I ~never hear the 2nd thing among rationalists (“improve your kid’s life outcomes by doing a lot of research and going through complicated procedures!”).
Homeschooling is often preferred not because it substantially improves life outcomes but because it’s nicer for the children and often parents. School involves a lot of wasted time/effort, and is frustrating and boring for many children. And so by homeschooling you can make their childhood nicer irrespective of life outcomes.
We use a mix of direct instruction, lots of online resources that we manage ourselves, and 1-on-1 tutors via Zoom through the (excellent) startup Modulo. I spent a large amount of time in the first 6 months − 1 year when we started (back during the pandemic) establishing norms and routines around scheduling and patterns that I hoped would lead to him becoming eventually very self-directed. Which did in fact work. That was intensive but now in the steady state the time cost is low.
I’m basically spending no time on preparation per se, but there is a time cost to supervision. We both work full-time and take turns managing him during the day (he’s 9), which means making sure he’s making it to his online classes and paying attention to his schedule, taking him outdoors for visits to museums etc. Most of the time he’s working on projects that he’s passionate about and doesn’t need me except when he gets stuck. He spends a lot of time building levels (for puzzle games or shooters, particularly) and teaching himself tools using YouTube videos and a lot of GPT/Claude.
We know some home-schooling kids with pretty fine-grained schedules, ours is more like a few scheduled things (e.g. online classes) and then big blocks of time where we trust him to do whatever he’s interested in that day.
I would include posts on health-optimizing genetic manipulation and similar things in this category. All of this is okay if just chosen but in conflict with “having kids is too costly”. Similar for homeschooling.
I assume by “health-optimizing genetic manipulation” you mean embryo selection (seeing as gene editing is not possible yet). Indeed, Rationalists are more likely to be interested in embryo selection. And indeed, it is costly. But I’d say this is different from costly parenting—it’s a one-time upfront cost to improve your child’s genetics.
Yes, a one-time investment is different from permanent effort. But they both can be very costly. In my original post, I meant all things that raise the cost / time investment / whatever of being a parent (and did not use the term “parenting”). I also think it is totally great if people invest a lot of time, effort, money, and other things into having great children. But I think there is a tension with saying that society should lower the demands on parents, so that people have more kids. Parts of the same community seem to have really high standards, and other parts say that we need to lower the standards, and I do not yet see how the tension is resolved.
I think there is a tension with saying that society should lower the demands on parents, so that people have more kids
I think the only possible tension here is re. embryo selection. And it’s not a real tension. The claim is something like “if what’s giving you pause is the high demand on parents, just wing it and have kids anyway and anyhow” + “if you already know you want to have a kid and want to optimize their genes/happiness here are some ways to do it”. I think most Rationalists would agree that the life of an additional non-embryo-selected, ordinary-parented child is still worth creating. Or in other words, one set of claims is about the floor of how much effort you can put in per child and it still be a good idea to have the child. The other set of claims is about effective ways to put more effort in if you want to (mainly what’s discussed is embryo selection for health/intelligence).
I ~never hear the 2nd thing among rationalists (“improve your kid’s life outcomes by doing a lot of research and going through complicated procedures!”).
Homeschooling is often preferred not because it substantially improves life outcomes but because it’s nicer for the children and often parents. School involves a lot of wasted time/effort, and is frustrating and boring for many children. And so by homeschooling you can make their childhood nicer irrespective of life outcomes.
Right, we homeschool our son because he seems more alive this way
How much time do you need for this per week, including preparation etc?
We use a mix of direct instruction, lots of online resources that we manage ourselves, and 1-on-1 tutors via Zoom through the (excellent) startup Modulo. I spent a large amount of time in the first 6 months − 1 year when we started (back during the pandemic) establishing norms and routines around scheduling and patterns that I hoped would lead to him becoming eventually very self-directed. Which did in fact work. That was intensive but now in the steady state the time cost is low.
I’m basically spending no time on preparation per se, but there is a time cost to supervision. We both work full-time and take turns managing him during the day (he’s 9), which means making sure he’s making it to his online classes and paying attention to his schedule, taking him outdoors for visits to museums etc. Most of the time he’s working on projects that he’s passionate about and doesn’t need me except when he gets stuck. He spends a lot of time building levels (for puzzle games or shooters, particularly) and teaching himself tools using YouTube videos and a lot of GPT/Claude.
We know some home-schooling kids with pretty fine-grained schedules, ours is more like a few scheduled things (e.g. online classes) and then big blocks of time where we trust him to do whatever he’s interested in that day.
I do directly instruct him in math and coding.
As someone who was homeschooled for a similar reason, thank you <3
I would include posts on health-optimizing genetic manipulation and similar things in this category. All of this is okay if just chosen but in conflict with “having kids is too costly”. Similar for homeschooling.
I assume by “health-optimizing genetic manipulation” you mean embryo selection (seeing as gene editing is not possible yet). Indeed, Rationalists are more likely to be interested in embryo selection. And indeed, it is costly. But I’d say this is different from costly parenting—it’s a one-time upfront cost to improve your child’s genetics.
Yes, a one-time investment is different from permanent effort. But they both can be very costly. In my original post, I meant all things that raise the cost / time investment / whatever of being a parent (and did not use the term “parenting”). I also think it is totally great if people invest a lot of time, effort, money, and other things into having great children. But I think there is a tension with saying that society should lower the demands on parents, so that people have more kids. Parts of the same community seem to have really high standards, and other parts say that we need to lower the standards, and I do not yet see how the tension is resolved.
I think the only possible tension here is re. embryo selection. And it’s not a real tension. The claim is something like “if what’s giving you pause is the high demand on parents, just wing it and have kids anyway and anyhow” + “if you already know you want to have a kid and want to optimize their genes/happiness here are some ways to do it”. I think most Rationalists would agree that the life of an additional non-embryo-selected, ordinary-parented child is still worth creating. Or in other words, one set of claims is about the floor of how much effort you can put in per child and it still be a good idea to have the child. The other set of claims is about effective ways to put more effort in if you want to (mainly what’s discussed is embryo selection for health/intelligence).