveness and for health.
01:49:04.360 | And I was talking with a friend of mine,
01:49:06.000 | and this friend has teenage daughters,
01:49:08.580 | and this friend is feeding her,
01:49:10.560 | they've chosen in their family to have an all,
01:49:15.560 | basically to be basically carnivore as a family.
01:49:19.280 | And her daughters, I was admiring her teenage daughters,
01:49:22.000 | just had this beautiful, totally clear, glowing skin.
01:49:25.000 | And she said, "Yeah, my daughters are the ones
01:49:26.840 | "who really want us to be on carnivore."
01:49:28.680 | Because they said that when they stopped being carnivore
01:49:32.600 | and they went back, they started to break out in acne,
01:49:34.760 | started to have these, they didn't like their skin,
01:49:38.760 | their skin wasn't in good shape.
01:49:41.000 | And I thought even something as obvious as skin,
01:49:45.480 | you would say, well, the quality of my skin,
01:49:47.280 | whether or not I have acne or how much acne I have,
01:49:49.960 | I shouldn't judge somebody for that.
01:49:51.760 | But in reality, it's probably a reflection
01:49:55.800 | in some degree of how healthy someone is.
01:49:58.560 | And being, trying to attract a healthy and beautiful spouse
01:50:03.560 | is a smart move from a financial perspective,
01:50:06.800 | from a long-term planning perspective.
01:50:09.480 | Health, beauty is an indicator of health,
01:50:14.280 | and health is something that is going to
01:50:17.400 | significantly reflect on the quality and satisfaction
01:50:22.400 | that you have in a marriage relationship.
01:50:27.080 | And so this is something that should be optimized for.
01:50:30.200 | When I married my wife, I made a commitment to her
01:50:34.760 | to have and to hold in sickness and in health,
01:50:39.520 | for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,
01:50:41.240 | till death do us part.
01:50:43.020 | In sickness or in health is a very big marital commitment,
01:50:47.900 | a very big vow.
01:50:49.620 | If I were, once I marry her,
01:50:54.620 | I have a commitment to her that doesn't end
01:50:59.820 | until either she dies or I die.
01:51:02.040 | That can be a very burdensome commitment to carry out.
01:51:09.460 | We should always honor people
01:51:11.460 | who fulfill their marital vows to a sick spouse,
01:51:14.900 | to an ailing spouse.
01:51:15.820 | That's proper for us to honor those people,
01:51:18.540 | no question about it.
01:51:20.440 | But you have a choice in who you marry.
01:51:25.440 | You are never required to go into a marriage relationship
01:51:31.220 | by anybody else or any circumstance.
01:51:35.180 | You have a choice.
01:51:36.740 | You don't have a choice after you're married.
01:51:40.260 | And when I reflect on the quality of my life
01:51:42.380 | and the satisfaction that I have with my wife
01:51:45.020 | and with our children,
01:51:46.740 | I realize how a significant component of that satisfaction
01:51:50.860 | is due to just basically having good health.
01:51:53.460 | I have good health, she has good health,
01:51:55.020 | we have healthy children.
01:51:56.380 | It makes a big difference in my life.
01:51:58.860 | I would have a much harder time
01:52:02.060 | being as confidently approving of marriage
01:52:05.420 | being a great life decision.
01:52:07.780 | If I had a wife who was sickly,
01:52:09.860 | I had children who were sickly,
01:52:12.680 | it would be harder for me to express
01:52:14.900 | such an unhindered approbation of the quality of my life.
01:52:19.900 | So breaking that back to the beginning,
01:52:22.740 | when I was in college and considering various girls
01:52:26.180 | that I was attracted to, I wasn't thinking about health.
01:52:28.980 | If you had told me I should be thinking about health,
01:52:32.540 | I probably would have said, oh, come on, that's no big deal.
01:52:34.580 | Love is love.
01:52:35.540 | I'm just gonna fall in love with the girl who's right for me.
01:52:37.300 | She's the one.
01:52:38.360 | I didn't have very mature thinking on it.
01:52:42.100 | Today, I would do it very differently.
01:52:44.180 | And today, I would tell my children, I do, I will,
01:52:47.300 | I do and will, that one of the things
01:52:49.260 | you need to screen your spouse for is health.
01:52:52.060 | And so all of us need to be as healthy as possible,
01:52:54.840 | as attractive as possible,
01:52:56.220 | as physically attractive as possible,
01:52:57.820 | because physicality, physical attractiveness,
01:53:00.400 | especially external physical attractiveness
01:53:02.340 | is closely related to health.
01:53:04.460 | And you want to choose somebody who is healthy
01:53:07.860 | in order for you to have the highest probability
01:53:11.420 | of having a satisfying and enduring relationship.
01:53:14.700 | We want to help our children to be highly attractive
01:53:20.020 | so that they can attract
01:53:22.060 | as the most attractive potential spouse possible.
01:53:26.860 | Now, the key here is not to optimize for the wrong factors.
01:53:32.620 | So we don't want to optimize, for example, for promiscuity.
01:53:36.780 | That's not a goal.
01:53:38.100 | We know that sexual promiscuity dramatically damages
01:53:43.100 | the long-term prospects of men and women to marry
01:53:47.280 | and their satisfaction with marriage.
01:53:49.020 | So we don't want to optimize for promiscuity.
01:53:51.980 | We want to optimize for marriage,
01:53:54.540 | not fornication, but marriage.
01:53:57.060 | That's the context for it.
01:53:58.620 | And so we should train for that
01:54:00.940 | and we should do everything possible
01:54:02.220 | to help our children develop attractiveness.
01:54:05.300 | All skills of attractiveness can be learned and developed.
01:54:09.460 | Physical attractiveness is a skill.
01:54:15.100 | There are lots of component skills,
01:54:16.660 | component skills of eating, exercise,
01:54:20.060 | body sculpting, muscle building, et cetera.
01:54:23.100 | These are skills that can be learned
01:54:24.420 | and can be put into place.
01:54:26.100 | I was young and dumb,
01:54:27.180 | and I always thought that this was kind of accidental.
01:54:30.140 | I watched this video this last week or a few couple days ago
01:54:32.980 | that really inspired me.
01:54:34.620 | And it was a guy named,
01:54:36.380 | there's a YouTuber named Brandon Carter.
01:54:39.040 | He's this dude, he's super buff,
01:54:41.160 | body of a Greek God type guy.
01:54:45.300 | And he's 40 years old.
01:54:46.740 | He's got this big platform and really attractive guy
01:54:50.300 | from a physical perspective.
01:54:52.300 | I don't need to pull him down.
01:54:55.860 | He's an attractive guy from a physical perspective.
01:54:57.620 | He did this video where he shared how
01:55:02.620 | he travels the world with a food scale.
01:55:06.100 | And literally, he travels the world
01:55:08.460 | and he weighs everything he eats.
01:55:11.060 | And his point was, he says, I care about this result.
01:55:14.660 | I'm not gonna leave it to chance.
01:55:17.100 | So I weigh everything that I eat
01:55:19.180 | so I can properly log it in MyFitnessPal
01:55:21.300 | and make sure that I'm in a caloric deficit.
01:55:23.500 | That video was inspiring to me
01:55:25.960 | because as a lifelong not physical guy,
01:55:28.380 | as a lifelong fat guy,
01:55:30.540 | when I was younger, I always thought it was accidental.
01:55:33.340 | I thought that like the muscular guys,
01:55:36.140 | my friends with the great six pack
01:55:37.780 | and the really attractive shoulders and whatever,
01:55:40.700 | I thought, well, it just comes that way, right?
01:55:43.580 | It's all genetic.
01:55:44.860 | Nonsense, it's a lifestyle decision.
01:55:47.700 | And Brandon Carter travels the world with a food scale?
01:55:50.180 | I don't.
01:55:51.100 | He looks like that?
01:55:52.180 | I don't.
01:55:53.020 | And it was a good slap in the face
01:55:54.540 | that I needed to say like,
01:55:56.240 | yes, you're gonna be a weirdo
01:55:57.500 | and you're gonna be a weirdo by weighing your scale,
01:55:59.260 | weighing your food when you're traveling the world.
01:56:00.780 | But if you want these results, this is what you gotta do.
01:56:03.780 | And so similarly,
01:56:05.220 | so that's why I say that physical attractiveness is a skill.
01:56:10.900 | Carter has developed skills that I haven't yet developed.
01:56:14.060 | So if I want what Carter has,
01:56:16.240 | then I can develop skills that match Carter's
01:56:18.740 | and I'll get closer to what Carter has.
01:56:21.340 | That's the point.
01:56:22.420 | So physical attractiveness is a skill.
01:56:25.200 | Personal confidence is a skill.
01:56:28.300 | It's something that we need to teach
01:56:29.780 | to our sons and our daughters.
01:56:31.300 | Teaching them personal confidence,
01:56:32.900 | helping them to develop personal confidence,
01:56:34.840 | helping them to develop an attractive personality.
01:56:38.540 | Personality is simply a skill.
01:56:39.980 | It's not an innate thing.
01:56:41.020 | Yes, there's an element of innate, like inherited qualities,
01:56:45.500 | but we can all develop personality.
01:56:47.620 | I can turn on personality, I can turn it off.
01:56:49.800 | I can change it.
01:56:50.640 | Learning charisma and all of these things
01:56:52.720 | that ultimately cause people to be attracted to us
01:56:55.160 | are skills.
01:56:56.000 | And I think that if you'll take that
01:56:58.160 | and then think about how can I invest
01:56:59.980 | into helping my child to develop these skills,
01:57:02.640 | then you'll have a really great path to run on.
01:57:05.640 | Young people need to have at least one thing
01:57:09.440 | that they feel really confident about.
01:57:11.520 | Ideally, it's more than one,
01:57:13.200 | but at least one thing that they feel really confident about.
01:57:15.680 | And you as a parent can nurture that,
01:57:17.920 | you can pay for that, you can help that to be acquired.
01:57:20.840 | We also need to help our children know how
01:57:25.440 | to attract a spouse.
01:57:27.040 | And I mean the actual actions to take to attract a spouse.
01:57:31.700 | They need to learn how to market themselves effectively.
01:57:37.440 | So physicality is an expression,
01:57:38.800 | but learning how to dress in an attractive way.
01:57:41.840 | Learning how to dress in a way
01:57:43.280 | that attracts the right kind of attention.
01:57:45.600 | I think men get away with a lot more than women do
01:57:49.720 | in terms of if a guy is in good shape,
01:57:53.000 | he can kind of be a slob
01:57:54.100 | and a lot of girls will overlook that.
01:57:56.080 | But the converse is not always true.
01:57:58.680 | And so with our daughters,
01:58:00.120 | if you want your daughter
01:58:02.200 | to attract a very high quality man,
01:58:06.220 | then you need to proactively train her
01:58:08.720 | and teach her how to do that.
01:58:11.200 | I don't yet have any teenagers,
01:58:13.080 | but here's my thought on teenagers.
01:58:15.080 | I was interacting with a client of mine recently.
01:58:17.560 | We're talking about his 15 year old daughter
01:58:19.600 | who was going out and shopping for a dress
01:58:21.720 | to go to a school dance.
01:58:24.400 | And he made these comments.
01:58:26.240 | By the way, comments that anger Joshua,
01:58:28.760 | there's just a few of them.
01:58:29.720 | Number one is don't come at me with like,
01:58:31.940 | does your wife work?
