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Why do Lower Income Parents Find More Joy In Kids?
We analyze a graph showing lower income parents rate being a parent as more enjoyable and rewarding than higher income parents. Debunking the bias that poorer people must be miserable raising children, we argue cultural factors like faith and insulation from the childless urban monoculture better enable them to find meaning in parenting. We also discuss how defining life goals around pleasure paradoxically reduces durable happiness.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] What this graph demonstrates, that both the percentage of parents saying that they find being a parent is enjoyable or rewarding highest among lower income people.
Malcolm Collins: A lot of people don't realize that when you define your personal goals around hedonism, like I am having a kid to be happier.
That kid will always provide you with less happiness than if you are having a kid because it is your ideological duty to have the kid, the happiness that you get from tasks that you do. Because you think they are a thing of intrinsic value and not to make yourself happy will always give you more durable happiness.
And the person who is chasing hedonism in and of itself, but the urban monoculture doesn't tell people that it tells people that the highest order goal in anyone's life should be. Sort of the mass distribution of hedonism.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. You sent me an interesting graph today that I want to talk about because [00:01:00] it speaks to a point that we often talk about within the perinatalist movement, where we will say lower income individuals have more children than higher income individuals. This is true between and within countries.
So that means on average, the less wealth the country has, the more kids, the higher the fertility rate is going to be. But also within countries in general, like if you look at the US until you get to like really extreme levels of wealth which we've talked about in our other video, like the, the will will child support cost speciation video, you do get high fertility rate again at extreme levels of wealth, but generally less wealth you have, the more kids you have.
Simone Collins: And I think a lot of people like, especially like wealthier people. When they hear us say this are like, Oh, well, that's just because these terribly uneducated people are just miserably having children because of their dumb religious beliefs or because they're too dumb to use birth control properly. And they then would, of course, the assumption there is if that is really true, if that is what is happening.
These are the most [00:02:00] miserable parents, right? Of course, because they don't have the resources for the kids, right? Because raising a child is so expensive these days. And because of course they're having children by mistake, because they're so dumb to not use birth control properly.
Malcolm Collins: So these wealthy parents, yeah, they're the ones who are having the fulfilling parenting experience.
One
Simone Collins: would assume, of course, because they were, they, they paid all the IVF. to have their Children at age 55 and they wanted their Children and they
Malcolm Collins: have the resources. I think that there is a level of, within the urban elite in our society today, this urban monoculture we talk about, a dehumanization of the lower classes in, in America.
You think? You don't think? Well, no, I mean, you say you think, but it's something that they, I do not think, realize that they have done.
Simone Collins: Well, especially the woke masses believe that they are the champions of the poor and
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, that's what they say. They're like, yeah, I'm the champion of the little guy.
And, and then you,
Published on 1 year, 9 months ago