Should You Even Have Kids?

Over the last few weeks, we’ve brought you our hit podcast, Raising Parents, covering the most burning issues moms and dads face today. We’ve explored how smartphones are ruining childhood, how you can discipline your toddler without being too “soft,” and what’s behind the rise in ADHD among boys. Today, our final episode drops and asks the biggest question of all: “Should You Even Have Kids?”

For most of human history, having kids wasn’t really a choice. Social expectations, a lack of birth control, and limited autonomy for women presented a simple menu of options: Have kids or join the convent. But after the 1960s ushered in easy, effective contraception and greater career opportunities for women, for the first time in history, many could choose how many children to have—or whether they should have them at all.

Fast forward to today, and more people are choosing not to have children for a variety of reasons. Some say they don’t want kids because of financial strain, or climate apocalypse, or because they simply don’t want them. Others say they do want kids, so they can heal generational trauma, or to give their first kid a sibling. A man once told me it was important for him to bear heirs so he could pass on his spectacular genes. Maybe that’s the underlying motivation, even if most would not put it quite so. . . bluntly. 

Having children is a personal choice. It’s also a choice that has broader, global implications. Everywhere across the world—in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa—fewer children are being born. And strangely enough, having kids has become part of the culture wars. You’ve got pro-natalist public figures like Elon Musk on one side saying everyone needs to procreate immediately in order to save humanity. And on the other side, people like climate activist Greta Thunberg say producing more children in an era of global warming is irresponsible.

But there’s no doubt that the fertility rate is plummeting. Presently, American women, on average, have 1.6 kids. In the 1950s, it was 3. In the U.S., the fertility rate needed for a generation to replace itself without immigration is approximately 2.1 births per woman. Around the world, between 1950 and 2021, as many countries got richer and women chose to have fewer kids, the fertility rate has fallen by more than half.

For economists—and I’m one of them—the speed of this plummeting fertility rate is cause for alarm. Economic growth partly depends on population growth. Retirees rely on younger workers to generate taxes and contributions to Social Security. With fertility rates in free fall, the math doesn’t add up.

So far, our series, Raising Parents, has focused on the state of our children. Today, we cap things off with a fundamental question: Should you even have kids—and what happens if we don’t? 

Spoiler: I won’t tell you whether or not to have kids. It’s a personal decision and also a financial one, a religious one, and for some, a political one. You’ll hear from a range of guests, all of whom I agree with, in part.

For example:

I feel lucky to be born in a time when, as Helena de Groot says, we actually have a choice. I agree with Leah Libresco that we need to make it easier for people, especially moms, to have children; and with Bryan Caplan, who says kids are more fun than we sometimes admit. I also really resonate with Ross Douthat’s point that parenting is both harder and more joyful than anything else on earth.

At the beginning of this episode, I say I’m unable to explain the feeling of being a parent. But I will try here nonetheless. Its very essence—for me, at least—is to feel someone else’s joy and sadness more deeply than your own. When things are going well with my children, setbacks in other parts of my life matter less. When things don’t go well for them, it’s all-consuming, and impossible to find joy. As I was recording this final episode, both of my children were at sleepaway camp, and I was spending all of my free time refreshing the camp website to see if they had added any new pictures. My children are, quite simply, everything. 

As a parent, it can be impossible to know what the best choices are for your children. Things crop up that you never thought about before. The world, and your child, surprise you all the time. It is hard not to second-guess yourself, even over the smallest things.

But here’s the secret I’ve come to learn: You have way less control than you think. So, you might ask why I have spent the last decade writing books about parenting. My answer is this: Even if you don’t have control, you do have choices, and these choices are important. I hope this series has helped you make better choices by offering good information and perspectives you don’t often hear from mainstream media, or pediatricians, or even your own parents. 

And while I also hope this series has answered many of your questions, it has probably unlocked all kinds of new ones as well. So, as we close out the series, I offer some final thoughts by presenting six of the biggest FAQs about parenting—followed by my advice.