01:58:32.860 | I think I talked about that earlier.
01:58:34.600 | That one annoys me.
01:58:37.120 | Number two, don't come at me
01:58:38.320 | with any of this macho nonsense.
01:58:40.360 | When my daughter gets,
01:58:42.440 | I'm gonna be sitting there cleaning my gun
01:58:44.000 | when the guy comes over and I'm gonna scare him off
01:58:46.680 | and I'm gonna scare off all her boyfriends.
01:58:49.080 | I hate that.
01:58:50.240 | And I don't like to be confrontational in real life.
01:58:53.200 | There are a few things that I confront men on
01:58:55.680 | every single time I hear them,
01:58:56.920 | and that's one of them.
01:58:58.080 | Don't give me any of that macho nonsense
01:59:02.920 | about I'm gonna scare away my daughter's boyfriends
01:59:05.360 | and I'll talk about that when she's 30 years old.
01:59:08.280 | You don't want that.
01:59:10.120 | You want your daughter to have a boyfriend.
01:59:14.200 | A really, really great one
01:59:16.520 | that you are thrilled to welcome into your family
01:59:18.760 | as a son-in-law.
01:59:20.360 | You want her to bring home a phenomenal man
01:59:24.220 | to interact with you and to join your family.
01:59:26.080 | That's what you're looking for.
01:59:28.160 | You don't want her to be scared,
01:59:31.000 | you don't want to be some loser redneck
01:59:34.800 | sitting there cleaning your shotguns
01:59:36.480 | so she doesn't bring guys home to meet you.
01:59:38.800 | But what you want her to do
01:59:41.200 | is you want her to learn how to attract
01:59:43.000 | the right kind of attention,
01:59:45.000 | not the wrong kind of attention.
01:59:47.200 | And so you need to teach your daughter
01:59:49.680 | as a father, as a mother,
01:59:51.560 | you need to teach your daughter
01:59:52.920 | how to attract the right kind of attention,
01:59:55.280 | how to address in a way
01:59:58.160 | that's going to attract the eye
01:59:59.880 | of a really high-quality man,
02:00:02.320 | not a low-quality man.
02:00:04.080 | And there's a skillset for that,
02:00:05.880 | how to market yourself effectively,
02:00:07.440 | how to express your personality.
02:00:09.640 | So I have lots of detailed thoughts on that.
02:00:12.280 | I just want to point it out to you
02:00:13.480 | that don't follow for these stupid tropes.
02:00:17.960 | Think in advance and teach your daughter
02:00:20.040 | how to dress so that she can land
02:00:22.200 | a world-class husband.
02:00:23.780 | Because for her life and for her happiness
02:00:26.200 | and for her fulfillment,
02:00:27.480 | that will be an amazing thing for her.
02:00:30.000 | And you want her to do that at 18, at 20, at 22.
02:00:33.400 | Because at 18 and 20 and 22,
02:00:35.720 | she's got the pick of the litter
02:00:37.240 | in terms of number of high-quality spouses
02:00:40.600 | that she could attract.
02:00:41.960 | And that's the best pathway for success,
02:00:45.520 | not for you to engage in some bozo, macho nonsense.
02:00:49.400 | And somehow then she's 35 years old
02:00:51.840 | and you've scared away all her boyfriends.
02:00:53.800 | And now you say, all right, honey,
02:00:54.640 | you're 35 years old, you can go and marry.
02:00:56.740 | So attracting a spouse is a whole set of skills
02:01:00.120 | and you can invest into your children
02:01:02.240 | to help them to be attractive.
02:01:06.160 | Selecting a spouse.
02:01:08.040 | In terms of selecting a spouse
02:01:09.960 | to help form the foundation,
02:01:11.400 | you need to give thought to how your children
02:01:13.160 | are likely to meet a potential spouse.
02:01:16.840 | When I was in college,
02:01:17.680 | I made fun of people who talked about the MRS degree,
02:01:20.000 | the idea that a girl would go to college to land a husband.
02:01:23.280 | I thought even at the time that it was a stupid joke.
02:01:28.080 | And okay, maybe it reflected reality a long time ago,
02:01:32.520 | but it was just a stupid joke.
02:01:34.420 | I no longer think that.
02:01:35.880 | I now think a very reliably good reason to go to college
02:01:39.880 | is to interact with a selection of carefully filtered,
02:01:43.720 | high quality men and women
02:01:45.760 | with hopes of potentially attracting a spouse.
02:01:49.020 | The thing I most value about my undergraduate degree
02:01:51.560 | is I met my wife, that's it.
02:01:54.400 | And if I had to do it all over again,
02:01:56.480 | and that was the only thing I got out of college,
02:01:58.200 | I would do it all over again.
02:01:59.920 | The cool thing about colleges and other institutions
02:02:03.960 | are that you have the ability to bring together
02:02:08.760 | a very strong and highly concentrated pool
02:02:15.120 | of attractive people who are filtered based upon something.
02:02:21.320 | In college, they're at least filtered
02:02:23.120 | based upon academic ability,
02:02:24.920 | which is strongly correlated to IQ.
02:02:28.200 | And you want your children to be smart.
02:02:30.780 | And a lot of IQ is inherited from mother and father.
02:02:35.100 | So you want to marry someone with the highest IQ possible.
02:02:38.220 | Well, we don't give potential dates IQ tests,
02:02:43.120 | but the homogamy that is created in the college environment
02:02:46.380 | or the environment of college lends itself very well
02:02:51.380 | and makes itself highly suited for homogamous relationships.
02:02:54.980 | And so college is a great screener of IQ.
02:02:59.100 | And it's one of the reasons we see a distinction
02:03:02.220 | and a separation of social classes in the United States
02:03:05.020 | is that more and more, all the smart people go to college
02:03:07.700 | and the dumb people don't.
02:03:08.780 | And so you have these social classes
02:03:12.500 | that are separating themselves from each other.
02:03:15.560 | There may be other screens.
02:03:18.460 | I went to a Christian university.
02:03:20.740 | The reason I did that, even though when I was 18 years old,
02:03:24.240 | was I said, you know what?
02:03:25.900 | If I go and sit down at the lunch table
02:03:27.260 | and introduce myself to five people,
02:03:29.180 | I want there to be a good, a strong chance
02:03:32.840 | that of the five, several of them would be people
02:03:36.740 | that I would want to be friendly with
02:03:37.920 | and be friends with on an ongoing basis.
02:03:40.300 | And that philosophy served me well.
02:03:44.440 | Given the chance to do it over again,
02:03:46.600 | I'd do it over again in a heartbeat.
02:03:48.520 | I would not want to go to a government college
02:03:51.540 | and be where the applicants,
02:03:56.200 | I'm talking about IQ and I can't get my words out,
02:03:58.560 | where the applicants are screened for IQ
02:04:01.520 | and academic ability, but not screened to some degree
02:04:05.440 | for lifestyle or character qualities.
02:04:10.440 | I don't want to be friends with the majority of the people
02:04:13.660 | at a lunch table in the government college.
02:04:16.360 | I'm more likely to want to be friends
02:04:17.880 | with the majority of people in the private institution
02:04:20.480 | or the Christian institution or something else
02:04:23.000 | where there's some kind of screening environment.
02:04:25.160 | I'm not interested in going to keggers on the weekend.
02:04:27.240 | I'm interested in people who are serious about life
02:04:29.380 | and serious about it.
02:04:30.220 | So you can screen for that based upon the kind
02:04:32.080 | of institution that you attend.
02:04:33.580 | So I think you should be careful
02:04:34.960 | and you should encourage people to do that.
02:04:36.560 | And one of my concerns that I have
02:04:37.920 | with the current anti-college commentary
02:04:41.840 | that many people have, which is in many cases,
02:04:45.640 | probably rightly placed, meaning that college
02:04:48.240 | is not as valuable as it once was,
02:04:50.060 | is that there's a signaling component of college.
02:04:52.560 | And so if you're a young man who could go to college
02:04:56.360 | and doesn't, you now have a significant barrier
02:04:59.920 | to overcome with a woman who could go to college and does.
02:05:04.000 | And we know in the data, on matchmaking data,
02:05:07.120 | that this is an important factor for women,
02:05:09.000 | and I think it's rightly important.
02:05:11.480 | It's not something that should be ignored.
02:05:13.120 | Now, it can be overcome.
02:05:14.000 | Any individual factor can be,
02:05:15.720 | but you should be careful about that.
02:05:17.560 | I believe as a parent that it's my responsibility
02:05:21.640 | to create a lifestyle for my teens
02:05:26.280 | that they have a broad exposure to many potential spouses.
02:05:32.840 | If you want to have grandchildren and great-grandchildren,
02:05:37.120 | take the responsibility seriously and recognize
02:05:40.120 | that it begins with, first and foremost,
02:05:42.880 | creating attractive children
02:05:44.840 | who have the character qualities,
02:05:46.840 | all of the things that will help them
02:05:50.080 | to be good husbands and wives.
02:05:51.640 | And then it's also a component of exposure.
02:05:56.640 | Finding a great spouse is an element
02:05:59.800 | of how many people are you exposed to
02:06:03.000 | and how attractively are you able
02:06:05.480 | to represent yourself to those people.
02:06:07.120 | It's just a numbers game.
02:06:09.000 | There is no one person in the world who's right for you.
02:06:12.080 | There is a person that you choose as your spouse
02:06:15.040 | that you're able to attract and that you had exposure to.
02:06:17.760 | So in addition to the qualitative aspects
02:06:20.600 | of investing into your children to help your children
02:06:22.760 | to be as attractive of a potential husband
02:06:25.280 | or as attractive as a potential wife
02:06:26.840 | as you can help them to be,
02:06:29.080 | you want to expose them
02:06:30.240 | to the widest possible candidate pool.
02:06:32.400 | And the question I always have,
02:06:33.800 | if a young man or young woman is talking to me
02:06:36.040 | and says, "I want to get married,"
02:06:36.920 | my question is, "How many women did you meet last month?
02:06:40.680 | "Tell me the number."
02:06:42.240 | And if a guy isn't meeting any women,
02:06:45.320 | then you know he's not serious about being married.
02:06:47.560 | And I always start my speech with,
02:06:49.480 | "You need to develop yourself into being an attractive man."
02:06:53.080 | But the second component of that
02:06:55.320 | is how many women did you meet?
02:06:56.760 | And so as a parent, I think it's my responsibility.
02:06:59.320 | If I want my children to be married
02:07:02.320 | and I'm gonna take it seriously,
02:07:03.920 | then it's my responsibility to help them
02:07:07.800 | to have exposure to broad numbers of people.
02:07:12.300 | So you should look for social outlets for this.
02:07:14.640 | Number one, this is a very good reason
02:07:16.640 | if there's a local school in your area,
02:07:19.800 | it may, even if it's an expensive local school,
02:07:22.120 | but the kind of people at it
02:07:23.680 | are the kind of people that would reflect your culture.
02:07:26.000 | This is a very good reason
02:07:27.000 | for you to pay expensive private school tuition
02:07:29.560 | so that your children are exposed to a peer group
02:07:32.280 | that would reflect your family's values,
02:07:34.640 | your family's social class,
02:07:36.160 | and the kinds of things that you do.
02:07:38.240 | Social class in today's world matters enormously.
02:07:43.100 | What has happened is if you look at some of the data,
02:07:46.320 | I've been reading Brad Wilcox's recent book on marriage.
02:07:49.640 | And what's so interesting, the point that he makes in that,
02:07:51.400 | and he's made it for years in his essays,
02:07:53.920 | is, excuse me, the point that is fascinating about it
02:07:58.920 | is that the higher social classes,
02:08:04.400 | and I'm measuring that based upon socioeconomic status,
02:08:08.080 | income and wealth,
02:08:09.520 | the higher social classes are the most likely classes
02:08:13.860 | to say that you can and should live however you want.
02:08:18.440 | So it'll be very unusual for you to find a rich person
02:08:21.280 | who will say, you should get married and stay married,
02:08:23.680 | and men and women should marry each other.
02:08:25.520 | On the contrary, wealthy people are very likely to say,
02:08:28.680 | hey, you live however you wanna live.
02:08:30.280 | You do you, man, you do you, right?
02:08:33.040 | That would be what they would say.
02:08:34.940 | But in reality, their lifestyle decisions
02:08:37.800 | are the exact opposite of that.
02:08:39.580 | They get married, they stay married.
02:08:42.040 | And the selection of a spouse is very, very important.
02:08:45.180 | So one of the things that's interesting
02:08:46.820 | is that if you look at the data,
02:08:49.380 | all of the upper class components,
02:08:52.700 | so for example, a couple that's married is,
02:08:55.580 | sorry, a couple with high educational achievement
02:08:59.620 | is more likely to be more religious.
02:09:04.900 | If you look at religious trends in the United States,
02:09:07.260 | the more highly educated someone is,
02:09:09.280 | the more likely they are to be religious.
02:09:11.100 | And the more enduring the marriage is.
02:09:14.680 | So these social class things that the wealthy people,
02:09:18.360 | they say one thing, but they're enforcing
02:09:23.360 | and reinforcing with their lifestyles something different.
02:09:28.360 | That's where we are.
02:09:29.640 | And so if you want your child to have access
02:09:32.660 | to a social class that encourages marriage,
02:09:36.200 | that's going to see it through,
02:09:38.200 | then you probably want to send your children
02:09:40.880 | to expensive religious schools
02:09:43.300 | because there's the highest exposure to people
02:09:46.560 | who are going to reflect those values.
02:09:49.040 | And so spending money on that intentionally
02:09:51.120 | is a smart move, it's a good move.
02:09:54.120 | In addition to schools,
02:09:55.600 | or if you don't have access to schools
02:09:58.000 | and things like that that are part of your choice,
02:10:00.320 | make sure that your children are exposed
02:10:01.840 | to a broad range of people their age.
02:10:06.280 | And so one of my goal, my decisions is that,
02:10:11.280 | especially with teenagers,
02:10:13.140 | I will make certain that my children are involved
02:10:15.240 | in many social groups.
02:10:17.320 | And it can be everything from a local camp
02:10:19.240 | that you love to attend, some kind of youth rally,
02:10:22.200 | or some political movement, or something like that.
02:10:24.760 | But your children need broad exposure to many people
02:10:27.720 | to have a high chance of them being exposed
02:10:30.840 | to different kinds of people
02:10:31.660 | so they can start to understand the kinds of people
02:10:33.200 | that they would be a good match for,
02:10:34.880 | but also have a high chance of meeting someone
02:10:37.160 | who is a good match from a natural perspective.
02:10:39.960 | And so you can spend money on that.
02:10:41.680 | So if you have young children as I do,
02:10:43.760 | plan to be spending lots of money on travel
02:10:46.520 | and on dues and organization fees
02:10:49.040 | and school expenses and things like that
02:10:50.720 | when your children are teenagers.
02:10:52.240 | And hopefully that will continue through college and beyond
02:10:54.340 | if they haven't met somebody when they are a teen
02:10:58.000 | and initiated a relationship that might result in marriage.
02:11:01.960 | In terms of selection,
02:11:04.240 | we also wanna be super intentional
02:11:05.880 | about teaching our children what to look for
02:11:09.520 | in a high quality spouse.
02:11:11.880 | If you're listening to me at this point, however long,
02:11:13.760 | I'm over two hours into this podcast.
02:11:15.240 | If you're listening to me,
02:11:16.160 | there's a good chance that you're married or wanna be.
02:11:18.800 | But if you're married,
02:11:19.620 | you know what makes for a good relationship.
02:11:23.040 | You probably don't wanna say it,
02:11:24.800 | just like I don't always wanna put all my things out
02:11:26.440 | on the internet.
02:11:27.400 | You probably don't wanna put it in a tweet
02:11:28.840 | and wait for the mob to pile on you
02:11:30.320 | for your unacceptable opinions.
02:11:32.600 | But you know the things that make for a good husband
02:11:35.520 | or a good wife.
02:11:36.840 | You know the aspects of compatibility
02:11:38.880 | and the features to look for.
02:11:41.000 | So train your children in that.
02:11:43.080 | Help them to be thinking about that.
02:11:44.480 | Helping them to be looking out for those things.
02:11:47.760 | Earlier I was making fun of the bad boy complex.
02:11:51.160 | It's so cliche and yet it's so true.
02:11:55.400 | Women wanna be attracted to the man,
02:11:57.400 | and I know he's not good for me,
02:11:58.640 | but I'm just so into him.
02:12:00.280 | This is stupid behavior.
02:12:01.960 | Teach your daughters not to do it.
02:12:03.940 | Think with your brain, not with your emotions,
02:12:06.720 | and control your emotions with your brain.
02:12:09.120 | Emotions are important, but they are a stupid master.
02:12:12.720 | So teach your children that.
02:12:14.400 | Teach your children to be questionable
02:12:17.000 | when they're attracted to someone
02:12:18.120 | who's clearly not a good fit for them.
02:12:20.300 | Teach them about the character clues to look for.
02:12:23.440 | So I've shared some of them,
02:12:24.600 | but no complaints to my parents, I appreciate that.
02:12:29.400 | But I've got a long list of things
02:12:31.480 | that I wanna make sure my children
02:12:32.560 | are looking for in the world.
02:12:34.780 | Everything from physical health, I've already described.
02:12:36.760 | I never thought to look for physical health.
02:12:38.840 | And maybe if I had been interested in a girl
02:12:40.640 | who wasn't healthy,
02:12:41.460 | I bet my parents would have said something.
02:12:43.100 | But by that time, it's too long and too late.
02:12:45.000 | And we're living in a world in which in our current moment,
02:12:48.680 | young people are, as best I can tell,
02:12:52.960 | there's not a strong cultural movement towards analysis.
02:12:57.640 | What I mean is that you're expected to be attracted
02:12:59.500 | to somebody no matter what, and it's just in you.
02:13:01.240 | Your sexual attractions and your romantic attractions,
02:13:04.080 | they're these innate things that you can't control
02:13:06.160 | and you just are who you are.
02:13:07.720 | And people make stupid decisions
02:13:09.200 | because of this mindset and this philosophy.
02:13:10.840 | And they go out into the world thinking that this is true,
02:13:13.280 | and then they screw up their lives.
02:13:15.580 | So I think that's dumb, and we can do better.
02:13:18.180 | So let's train our children, and we have the data.
02:13:21.000 | Any one of us can invite a marriage therapist
02:13:22.940 | over for dinner and say,
02:13:24.080 | "Hey, marriage therapist who talks to hundreds of couples
02:13:26.600 | "who are in the process of divorcing,
02:13:28.700 | "what are the things that you're teaching
02:13:30.120 | "your children to do?"
02:13:31.280 | And we can have that conversation and we can learn
02:13:34.000 | about what not to do.
02:13:35.640 | All the research is there available for us.
02:13:38.020 | And that's why it annoys me that so many men especially,
02:13:42.320 | but men are scared of marriage 'cause they somehow think
02:13:44.640 | that a 50% divorce rate is accidental.
02:13:46.920 | It's not an accidental statistic.
02:13:48.480 | It can be controlled based upon good decisions
02:13:50.880 | at every level of this.
02:13:55.940 | Selecting a spouse, teach your children to select.
02:13:57.860 | Now, marrying the spouse, okay?
02:13:59.820 | Marrying the woman, marrying the man.
02:14:03.440 | We used to have strong social pressure in favor of marriage
02:14:06.980 | before sexual activity and before children.
02:14:09.320 | That social pressure is basically gone.
02:14:12.280 | We need to bring it back on a consistent basis.
02:14:16.440 | Sexuality outside of marriage causes enormous destruction.
02:14:23.140 | Sexuality within marriage causes enormous happiness.
02:14:26.880 | You may not be able to control the broader culture
02:14:30.560 | of your country.
02:14:31.400 | I can't control the broader culture of my country,
02:14:34.360 | but we can control the culture of our family.
02:14:38.700 | And we can teach children soberly
02:14:41.020 | the facts about marriage and sexuality.
02:14:44.740 | And we need to be very clear.
02:14:47.260 | The data on this is strong in terms of the damaging impact
02:14:51.660 | that promiscuous sexuality has
02:14:54.460 | on long-term relationship satisfaction.
02:14:56.780 | Similarly, marriage at one point in our cultures
02:15:03.740 | was strongly supported by communities.
02:15:07.420 | It can be strongly supported again.
02:15:10.180 | We may not be able to fix the tragedy of no-fault divorce
02:15:13.440 | in the United States of America, probably not,
02:15:16.220 | but we can still provide the social support
02:15:20.060 | for marriage in our communities.
02:15:22.280 | If somebody is, and I'm not gonna go through
02:15:26.180 | step-by-step how to do it, but it has to be done.
02:15:28.500 | It has to absolutely be done.
02:15:30.320 | There are always people in the top 20% of couples
02:15:37.760 | who are gonna sail into marriage and sail through marriage
02:15:40.580 | and have no problem whatsoever,
02:15:42.340 | and they need no community support for marriage whatsoever.
02:15:46.100 | There's probably always gonna be a bottom 20% of people
02:15:48.980 | who no amount of community support,
02:15:50.700 | no amount of counseling, no amount of,
02:15:52.500 | they're just broken people who their marriages
02:15:54.740 | are destined to fail catastrophically.
02:15:57.460 | It's the middle 60% that we should be concerned about.
02:16:01.020 | And the strong social pressure
02:16:03.500 | to be cautious before marriage,
02:16:05.900 | and then to maintain marriage,
02:16:07.360 | we can keep a significant portion of that middle 60%
02:16:11.540 | of marriages intact and time for the emotions to dissipate
02:16:15.100 | and for people to realize, you know what,
02:16:16.480 | we're better off together.
02:16:17.860 | And so to the extent that you have influence
02:16:20.460 | in your community, learn to support marriage
02:16:23.380 | so we can work with that 60% and improve that.
02:16:26.220 | It's really important.
02:16:27.740 | Financially speaking, we need to pull apart
02:16:30.460 | the different components of marrying someone
02:16:35.460 | and see how they can be financially supported.
02:16:39.140 | The first component is attractiveness,
02:16:42.220 | meaning is he a moneymaker?
02:16:46.180 | Can he provide for me if you're a woman?
02:16:48.440 | Women care about how much money men earn.
02:16:52.860 | And I believe that that is right and they should.
02:16:56.260 | Men don't have the same consideration.
02:16:59.140 | Men do not generally care how much money a woman earns.
02:17:02.780 | And the kind of man who cares about how much money
02:17:04.780 | a woman earns is probably not the kind of man
02:17:07.140 | who wants to have children and build a family,
02:17:10.940 | build a legacy.