1. I am a first-time mom with a full-time job. I love my job, but I have heard from social media that a mom should not work! Instead, she should stay at home with the baby, so the baby won’t develop attachment problems. I feel guilty leaving my infant with someone else to take care of him. You briefly touched on this subject in one of the episodes. Could you expand on it and explain the data? —Evalina

This is an incredibly fraught topic for a lot of people. Even if you are confident in your choice, it can be hard to leave your baby, and adding this kind of guilt on top of it makes it worse. There is an Instagram reel in which someone says a version of: “When you drop your baby at day care, they think you died.” How can we expect parents to think logically about these choices with that kind of claim running around?

I’ve written extensively about day care. The data on child-care use shows only small effects in any direction. Kids who spend more time in formal child care before school age seem to perform slightly better academically early on, but have slightly more behavioral issues. Both effects are small; they fade over time. 

I do want to be clear: Adverse experiences for children between the ages of 0 to 3 do matter. Kids need a stable place to live, and have enough to eat with people who love them and provide consistent support. When kids don’t have this when they are young, they suffer. But there are a lot of ways to meet those needs from all kinds of parents—those who stay at home, those who work, those who rely on child-care centers, or nannies, or grandparents, and more. 

In some cases, low quality child care (with caregivers who are totally inattentive, for example) seems to be worse for kids. It’s worth giving thought to where your child spends the day. But that doesn’t mean it has to be with you.

I strongly believe that choosing to work does not harm your children. The evidence suggests the net effects of working on child development are small or zero. This isn’t the decision that is going to make or break your child’s future success (if there is any decision that would at all).

For what it is worth, I worked from when my children were very small. We had a nanny when the kids were little, and they were in group child care when they got a bit older. My parents had me in a home-based child-care center from a few weeks old, and the woman who ran it—Tanta, as I called her—was a formative part of my early life. 

2. My cousin told me I am abusing my two sons because I sleep trained them. I didn’t let them scream for hours. I would put the baby in bed and let him cry for about 10 minutes, at which point he would sleep through the night and has ever since. She tells me that he is distressed but simply doesn’t show it to me because I broke his trust by sleep training. Is this true? —Liz

This is a place where we actually have some reasonably good data, which means we can both answer your main question—did you damage your children by letting them cry?—and also understand where her (misguided) claim about trust comes from.

We have randomized data on sleep training and its impact on kids. What researchers find is that sleep training does improve sleep in the short term. It’s not a panacea for all kids but, on average, kids sleep better after sleep training than before. Data also shows parents who sleep train wind up in better moods and feel more satisfied with their marriages.

It doesn’t appear that kids have more behavioral issues or attachment issues because of sleep training. Does this mean you need to do it? Absolutely not. This is a very personal choice. But if you do choose to sleep train, there is no evidence it’s damaging.

To your cousin’s claim about distress: There is a single study where researchers brought babies and their moms into a sleep lab for a sleep-training intervention. They found that, after a few days, when the baby is sleeping better, the mom’s cortisol is lower and the baby’s is not lower (or higher). The researchers interpreted this as some kind of detachment, but it seems like an incredible overinterpretation, especially given what we know from the studies I just mentioned.  

Bottom line: You should have confidence in what you’re doing. You’re not doing anything wrong.

3. What does the data say on public vs private school? Is it more important that we send our children to a private school, or send them to a public school and be able to afford piano lessons and a trigonometry tutor down the line? —Hannah

Private school students score better, on average, on most standardized tests. However, they also have, on average, more access to resources and parents who scored better on these tests. Separating out the impact of family background from the effect of schooling is extremely difficult. The only plausibly causal evidence we have is based on school voucher lotteries, where some kids “win” a school voucher and some do not. The kids who win are then more likely to attend private school. Studies like this show small effects, some positive and some negative, and seem to depend on what kind of private schools the vouchers are used for.  Honestly, there is not much to learn from this. 

We may learn more by comparing across public schools. What we see there is that the most important determinant of test scores by far is the income of the neighborhood where the school is located. In the end, it’s so much about the family, which should be reassuring here. If you like the school, and you’re excited about it for your kid, then it’s the right thing for you!

4. Our daughter just started hitting her mom. Any advice on how to handle? —Adam

Let me first say: This is very normal. A huge share of kids hit their parents, but also other kids. Sometimes—and I’m not saying this is your reaction!—this makes parents feel terrible, like they’ve got the bad kid. In case you’re thinking this, stop. Hitting (and also biting) is developmentally normal. It doesn’t mean you should ignore it, but it’s very typical.