02:17:12.380 | So we have to separate this based upon men and women.
02:17:15.740 | But it's right for men to be expected to be earners.
02:17:22.900 | And in a moment, I'll talk about how to facilitate that.
02:17:25.400 | But the first thing is how to signal that appropriately.
02:17:28.580 | There needs to be a strong indication
02:17:30.260 | that this man is a good earner
02:17:31.740 | and there needs to be some measure of his wealth.
02:17:35.900 | I didn't intend for this podcast
02:17:37.260 | to become the beast that it's become,
02:17:39.100 | but at its core, there needs to be financial disclosure,
02:17:44.100 | but at the proper time.
02:17:46.380 | And so a man needs to be earning enough
02:17:48.260 | and there should be an indication of financial stability.
02:17:52.300 | Now, the traditional way
02:17:53.740 | that a man showed his financial attractiveness
02:17:57.020 | in many cultures was doing things like having a home,
02:18:00.820 | having a job, having a house,
02:18:02.580 | preparing something for his wife,
02:18:04.500 | preparing a life to bring his bride into.
02:18:07.760 | In our current time, most of that has gone away
02:18:10.820 | in just favor of an engagement ring.
02:18:13.340 | And an engagement ring is probably important
02:18:17.380 | in terms of a signal or a token of a man's ability.
02:18:21.800 | So I'm not the guy who's telling you
02:18:24.060 | to buy a ring from a bubblegum machine and give it out.
02:18:27.900 | Because there's an element
02:18:29.140 | at which a man demonstrates his worth for his bride
02:18:32.300 | and demonstrates his ability to provide
02:18:34.540 | based upon some external thing,
02:18:36.920 | some bubble, some proof of it.
02:18:40.300 | We don't have a dowry system,
02:18:41.720 | but finances have always been an important component
02:18:44.120 | of marriage throughout history, and they still are.
02:18:46.840 | However, I would say an engagement ring
02:18:49.380 | should probably be less important than a debt-free house.
02:18:52.720 | So finding an ability to say,
02:18:54.240 | "Hey, here's a debt-free house,"
02:18:55.600 | that should probably take priority over an engagement ring.
02:18:59.680 | So consider and make sure
02:19:01.280 | that we are choosing signals of financial ability
02:19:06.280 | that are appropriate
02:19:07.440 | for the long-term success of the couple.
02:19:11.680 | Weddings should be funded by the community, not the couple.
02:19:15.960 | A huge impediment right now to marriage
02:19:18.960 | is the cost of a wedding.
02:19:21.000 | Well, duh, if you're a young couple
02:19:24.120 | and you think that it's your job somehow
02:19:26.080 | to throw an enormous party
02:19:27.240 | so all your guests can get drunk on your dime,
02:19:30.160 | you can't afford that.
02:19:32.080 | Weddings should be a community affair.
02:19:33.880 | And what has happened is we've broken our communities,
02:19:36.480 | we've approved men and women shacking up together,
02:19:41.480 | and then we've somehow said that that's okay,
02:19:44.580 | and then in 10 years,
02:19:45.600 | after you've shacked up together for 10 years,
02:19:47.740 | then we'll come to the party that you throw.
02:19:49.720 | That's not the way it is.
02:19:51.400 | The community that a person is involved in
02:19:53.960 | has always been an important component of marriage.
02:19:56.520 | So the community enforces proper social order
02:20:00.480 | by expecting marriage as a prerequisite for sex.
02:20:03.800 | And then the community comes together
02:20:05.440 | and ideally should create the wedding
02:20:07.980 | so that the couple can make their commitments,
02:20:10.040 | make their public vows one to another,
02:20:11.640 | and the community supports that.
02:20:12.840 | And that's a fundamentally important part
02:20:14.800 | of community stability.
02:20:16.560 | So as a parent who is looking to invest into your children,
02:20:23.440 | I think it's right for you to consider paying for weddings.
02:20:26.920 | And that's a proper and right expression of money.
02:20:30.560 | You can figure out how much it is.
02:20:32.240 | My point in this podcast is simply to show
02:20:36.560 | that if you desire to help your children
02:20:38.600 | to get married and have children
02:20:40.260 | and to do it at a young enough age
02:20:41.840 | so that we can change some of these fertility rate problems,
02:20:44.720 | then paying for weddings is a reasonable goal.
02:20:48.840 | It should also be reasonable
02:20:50.360 | that if you yourself don't have the financial capacity
02:20:52.960 | for it, that you have a community that can do it,
02:20:56.040 | that have a community that can come together,
02:20:57.740 | can have a great big potluck after church,
02:21:00.480 | have a great big potluck in the park
02:21:02.240 | and throw a wedding, throw a party for someone.
02:21:04.960 | If you want, if you, as I do,
02:21:07.480 | if you are a man or a woman in your community
02:21:10.280 | and you want to see marriages built and be strong,
02:21:14.720 | and you want to see all of the good things
02:21:20.240 | that come from that, then you need to be willing
02:21:23.520 | and I need to be willing to do some of the work
02:21:25.640 | to support that and not just sit by
02:21:27.680 | and poke fingers at statistics,
02:21:29.920 | but do the work to support couples in that.
02:21:33.340 | That's our responsibility.
02:21:35.000 | Also in terms of marriage,
02:21:38.160 | financial impediments to marriage must be limited.
02:21:42.080 | The biggest financial impediment to marriage
02:21:43.800 | is student loan debt or some other form of debt,
02:21:46.480 | but student loans are the big one.
02:21:48.440 | If my daughter is going or my son is going
02:21:53.440 | and gonna marry a woman and he finds out
02:21:56.440 | that she's got $150,000 of student loan debt
02:21:59.400 | for a non-high income producing career,
02:22:03.000 | I'm gonna strongly encourage him
02:22:05.240 | that this is an enormous negative factor.
02:22:08.080 | I wouldn't say it's an ultimately disqualifying factor
02:22:12.900 | of anything really, 'cause all of these factors,
02:22:16.360 | they need judgment and ability.
02:22:18.120 | I don't think that just having,
02:22:19.240 | oh, this is absolutely disqualifying is the case.
02:22:22.280 | There's very few of those, but it's an enormous red flag
02:22:25.680 | and if he marries her, it will be an enormous impediment
02:22:29.800 | to their life for the coming years.
02:22:31.800 | Same thing both ways.
02:22:33.320 | So be aware, be very cautious of student loan debt
02:22:37.000 | and teach your children to be very cautious of it
02:22:39.400 | and if possible, I mean, sorry,
02:22:41.600 | student loan debt can always be avoided.
02:22:43.120 | There's always a way and in most cases,
02:22:45.720 | avoiding it is the right move.
02:22:48.520 | Now, some specific suggestions for young men
02:22:51.640 | and how we can help our young men to be prepared.
02:22:55.600 | We need to optimize and rethink
02:22:57.760 | our entire educational system and income generation
02:23:01.920 | of the system that we have right now
02:23:03.480 | and help our young men to optimize education
02:23:06.400 | and income generation at an early age.
02:23:09.360 | One of the big problems that we have
02:23:10.840 | is I think marriages generally work best
02:23:13.760 | if a couple is close in age.
02:23:16.800 | So we don't want to have a 40-year-old son
02:23:20.640 | who's marrying a 20-year-old daughter.
02:23:22.640 | That's not ideal.
02:23:23.800 | Much better to have a 23-year-old son
02:23:26.160 | marrying a 23-year-old girl, excuse me.
02:23:29.080 | Son and daughter was not what I intended to say.
02:23:32.600 | We don't want a 40-year-old man marrying a 20-year-old girl
02:23:34.760 | if it can be avoided.
02:23:35.920 | We want 23-year-olds to marry, 25-year-olds to marry,
02:23:38.600 | 20-year-olds to marry.
02:23:39.560 | We want people to marry in an age bracket
02:23:42.800 | where they're similar to one another.
02:23:44.560 | The problem is that if a man is expected to provide
02:23:48.920 | and be wealthy and established
02:23:50.760 | and able to make lots of money,
02:23:53.080 | then generally he needs some time to make that happen.
02:23:56.320 | And so it's a very unusual 20-year-old
02:23:58.600 | who is able to financially attract a girl.
02:24:02.800 | It's much more likely that he'd be 30 or 35
02:24:05.280 | when he's able to attract a high-quality girl.
02:24:08.000 | On the flip side, we want our daughters to be attracted
02:24:10.720 | to men who can provide for them.
02:24:13.440 | The problem is that the man who can provide for her
02:24:16.200 | is probably not gonna be able to do that
02:24:18.160 | until after a decade of working,
02:24:20.760 | of earning and making money.
02:24:23.520 | And she's probably gonna be significantly past
02:24:26.600 | her prime fertile years able to have children.
02:24:29.040 | And this is the numeric problem
02:24:31.040 | that couples are facing right now.
02:24:33.200 | That a woman's highest period of fertility
02:24:35.480 | comes from middle teenage years and into 20s.
02:24:38.440 | By the time she's 30 years old,
02:24:39.880 | she's lost 90% of her eggs.
02:24:41.800 | Her pregnancies are likely to be more challenging.
02:24:44.840 | And every year that goes by into her 30s,
02:24:47.440 | it becomes more difficult.
02:24:48.880 | So it's very difficult to start having babies
02:24:50.880 | at 30 years old and have six of them by 40.
02:24:53.200 | That's pretty rough.
02:24:54.880 | It's much easier to start at 20 and have six babies by 40
02:24:58.480 | without it being a major problem.
02:25:00.400 | But the problem is how does a 20-year-old
02:25:01.960 | select a high-quality man who's also 20 years old?
02:25:06.960 | So we need to work on this.
02:25:09.920 | And there's a couple aspects to it.
02:25:11.340 | Number one, a lot of our current delayed marriage
02:25:15.840 | is due to very high educational requirements
02:25:18.680 | for our current society.
02:25:20.840 | And these educational requirements are fine.
02:25:22.920 | They are what they are.
02:25:23.760 | They're real, they're important.
02:25:26.480 | And we can't just toss them aside
02:25:29.280 | and say that we don't need them anymore.
02:25:32.000 | They are important and we need to pay attention to them
02:25:34.720 | because at the end of the day,
02:25:36.800 | it's good to be highly educated.
02:25:39.040 | But we also need some alternative methods.
02:25:41.880 | So first, we can put a lot of education,
02:25:44.780 | much more education into the teenage years
02:25:47.840 | than we currently do.
02:25:49.620 | But we also need to put education and income generation
02:25:52.660 | into the teenage years.
02:25:54.300 | A lot of educational time is wasted with frivolity.
02:25:58.380 | And while I'm a fan of being in a classroom dynamic
02:26:02.260 | where you can meet potential spouses,
02:26:04.180 | a lot of it is a waste of time.
02:26:06.100 | And so the emphasis that I'm trying to say is
02:26:09.120 | we need to help young men to be earning money
02:26:11.440 | at an earlier age so they can build confidence
02:26:14.160 | in their earning abilities and start building skills
02:26:17.440 | that will pay off significantly for them
02:26:19.640 | in the fullness of time.
02:26:21.080 | Now, I think this is one big reason
02:26:22.840 | why the United States really shines here.
02:26:24.440 | In many countries, young people can't even work
02:26:26.680 | until they're age 18.
02:26:28.080 | In the United States, 13 or 14 or 15 in most states,
02:26:31.360 | you can work and generate gainful employment.
02:26:33.800 | So that's good to have job experience.
02:26:36.900 | I have lots of thoughts on what that should look like
02:26:39.100 | for teenagers, but the point is it's good
02:26:41.340 | and that there's job opportunities for teenagers.
02:26:46.140 | Teenagers need to go after them.
02:26:47.980 | And it's a balance because education is important,
02:26:50.660 | hobbies and avocations are probably also important,
02:26:53.260 | but earning ability is important.
02:26:54.980 | And a man who's been earning money for himself
02:26:57.700 | and paying for his own bills
02:26:59.300 | is going to have a much higher degree of confidence
02:27:01.460 | and is gonna have the confidence
02:27:02.760 | that he could support a wife if he needed to
02:27:05.680 | and if he chose to.
02:27:06.960 | So I think that we should not extend childhood like we do
02:27:10.240 | until a very late age by extending schooling out
02:27:12.940 | for long, long periods of time,
02:27:14.640 | but let's compress those things a little bit
02:27:16.640 | and let's recognize that they can be done side by side.
02:27:19.400 | Young men should be productive in their teen years
02:27:21.640 | while also becoming highly educated.
02:27:24.840 | In addition, young men should be taught by you and by me
02:27:28.640 | to be serious about their finances.
02:27:31.180 | Young men should be establishing their financial base
02:27:34.200 | with an eye towards optimizing for marriage and children,
02:27:38.440 | not necessarily optimizing
02:27:40.380 | towards maximum net worth or frivolity.
02:27:43.280 | My regret of my teenage years
02:27:46.640 | is that I engaged in too much frivolity
02:27:48.760 | and I did a lot less frivolity than a lot of people,
02:27:52.040 | but there are other pathways.
02:27:53.900 | Years ago, I interviewed Steve Maxwell on the show
02:27:56.600 | and I liked his sons, sorry, his book.
02:27:59.440 | He has a book called "Raising Our Sons
02:28:02.540 | to Buy Debt-Free Houses," something like that.
02:28:05.220 | And what he showed in that book
02:28:07.200 | from his personal family experience
02:28:09.420 | was that all of his sons were able to,
02:28:13.680 | with their own labor and their own savings,
02:28:16.360 | all of his sons were able to buy and pay cash
02:28:20.260 | for an individual single family home prior to marriage,
02:28:24.780 | in some cases as early as I think late teenage years,
02:28:27.340 | 18, 19, some of them early 20s, but prior to marriage.
02:28:31.020 | Now, this was in the context of a town in Kansas,
02:28:34.460 | so lower cost of living than some other places,
02:28:37.700 | but that should factor into it.
02:28:39.420 | And so interestingly, his sons all married
02:28:41.940 | and his sons all have various grandchildren.
02:28:44.820 | And so you can see the connection between that,
02:28:47.780 | that that was a good and proper move for them.
02:28:52.780 | And I don't see why more of us shouldn't do that.
02:28:56.820 | Children and teenagers,
02:28:59.060 | let me just use the word adolescence 'cause not children.
02:29:01.660 | I don't want children to work for money necessarily.
02:29:05.380 | Adolescents and teenagers can work for money
02:29:07.780 | and they can save money and we can teach them to do that.
02:29:10.900 | And so you can either teach your child
02:29:13.540 | to spend all of his money on mindless consumerism,
02:29:18.260 | or you can teach your child to have the goal
02:29:20.340 | of buying a debt-free house by the time he gets married.
02:29:24.420 | And your child will probably achieve the goals
02:29:26.460 | that you teach him to accomplish, teach him to go for.
02:29:29.760 | So pay attention to that and recognize
02:29:31.460 | that these are worthy things that can be done.
02:29:36.360 | So let's help young men to be more serious at a young age
02:29:41.140 | and that way they can be more established
02:29:45.820 | and more attractive to a high-quality potential wife
02:29:49.320 | at a younger age instead of having to wait
02:29:52.020 | until he's 30 or 35 years old to be able to attract her
02:29:56.400 | 'cause that's a major problem
02:29:58.740 | of our current fertility rate crisis.
02:30:01.860 | It's not as severe as the other factor though,
02:30:05.420 | which involves our young women.
02:30:07.660 | One of the enormous problems
02:30:12.180 | in the current declining fertility
02:30:15.220 | is that women are waiting significant amounts of time
02:30:20.140 | before having babies.
02:30:21.660 | All of the reasons that they're waiting make sense.
02:30:26.440 | But they're all culturally induced reasons.
02:30:30.160 | If you look at the kind of normal expected strategy
02:30:33.960 | of a young woman today, normally speaking,
02:30:37.800 | a young woman is going to be strongly encouraged
02:30:41.640 | to finish high school before having a baby.
02:30:45.640 | And so one of the enormous declines,
02:30:49.680 | let me read from an article here,
02:30:51.600 | I'll read from an ABC News article.
02:30:54.100 | (clears throat)
02:30:56.240 | So this ABC News article on the current fertility rate,
02:30:59.300 | talking about how there's a significant decline
02:31:01.160 | and I'll start here.
02:31:02.280 | Aside from an increase in teen births in US
02:31:06.600 | fall to record low as overall total rate drops by 2%.
02:31:09.800 | So this is the same article that I just,
02:31:11.320 | or the same data that I led the show with,
02:31:13.900 | but we're talking about another factor of it.
02:31:20.760 | In 2023, there were 3.59 million births recorded,
02:31:24.180 | a 2% decline from the 3.66 million recorded in 2022,
02:31:28.420 | a 2% decline year over year,
02:31:30.620 | according to the report from the CDC.
02:31:32.740 | This follows what has been a general decline
02:31:34.660 | since the mid-2010s.
02:31:36.700 | Between 2015 and 2020, the number of births fell
02:31:39.660 | an average of 2% per year from 2015 to 2020,
02:31:43.380 | including a decline of 4% from 2019 to 2020.
02:31:48.680 | Skipping on, aside from an increase in 2006 and 2007,
02:31:52.820 | the teen birth rate in the United States
02:31:54.780 | has been continuously declining since 1991.
02:31:57.960 | From 2007 through 2023, rates for younger teens,
02:32:01.540 | ages 15 to 17, and older teens, ages 18 to 19,
02:32:05.680 | declined by 8% and 6% per year,
02:32:08.500 | respectively, the report found.
02:32:10.740 | Reasons for the decline in teen pregnancy are not clear,
02:32:13.300 | but the CDC says evidence suggests
02:32:15.660 | it's due to a mix of more teens
02:32:17.260 | abstaining from sexual activity
02:32:19.100 | and more sexually active teens using birth control.
02:32:22.380 | Birth rates also declined for women
02:32:24.380 | between ages 20 to 29 and ages 30 to 39.
02:32:29.300 | For preteens and teens between ages 10 and 14
02:32:32.380 | and women aged 40 and older,
02:32:34.020 | rates were relatively unchanged from 2022 to 2023.
02:32:38.340 | So here we have the story
02:32:39.940 | of declining birth rates in words.
02:32:42.680 | Now, none of us want preteens to be having babies.
02:32:46.740 | None of us do.
02:32:48.300 | Most of us don't want teens to be having babies.
02:32:51.180 | I would like to offer just a small qualification of that
02:32:56.180 | to say that I think it'd be lovely
02:32:59.280 | if 18-year-old girls have babies,
02:33:01.620 | 19-year-old girls have babies.
02:33:02.900 | I think that's fantastic.
02:33:04.460 | I have a friend of mine who they,
02:33:07.020 | he and his wife, now wife,
02:33:09.220 | conceived their first three babies out of wedlock
02:33:12.180 | starting when she was, I think, 17,
02:33:14.580 | and they wound up having six babies
02:33:16.740 | and built it into a great family
02:33:18.420 | and everything has worked out.
02:33:21.500 | I am never one to encourage premarital sex
02:33:24.800 | or pregnancy outside of marriage.
02:33:28.060 | The data would indicate, though,
02:33:30.220 | regardless of what I would say about it,
02:33:31.740 | that this is an important source of births for a society.
02:33:36.740 | If you look at the fertility rates
02:33:39.240 | and reproduction rates throughout Latin America,
02:33:42.220 | the decline in unexpected unwanted teen pregnancy
02:33:47.220 | has resulted in a huge component
02:33:51.820 | of the collapse of birth rates.
02:33:53.460 | Previously, prior to widespread contraception,
02:33:59.300 | previously, the unexpected unintended teen births
02:34:04.300 | made an enormous component
02:34:09.020 | in overall Latin American fertility.
02:34:12.320 | Today, due to the collapse of unintended teen pregnancies,
02:34:17.040 | the total fertility rate in much of Latin America
02:34:20.160 | has broadly collapsed.
02:34:21.740 | This is one of those paradoxes
02:34:25.820 | where I'm acknowledging the numerical truth
02:34:28.480 | without endorsing the societal dysfunction
02:34:31.520 | that we don't want teens to be having babies
02:34:34.480 | outside of wedlock.
02:34:35.640 | That is not the goal.
02:34:36.880 | But those babies outside of wedlock
02:34:39.240 | actually had a positive effect on total fertility rate.
02:34:42.520 | And that positive effect is now significantly declined.
02:34:46.960 | But back to the kind of the normal course
02:34:48.920 | of a young woman's life in today's world.
02:34:51.560 | It'd be very normal to say,
02:34:52.480 | "You need to finish high school."
02:34:53.640 | Okay, 18 years old.
02:34:55.320 | Then for most people,
02:34:57.560 | especially from an audience like mine,
02:34:59.400 | most of us would say, "Well, you need to go to college."
02:35:01.680 | And today, women are going to college
02:35:03.200 | at enormously high rates.
02:35:04.920 | And very few women want to get married
02:35:07.760 | and very few women want to have children
02:35:09.360 | until they get out of college.
02:35:11.480 | I think we should question that assumption, by the way,
02:35:13.680 | which I'll come back to in a moment, but that's the case.
02:35:16.320 | So now she's probably gonna be 22 or 23 years old.
02:35:19.640 | Then the entire purpose of going to college
02:35:22.440 | for most young women is to prepare themselves for a career.
02:35:27.440 | And so therefore, she needs to go on and get a career
02:35:29.960 | and she needs to establish herself in a career
02:35:33.560 | before having babies.
02:35:35.040 | In many cases, not necessarily before getting married,
02:35:38.360 | although marriages and relationships,
02:35:41.320 | it's not that easy for modern women
02:35:43.840 | to nail down a guy into a marriage.
02:35:46.040 | There's a whole lot of women living in relationships
02:35:48.160 | of various undefined forms, situationships,
02:35:51.360 | whatever it's called.
02:35:52.960 | So it's not as easy as it once was
02:35:54.660 | for a woman to get married,
02:35:57.800 | even though she'd be an attractive girl
02:35:59.880 | because the whole dating marketplace has changed.
02:36:03.320 | The point is that in many women's minds
02:36:05.440 | and in their ideal timing,
02:36:06.560 | she's going to establish herself in her career,
02:36:09.760 | which probably takes about a decade from say 23 to 33.