Discipline—as we talked about in our episode—is very personal, and there are a lot of ways to handle this. The general advice: Do not hit back, do not yell, do something consistent, but do make it clear that this behavior won’t be tolerated.

In my experience, there are two basic reasonable approaches. One is 1-2-3-Magic or a similar method. In this case, hitting is a behavior that’s met with a time-out or another consequence. Despite what the internet may tell you, this isn’t about yelling and punishing and telling kids they are bad, it’s about having a defined set of consequences for behaviors. 

A second is to impose a strict set of boundaries—this would be a version of what Instagram influencer Dr. Becky branded as “Good Inside.” Tell your child, “I’m not going to let you hit,” and then physically restrain them from doing it, by, say, holding their hands. 

For me, both of these approaches offer a middle ground between physical punishment and an overly permissive setup where there are no consequences or boundaries. 

5. Where is the balance between protecting childhood innocence and ensuring kids know about the world? Is it best to wait for your kid to start asking questions or is it better to be proactive with some more mature themes? Does it come down to household values or is there data to say how young is too young for some topics? —Morgan

There are a million hard topics with kids, some that we get to prepare for and some we do not. Current events, yes, but also things that touch closer to home. The death of a pet. The death of a family member. Sex. One general principle for all of these conversations is: Don’t lie. This doesn’t mean you need to give all the details. But do tell the truth.

For these conversations, I have a simple system: 

First, ask whether you need to have this conversation. There are things which, yes, you could talk about with your 3-year-old, but they don’t need to know about right now. Before you proactively have a conversation, ask yourself, Will they learn about this without me? If yes, you probably want to go first. If you think your toddler will not hear about the war between Israel and Hamas, for example, you probably do not need to tell them about it right now. 

Second, pick a time to have the conversation when you have their attention, like when you are in the car together.

Third, prepare a simple script with the information you think they need to know in an age-appropriate way. This will vary by age. For a 3-year-old, you might try: “There’s a war in the Middle East, which is an area far away from us. You might hear adults talking about it, or hear about it on the news. It’s something that makes adults upset, but it isn’t something you need to worry about.” For an older child you might explain more. Keep it simple, factual, short. 

Fourth, expect nothing. Often kids will respond with something like, “Okay, cool.” Even though what you told them is definitely not okay or cool. Take their lead in the conversation. If they ask for more, answer short and factually. If they don’t ask for more, let it go.

Fifth, prepare for follow-up. Kids process slowly but often will bring something up again in the future, so be ready to have the rest of the conversation, even if it’s days or weeks later. 

6. My wife and I struggle with when we should go with what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, and when we should question it. How do we know what’s best? —Johnny

I have enormous respect for the AAP and the work they do, and in many cases, I fully endorse their recommendations. There are also instances where I think they overstate the certainty of the evidence and make blanket recommendations when parents would be better served with nuance. 

Overall, we overwhelm new parents in ways that produce unnecessary fear. In one recent advisory about sleep, the AAP told parents that infant hats were risky. This is based on more or less nothing, and while I’m no shill for Big Hat, scaring new parents about hat-wearing seems mean.

A lot of AAP guidance is based on a cautionary principle: If there is any reason why one choice could possibly be safer, they recommend it. When it’s something that matters or affects you—things like breastfeeding, co-sleeping, etc.—it’s reasonable to ask about the quality of the evidence. The AAP generally puts out detailed information about how they came to their conclusions, so you can often look directly at the quality of the evidence. You can also ask your pediatrician, or me over at ParentData.    

One frustrating thing about our current moment is that we’ve set up what seems like an adversarial relationship between experts—in this case, the AAP—and parents. In fact, I think we are all rowing in the same direction: We’re all trying to make good choices for our families. In an ideal world, expert advice would help us make and prioritize those choices better, rather than simply providing a list of do’s and don’ts.

If you have a parenting question to ask Emily Oster, please write to us at Parenting@TheFP.com. And to listen to our entire series, follow “Raising Parents with Emily Oster” on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

To support more of our work, subscribe to The Free Press:

Subscribe now

The Free Press earns a commission from all qualifying purchases made through book links in this article, including as an Amazon Associate.