02:36:13.720 | Now, if she's able to find a high quality guy,
02:36:16.840 | enormous question there related
02:36:19.920 | to a woman's basic hypergamous tendencies
02:36:23.200 | to want to marry someone who is her superior,
02:36:25.860 | if she's gonna find a guy that she's willing to accept,
02:36:28.640 | and if she's able to convince him to marry,
02:36:30.720 | which is difficult in today's world,
02:36:33.060 | then that often puts her at say 30 something
02:36:36.480 | before having babies,
02:36:37.960 | which means there's not generally much time
02:36:40.680 | for her to have babies.
02:36:41.920 | And this is especially acute
02:36:45.160 | given how difficult the load can be on her
02:36:50.160 | is that is her husband ideally,
02:36:53.300 | is her husband even gonna be willing to support her?
02:36:56.380 | What's the cost gonna be
02:36:57.320 | for her walking away from her career?
02:36:58.680 | It's enormous financial cost for a young woman
02:37:01.160 | who has dedicated 20 years of her life
02:37:03.100 | to preparing herself for a career,
02:37:04.900 | and now she's supposed to walk away from that
02:37:06.860 | when all of her social clout and value
02:37:11.640 | is being expressed based upon her earning ability.
02:37:14.740 | That's a significant challenge for a young woman.
02:37:17.860 | So we need to change various aspects of this,
02:37:23.880 | and we need to do it intentionally.
02:37:25.220 | The first thing is we need to optimize for motherhood
02:37:30.920 | without neglecting the possibility of the contrary.
02:37:33.780 | I find it challenging to figure out
02:37:35.720 | how to express these things appropriately,
02:37:37.120 | so you're gonna have to listen carefully.
02:37:39.720 | We need to optimize for motherhood
02:37:42.440 | without neglecting or harming our young women
02:37:46.000 | who may not ultimately turn out to be mothers.
02:37:48.680 | That's a challenge.
02:37:51.300 | So there are some people
02:37:52.140 | who would take an extreme form on these views.
02:37:54.500 | You would have an extreme feminist form
02:37:56.480 | that would say you don't need to be a mother,
02:37:57.600 | you don't need a man,
02:37:58.440 | so let's just optimize everything for career.
02:38:00.220 | You go, boss babe.
02:38:01.520 | Then there might be a very fundamentalist
02:38:03.940 | religious backlash that says we don't care about careers,
02:38:06.660 | you just need to have a mother.
02:38:07.540 | We want you to have as many babies as you possibly can.
02:38:10.420 | I am very uncomfortable with either of these extremes.
02:38:13.620 | It does not seem right to me that in our current society,
02:38:16.640 | women not be prepared to live independent lives.
02:38:20.900 | Marriage does not happen for all men and women,
02:38:23.980 | and so therefore, as a father,
02:38:26.340 | I think I have a responsibility to prepare my daughter
02:38:30.800 | to be strongly equipped if she is single for her lifetime.
02:38:35.800 | And so we don't want to neglect proper academic preparation,
02:38:43.960 | proper career preparation.
02:38:45.920 | I don't think that the kind of fundamentalist extremist,
02:38:50.920 | women shouldn't go to college line
02:38:52.520 | is appropriate in most cases.
02:38:54.880 | We know from the data that highly educated women
02:38:56.800 | have the most enduring marriages.
02:38:58.740 | I appreciate being married to a very smart woman.
02:39:02.220 | I don't care about, it's one of those things
02:39:04.360 | where it's not the college degree that makes a difference,
02:39:06.440 | but the fact that she would go to college
02:39:08.880 | and is capable of going to college is to me important.
02:39:11.280 | I would have a very hard time
02:39:12.760 | being married to an ignorant woman.
02:39:15.160 | I would be a very hard time being married to a woman
02:39:17.520 | who was not my intellectual equal
02:39:19.840 | if we make weird grammar jokes with one another,
02:39:22.760 | and that would, if I couldn't do that,
02:39:24.960 | it would be frustrating.
02:39:26.560 | So I want to be married to a smart woman.
02:39:28.320 | But what I appreciate very much about my wife
02:39:30.240 | is that her entire ambition was not related to her career.
02:39:34.720 | So we want to optimize for motherhood
02:39:37.920 | without neglecting the possibility
02:39:39.320 | of non-motherhood, non-marriage.
02:39:42.560 | So because the standard approach
02:39:45.220 | is not optimizing for motherhood in any way
02:39:48.260 | due to that long train, again, go to college,
02:39:52.560 | don't get married till after college, build your career,
02:39:54.200 | and start thinking about children when you're 33,
02:39:57.160 | that doesn't work for long-term fertility.
02:40:00.560 | And many 30-year-old, 35-year-old women
02:40:02.800 | are having a much harder time having babies
02:40:04.840 | than they thought they would at the time
02:40:07.120 | because they were poorly educated.
02:40:08.960 | And then in addition, it's basically impossible
02:40:13.800 | to expect young men and women to be sexually chased
02:40:18.120 | as sexual adults for 15 or 20 years.
02:40:22.720 | And so this is creating all kinds of toxic problems
02:40:25.460 | in the marriage marketplace.
02:40:27.240 | And so if a girl has not been sexually chased
02:40:30.940 | and she goes to college and she's had this boyfriend,
02:40:33.880 | that boyfriend, this boyfriend, the other boyfriend,
02:40:36.000 | then now her ability to attract a very high-quality husband
02:40:39.860 | is severely diminished based upon this lifestyle.
02:40:42.760 | And again, a lot of girls finding this out
02:40:44.520 | and it's very sad, it ought not to be so.
02:40:47.120 | So we've got problems for men and problems for women
02:40:49.240 | and we have to work within this.
02:40:52.280 | We have to solve this for the next generation.
02:40:54.580 | High levels of education and career ambition
02:40:58.040 | are generally less important to men and potential husbands,
02:41:02.040 | meaning your wife having high levels of education
02:41:05.520 | and career ambition is generally not so important
02:41:08.520 | to men who wanna be husbands.
02:41:10.520 | It is often important to women, the women themselves,
02:41:14.760 | but it's not important to men.
02:41:16.640 | In addition, a lot of things related
02:41:19.000 | to our professionalization of society
02:41:20.760 | are causing enormous problems.
02:41:22.280 | Women having high-paying jobs leads to lower fertility.
02:41:26.120 | Men having high-paying jobs leads to higher fertility.
02:41:29.220 | So I think that college is a great place
02:41:31.000 | for a woman to meet a high-quality, ambitious man.
02:41:33.760 | Well, we've gotta figure out if there's some ways
02:41:35.340 | that we could change the educational and career curve
02:41:38.120 | that would create more options for women
02:41:41.000 | and create options for them to have babies
02:41:43.960 | without feeling like that's the only thing,
02:41:46.720 | that's the only thing that they can have.
02:41:48.980 | So I go back to the teenage years.
02:41:51.440 | Can we have more educational accomplishment
02:41:55.320 | for young women during their teenage years?
02:41:57.520 | Can we speed up education?
02:41:59.000 | I think we have to, or we're not gonna survive as a society.
02:42:02.200 | The data, again, our collapsing birth rates are so clear.
02:42:05.820 | Highly educated women are not perpetuating themselves,
02:42:09.240 | generally speaking, if they're marrying later in life.
02:42:12.240 | There's lots of mothers who are highly educated,
02:42:14.920 | but generally what's happening is they are becoming,
02:42:17.920 | they're getting their degrees and they're getting married,
02:42:20.240 | they're stepping out of the career world,
02:42:22.120 | and they're raising babies.
02:42:23.680 | But women who are hardcore on career track,
02:42:27.420 | it's very difficult for them to have babies.
02:42:29.760 | So could we change it?
02:42:31.040 | Could we get more education accomplished
02:42:32.580 | in the teenage years?
02:42:33.920 | A good friend of mine was homeschooled.
02:42:35.840 | She went to college at 16, and she was a practicing doctor,
02:42:39.840 | probably when she was, I think, 23, 24.
02:42:42.480 | And she herself married a doctor and had children.
02:42:46.680 | And so I think adolescents and teens are capable
02:42:51.160 | of a much more accelerated educational program
02:42:53.640 | than we currently do.
02:42:55.480 | Another question, couldn't we make careers fit
02:42:58.320 | around motherhood?
02:42:59.560 | So the pressure that women feel
02:43:02.560 | to make as much money as possible
02:43:06.040 | is often due to the old system of men starting a career,
02:43:11.040 | raising their family, working, and then retiring at 65.
02:43:15.800 | So women feel like they got to do all of that
02:43:18.600 | on the same time schedule as everyone else.
02:43:21.480 | They got to compete with men constantly
02:43:24.200 | and be earning the same amount or more than men.
02:43:27.160 | And they got to do it all in the same timeline.
02:43:29.960 | But why do we have to do it on that timeline?
02:43:32.140 | Why can't we create social structures
02:43:35.700 | that allow a woman to have children
02:43:39.600 | while she's in school, getting educated, doing things?
02:43:44.000 | Why can't we create a time gap
02:43:45.620 | where she spends 10 years raising small children?
02:43:48.680 | And then after her children are older
02:43:50.840 | and they can be enrolled in school,
02:43:52.200 | then she goes and starts her career
02:43:54.960 | or continues her career.
02:43:56.840 | I think that many of the expectations that we have
02:43:59.280 | around how to handle school marriage children are false.
02:44:03.520 | I don't see why it would be a bad thing
02:44:06.420 | to have babies in college.
02:44:08.380 | There clearly needs to be some financial support.
02:44:10.660 | So if I were an 18-year-old and I had an 18-year-old wife
02:44:14.460 | and I were thinking about having a baby,
02:44:15.820 | my question is just how am I gonna do it?
02:44:18.260 | How am I gonna provide for a wife and a baby?
02:44:20.680 | But if I have a job and my wife is in school,
02:44:24.220 | I don't see why she can't have a baby and go to school.
02:44:27.900 | It's actually probably a really great time to have a baby
02:44:30.200 | because she's young, she's energetic,
02:44:32.900 | she can deal with lack of sleep or loss of sleep
02:44:37.900 | or disrupted sleep schedule much more easily
02:44:39.700 | than she can when she's 35.
02:44:41.480 | There's lots of other people around.
02:44:42.740 | There's lots of babysitters.
02:44:43.700 | There may be people in our dorm.
02:44:44.900 | There's lots of people who can come and take care of the baby
02:44:46.700 | while she goes to class.
02:44:48.260 | There's all kinds of ways.
02:44:49.300 | So college and babies,
02:44:51.340 | I don't think are necessarily opposed to each other.
02:44:53.660 | Why should they be?
02:44:54.780 | They don't have to be.
02:44:55.980 | And so we just need to think through all these assumptions
02:44:58.300 | that we've embraced that have created
02:45:00.900 | a falling apart society.
02:45:02.800 | So couldn't we make careers fit around motherhood?
02:45:06.860 | Couldn't a mother start earlier in some cases,
02:45:10.140 | but then start later and continue later?
02:45:12.580 | Couldn't she, if she wants to have children
02:45:15.500 | and she wants to earn income,
02:45:16.780 | couldn't we accept both of those things
02:45:18.860 | by just adjusting expectations?
02:45:21.100 | All of these things are just social expectations
02:45:23.180 | and thus they can be reprogrammed.
02:45:25.300 | In addition, you asked the question,
02:45:26.820 | could we subsidize motherhood financially?
02:45:29.300 | Now, many countries are doing this.
02:45:31.500 | It is not demonstrating itself to have a positive impact
02:45:35.100 | on total fertility rates.
02:45:36.700 | But in many countries,
02:45:38.820 | the ones I have the best data on are the European countries.
02:45:41.500 | You have the German Kindergarten system
02:45:43.860 | where parents are just paid for having children.
02:45:46.820 | And that's something that can be done.
02:45:48.540 | I think will be done more in the future,
02:45:50.480 | but it's not actually changing things right now
02:45:53.340 | in terms of birth rates.
02:45:57.300 | Nevertheless, I expect that to be a path
02:45:59.260 | that we continue down,
02:46:00.260 | that I think we're gonna continue to say,
02:46:01.940 | can we pay people to have babies?
02:46:03.460 | Can we subsidize them?
02:46:05.180 | And so here, I think it's very reasonable
02:46:07.180 | that that could happen.
02:46:08.540 | And if you put this together with health benefits
02:46:12.500 | and other forms of subsidies,
02:46:13.980 | then I think that young people could make this work.
02:46:19.860 | Let me give an example.
02:46:21.060 | Let's say that I've got one of my sons
02:46:23.420 | and one of my sons finds an amazing wife.
02:46:28.860 | And let's say that they meet at 18 years old
02:46:32.340 | and they go to, and they're living,
02:46:33.800 | they could do this in the United States,
02:46:34.840 | but I'm just gonna use a welfare state country
02:46:37.780 | as an example.
02:46:38.980 | So they move to Berlin and they're going to college
02:46:42.480 | in Germany that's tuition-free, living in Berlin.
02:46:46.140 | And they of course have to pay for housing, room and board.
02:46:51.020 | But when you're young, you can do that
02:46:52.740 | and you can fit two small people into a room.
02:46:54.580 | It's not that big of a deal.
02:46:56.380 | And if you have a baby, great, you have a baby.
02:47:00.180 | Well, in Berlin, they would start receiving kindergarten.
02:47:02.800 | And not only then, of course,
02:47:04.220 | would the government pay for medical costs,
02:47:07.180 | but you get kindergarten for the child.
02:47:08.740 | You get a monthly payment amount for the child.
02:47:11.780 | You have a very low income 'cause they're both in college.
02:47:14.980 | The college is paid for.
02:47:15.980 | All that my son would have to do as a husband
02:47:18.740 | would be to provide enough money to pay for room and board.
02:47:23.740 | And if I, as a parent, am involved in that,
02:47:26.360 | then I can support him and them in that as well.
02:47:29.500 | Because as a parent,
02:47:30.340 | I should be willing to support my children
02:47:32.060 | if they're having grandchildren to some degree.
02:47:34.380 | If I'm not willing to do it,
02:47:35.300 | why should I expect society to do that?
02:47:37.180 | Now we could do something similar in the United States.
02:47:39.860 | In the United States, tuitions are very broad,
02:47:43.220 | but it doesn't cost that much for college students to live.
02:47:46.540 | It doesn't cost that much for them to feed themselves.
02:47:50.420 | There are already today in the United States,
02:47:52.260 | there's plenty of welfare programs,
02:47:53.780 | Medicaid that can pay for the birth of the baby.
02:47:56.440 | And there's not a version of Kindergarten
02:47:59.800 | in the United States today,
02:48:00.760 | but there may be something like that in the future
02:48:02.700 | if we continue down the path that we're in
02:48:04.280 | in a welfare state.
02:48:05.640 | So my point is that if young people desire to have children,
02:48:09.320 | they can be done during college years
02:48:13.660 | when young men and women are most fertile,
02:48:16.120 | when they're able to handle that.
02:48:17.240 | And I don't see that as something
02:48:20.400 | that should just be avoided at all costs.
02:48:22.520 | I think there's something that should come into play there.
02:48:26.260 | And we probably will be subsidizing motherhood
02:48:30.100 | in virtually all of our societies in the future.
02:48:33.040 | Again, most welfare states are already doing that.
02:48:35.180 | We're not doing that in the United States.
02:48:36.900 | We will be in the future.
02:48:37.980 | Right now, the United States has been relying
02:48:40.020 | almost entirely on immigrants
02:48:41.620 | to make up for the population shortfall,
02:48:44.200 | but the world is basically running out of immigrants.
02:48:46.580 | So the only potential source of immigrants
02:48:48.860 | for the United States would be Sub-Saharan Africa.
02:48:51.020 | All of the Americas are now basically empty of immigrants
02:48:54.360 | and there aren't enough people there.
02:48:56.040 | They're facing their own population issues.
02:49:00.080 | So we're gonna be fighting with the rest of the world
02:49:02.560 | for all of the African immigrants,
02:49:04.600 | but Europe has already been importing
02:49:06.440 | more of those immigrants than the United States.
02:49:10.160 | So next, I would just say,
02:49:12.040 | can we adjust career expectations
02:49:14.440 | and make family enterprises more common?
02:49:17.140 | So I would love to see more of this.
02:49:19.000 | Can we bring together men and women in family enterprises?
02:49:22.460 | If you look at most of the problems
02:49:24.140 | that husbands and wives face with their career obligations,
02:49:29.140 | the worst possible living arrangement
02:49:32.640 | is for both of them to have jobs.
02:49:34.400 | If either the husband or the wife doesn't have a job,
02:49:39.200 | but instead has a business,
02:49:40.780 | which gives him or her a modicum of self-control
02:49:43.260 | over his schedule and his life,
02:49:45.140 | then you have dramatically better outcomes from that.
02:49:48.800 | So could we give men and women a balance?
02:49:52.180 | Now, what's even better is bring both of them together
02:49:54.060 | in a family enterprise.
02:49:55.580 | And so if our sons and our daughters
02:49:58.580 | could channel their career ambitions
02:50:02.060 | into something that's a good fit for a family enterprise,
02:50:06.220 | then we can satisfy that desire to build a career
02:50:09.660 | without it compromising the family.
02:50:12.780 | And I think that there's a lot more of this that is needed.
02:50:16.260 | I didn't marry my wife because she, you know,
02:50:19.480 | could make me a lot of money,
02:50:21.120 | but my wife is an important part of my life and in my world.
02:50:24.740 | And what I've always admired is husbands and wives
02:50:28.000 | who work together in a business
02:50:29.840 | and they bring complimentary skills.
02:50:31.400 | I think that brings a whole set of challenges
02:50:33.320 | that have to be worked to,
02:50:34.600 | but that's an enormous opportunity
02:50:36.120 | for solving some of these,
02:50:37.600 | the tension between the family and the business.
02:50:40.240 | And I also see that as appropriate
02:50:41.560 | for all these other benefits
02:50:42.680 | of passing down through the generations as well.
02:50:46.060 | We've talked then about attracting a spouse,
02:50:51.060 | selecting a spouse now, and marrying a spouse.
02:50:57.300 | So now what about having children?
02:51:00.220 | What do people need to have children?
02:51:01.980 | General young people to be confident in having children,
02:51:04.300 | they need to be debt-free,
02:51:05.660 | they need to have a sufficient income
02:51:07.100 | and they only need to own a big enough home.
02:51:09.140 | And so as parents, we can affect these things.
02:51:12.000 | We can teach our children to stay out of debt.
02:51:14.980 | People being indebted is entirely a choice.
02:51:19.580 | It's a lifestyle choice that people make.
02:51:21.740 | And we can teach our children to stay out of debt,
02:51:24.300 | knowing that that will help them
02:51:26.020 | to be able to afford to have children in the future.
02:51:30.520 | You say, "Well, Joshua, what about educational debt?"
02:51:34.620 | You can teach your children to stay out of educational debt.
02:51:37.620 | I wrestled with years with some of the hardcore scenarios
02:51:40.860 | of law school, medical school,
02:51:42.140 | I finally cracked the nut on those.
02:51:43.980 | Not perfectly, and I'm not saying
02:51:45.740 | that all people should avoid medical school,
02:51:47.980 | but debt is entirely avoidable.
02:51:51.900 | So let's do that because it matters for reproduction.
02:51:55.700 | In addition to just teaching them to stay out of debt,
02:51:58.820 | we can pay for it.
02:51:59.780 | If you want to have grandchildren,
02:52:01.740 | you probably need to pay for your children's college.
02:52:04.440 | It's up to you.
02:52:07.840 | If you wanna have grandchildren,
02:52:08.820 | you probably need to pay for your children's college.
02:52:10.980 | If you wanna have grandchildren soon,
02:52:12.540 | and many grandchildren,
02:52:13.500 | you probably need to pay for your children's college.
02:52:15.900 | Next, as parents, we can subsidize
02:52:18.700 | our children's first house, or at least a down payment.
02:52:22.740 | If we don't have money, we can subsidize with education,
02:52:25.540 | as I described from Steve Maxwell's story
02:52:27.340 | of his son saving enough money to pay for their houses.
02:52:30.900 | We can also subsidize it with money.
02:52:33.220 | If you want great, so if you want your children
02:52:35.900 | to be successful with money,
02:52:38.940 | give them money when it really counts.
02:52:41.780 | And giving your children a down payment for a house,
02:52:44.080 | or giving your children a house,
02:52:46.700 | I think is an amazing goal for you to have.
02:52:50.060 | If you show up in my office,
02:52:54.880 | and you have a thin retirement portfolio,
02:52:58.320 | but you have three children,
02:53:01.460 | and all of your children are living in debt-free houses,
02:53:04.100 | and they've all got three children,
02:53:06.300 | I would bet you're gonna be more satisfied
02:53:08.700 | with your life and with your decisions
02:53:10.820 | than if you showed up in my office
02:53:12.100 | with a big, fat retirement portfolio and no grandchildren.
02:53:15.940 | Houses don't cost that much
02:53:20.660 | for most listeners of Radical Personal Finance.
02:53:23.020 | What happens is that we've never set goals around them.
02:53:26.880 | We've set goals exclusively around
02:53:28.540 | accumulating lots of money for retirement,
02:53:30.460 | not based upon housing for our grandchildren.
02:53:34.220 | So consider, save for a down payment for your child's house.
02:53:38.640 | Save for a house for your children.
02:53:41.740 | If you can't do that,
02:53:44.860 | and if you wanna have grandchildren,
02:53:47.100 | give your children the big, fancy house that you live in,
02:53:49.940 | and you move into a small studio apartment.
02:53:52.680 | I'm not joking about this.
02:53:56.100 | To me, it's the most obvious thing in the world
02:53:58.420 | that would be a win-win for multiple people.
02:54:01.780 | There's so many wealthy men and women in their 50s
02:54:05.500 | who are living in fancy houses,
02:54:08.100 | and they're bugging their children,
02:54:09.860 | "Why don't you gonna have children?
02:54:10.700 | "Why don't you have children?"
02:54:11.700 | And the children are saying, "Mom, Dad,
02:54:13.060 | "we can't even afford to live."
02:54:14.780 | And both of them are right.
02:54:16.660 | So if you really care about it,
02:54:18.260 | give your children your house,
02:54:20.420 | and you go and move into a small apartment.
02:54:22.400 | Both of you will probably be happier about it.
02:54:24.140 | You don't need a big, giant house
02:54:25.640 | when you're 50X years old or 60 years old.
02:54:28.060 | You need a studio, an empty nester,
02:54:29.380 | you need a studio apartment.
02:54:30.700 | You'll probably be happier in your studio apartment
02:54:32.940 | going out every night, eating out every night,
02:54:34.780 | enjoying kind of a totally different lifestyle,
02:54:37.340 | and your children will do better being in a house,
02:54:39.020 | and you'll probably have some grandchildren.
02:54:40.740 | So be open to anything.
02:54:43.980 | We have to change things, or our families are gonna die,
02:54:46.820 | and our culture is gonna die.
02:54:48.900 | We can support child raising within our community.
02:54:51.760 | So the cost of childcare is the third big expense.
02:54:55.620 | The things that people say that young people
02:54:58.140 | who could be having babies,
02:54:59.860 | who are choosing not to have babies say.
02:55:01.580 | Number one, debt, student loan debt.
02:55:03.900 | Number two, housing.
02:55:04.960 | Number three, childcare.
02:55:06.540 | Well, if you can't give your children a house,
02:55:08.780 | or maybe you can't, support your children with childcare.
02:55:12.020 | Retired parents can be primary caregivers for grandchildren,
02:55:15.460 | and this can be a really great way to provide the care
02:55:18.820 | that allows moms and dads to go to work,
02:55:21.020 | and yet provides really high-quality care.
02:55:23.420 | And you've done it once, you can do it again.
02:55:25.140 | And so if you want grandchildren,
02:55:26.900 | be willing to do what is necessary to help encourage that.
02:55:31.180 | In addition, we can subsidize many of the luxuries of life
02:55:34.060 | to support our children.
02:55:35.780 | So if young parents know that when you have children,
02:55:40.780 | you know that there's a pretty decent chance
02:55:44.940 | that you're giving up
02:55:45.780 | on some of the luxury consumption items
02:55:47.640 | that your friends are gonna be able to go and do.
02:55:50.640 | There's a reason why there's nonstop,
02:55:53.360 | nonstop, you know, we're not nonstop,
02:55:57.600 | but there's a reason why there's all the TikTok memes of,
02:56:01.480 | you know, we're dual income, we're dual income.
02:56:03.160 | We can go anywhere we want this weekend.
02:56:04.640 | As a parent, you know, I'm probably giving that up.
02:56:07.360 | So go ahead, if you are a wealthy parent,
02:56:11.060 | go ahead and subsidize some of the luxuries.
02:56:13.680 | And you can do that in various ways.
02:56:15.260 | You can do it structurally.
02:56:16.720 | You can provide your children with income.
02:56:18.760 | You can do it with a trust.
02:56:20.560 | You can provide your children with housing.
02:56:22.000 | You can give your children a boat.
02:56:23.600 | You can do things on an ad hoc basis
02:56:25.720 | or on a continual basis.
02:56:27.600 | But if you have money, be willing to spend it
02:56:31.000 | to help your children to have children.
02:56:33.320 | Now, if you just throw money at your children
02:56:36.000 | and you haven't built all those cultural foundations
02:56:38.240 | that I started the show with,
02:56:39.720 | I don't think you're gonna have grandchildren.
02:56:41.200 | I don't think you're gonna have
02:56:42.040 | a hundred great-grandchildren.
02:56:43.680 | But if you focus on doing both of them,
02:56:46.840 | then I think the chances are pretty good
02:56:48.800 | that you'll be able to do both.
02:56:50.400 | My wife and I have grown our family
02:56:54.840 | based upon what I have earned.
02:56:57.520 | Nobody's given us really anything.
02:57:00.160 | And that's fine, and that's good.
02:57:02.980 | We have five children,
02:57:05.320 | so they didn't need to give us anything.
02:57:07.440 | Probably would have been easier, though,
02:57:08.800 | if people wanted grandchildren
02:57:11.200 | and they wanted their things to grow on,
02:57:12.600 | it would have been easier to have a stipend.
02:57:15.800 | So look for ways you can do it.
02:57:17.520 | You can pay for your grandchildren's school,
02:57:19.320 | or you can tell your children they would be.
02:57:21.320 | My children are not in private school.
02:57:23.840 | That's something that grandchildren can subsidize.
02:57:27.240 | You can pay for schooling.
02:57:28.560 | You can pay for activities.
02:57:30.800 | You can pay for extra expenses.
02:57:33.680 | There's all kinds of things that you can do
02:57:35.960 | for your children to help them
02:57:37.440 | and encourage them to have grandchildren.
02:57:39.520 | And so think ahead and plan for those things.
02:57:42.460 | In addition, I think it's reasonable
02:57:44.600 | to think about estate planning.
02:57:45.720 | And I think that if you want to have grandchildren,
02:57:48.760 | then you should consider splitting your estate
02:57:51.800 | not based upon the number of children that you have,
02:57:54.640 | but based upon the number of grandchildren that you have.
02:57:57.960 | I'm not necessarily encouraging this,
02:58:00.040 | as I think that it should be part of the family dynamic
02:58:03.360 | as to what your goals and values are.
02:58:06.200 | What I'm trying to say is that if we were to set a goal
02:58:10.720 | of something like you're having 100 great-grandchildren,
02:58:14.780 | then we should be open to all the strategies
02:58:17.720 | that could potentially help in the accomplishment
02:58:22.440 | and the achievement of that goal.
02:58:24.200 | And one thing that you can do if you have money
02:58:27.000 | is you can tell your children
02:58:28.480 | that I'll spend money on the things that I value,
02:58:30.560 | and one of the things that I value is grandchildren.
02:58:33.240 | So if you have four children
02:58:34.760 | and two of your children have four children
02:58:36.880 | and two of your children don't have children,
02:58:38.840 | why don't you reflect that in not only the money
02:58:41.640 | that you spend now while you're alive,
02:58:42.960 | but to reflect that in your estate?
02:58:45.240 | When children, in the same way that in order for a woman
02:58:49.560 | to be a full-time mom and walk away
02:58:52.320 | from a highly paid career,
02:58:54.040 | she needs to really believe that it's worth it,
02:58:56.200 | and that's a hard thing for many women to do,
02:58:58.640 | similarly for children.
02:59:00.080 | If you know that I'm investing into having children,
02:59:04.320 | I know that I'm taking a financial cost for this
02:59:07.960 | because I'm giving up potential income
02:59:10.240 | to be a present father.
02:59:11.920 | I'm giving up flexibility,
02:59:14.220 | and I'm also adding expenses to my life.
02:59:17.800 | If I know that my wealthy father or my wealthy mother
02:59:22.520 | is writing me in for a significant portion
02:59:25.960 | of his or her estate,
02:59:27.480 | that's gonna help me be more willing to make that choice.
02:59:31.080 | And while that's probably not gonna affect
02:59:33.480 | the global fertility rate,
02:59:35.280 | it's probably gonna reflect the total fertility rate
02:59:38.080 | within your family.
02:59:41.160 | I've said quite a lot.
02:59:42.640 | I hope that it is useful to you.
02:59:44.240 | I didn't really expect this show to be three hours,
02:59:47.880 | but here we are.
02:59:48.780 | My hope in today's show is not to give you all the answers,
02:59:53.580 | but to inspire a conversation.
02:59:55.340 | As a society, we are dying.
03:00:00.480 | Slowly and inexorably.
03:00:04.120 | We're not dying as quickly in the United States
03:00:05.960 | as we are in Japan and in South Korea and in China,
03:00:09.560 | but we are dying.
03:00:10.600 | And the first obligation that we have to our fellow humanity,
03:00:15.680 | to our species, is to not die.
03:00:18.600 | Human beings probably don't deserve
03:00:22.400 | to be on the endangered list yet,
03:00:24.560 | but there are warning signs everywhere.
03:00:27.400 | So if you care about that,
03:00:29.880 | if you care about the continuance of your family,
03:00:32.580 | then pay attention and let's talk about these things.
03:00:35.680 | What I'm hoping to do in today's podcast
03:00:37.560 | is just to give you enough thoughts
03:00:39.520 | to inspire a conversation.
03:00:41.580 | I want to inspire you to talk with your wife,
03:00:44.840 | talk with your husband, and to start there.
03:00:47.760 | As I've previously said, maybe have one more baby.
03:00:50.560 | I think it's worth it.
03:00:51.480 | I think you won't regret it, but consider it.
03:00:55.000 | If it costs you a little bit of money,
03:00:56.140 | I think that's a reasonable decision.
03:00:58.240 | Broadly speaking, I wanna inspire conversations
03:01:00.320 | with you with fellow parents.
03:01:02.260 | Again, I don't see any reason why having the largest number
03:01:06.680 | at the end of our life in a net worth statement
03:01:08.720 | is a compelling goal.
03:01:10.320 | It's not, I think it's a dumb goal.
03:01:12.420 | I think we should optimize for other things.
03:01:14.520 | And there's a whole range of optimization
03:01:16.520 | that you can optimize for for yourself.
03:01:19.320 | But I also think it's reasonable
03:01:21.920 | that if we look at all of recorded history,
03:01:25.380 | all of recorded humanity,
03:01:27.200 | all of our ancestors who've come before us,
03:01:29.340 | that the ambition that a man or woman had
03:01:34.260 | to be the patriarch or matriarch of a dynasty,
03:01:37.200 | that that was a core component of life for many people.
03:01:40.340 | And I don't see why it should change today.
03:01:43.320 | And somehow, though we live
03:01:45.700 | in the easiest time in human history,
03:01:48.580 | with the most abundant wealth of all time in human history,
03:01:53.540 | we've optimized almost exclusively
03:01:55.980 | for higher financial wealth,
03:01:59.140 | and we're not even replacing ourselves.
03:02:02.400 | Whereas the societies that replace themselves
03:02:05.160 | are often the ones that are desperately poor,
03:02:07.440 | can barely feed themselves,
03:02:10.200 | desperate violence, children dying all over the place,
03:02:14.360 | and you and I sit back, fat, happy, and rich,
03:02:16.920 | and we don't even bother to continue.
03:02:19.480 | So I'd like to just inspire people to add some other goals.
03:02:23.320 | I think the ambition to say,
03:02:25.880 | "How could I build a family culture
03:02:27.680 | "that resulted in my having 100 great-grandchildren?"
03:02:30.560 | is a pretty cool idea.
03:02:32.280 | I didn't say 1,000, obviously not.
03:02:34.680 | Maybe it's 50.
03:02:36.000 | You do the math, you pick your number.
03:02:38.160 | But if you had four or five children,
03:02:41.640 | and each of your children had four or five children,
03:02:43.760 | then things grow pretty quickly.
03:02:45.920 | And that's not too crazy.
03:02:47.640 | That's not too far out of the envelope
03:02:50.440 | for where you could possibly be.
03:02:53.560 | And I think that if you spent money
03:02:54.840 | on building that kind of family culture,
03:02:56.840 | spent time on it,
03:02:58.160 | I think that you reflect back at the end of your life
03:03:00.160 | with a high degree of satisfaction
03:03:02.040 | on your contribution to your family,
03:03:03.800 | on your contribution to the human species,
03:03:06.440 | and on your contribution to the world.
03:03:08.440 | Thank you for listening.
03:03:09.280 | I hope that I've inspired some conversations.
03:03:11.240 | Share with me your ideas in the days to come.
03:03:13.120 | I really wanna hear from you in the days to come.
03:03:15.280 | - The drive to go further and reach higher.
03:03:19.240 | The same thing that inspires you inspires us.
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03:03:28.560 | to up to 10 no-cost gen ed courses
03:03:30.920 | to help you save time and money
03:03:33.080 | so you can keep striving.
03:03:34.920 | Visit strayer.edu to learn more.
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