“Modern parents are far from miserable. But the parenting experience can and should be improved. Instead of fruitlessly playing Pygmalion, focus on enjoying your journey together. Raise your kids with kindness and respect. Find common interests. Use discipline not to teach lifelong lessons, but to persuade your kids to treat you and others decently here and now. If you use these strategies, parenting and bigger families really are a lot of fun.”
“I think [Caplan] has a point: micromanaging kids is an investment that won’t pay off. Our kids are more than the sum of our parenting efforts; they’re people in their own right.”
“Caplan is using economics to assess parenting, and coming up with some pretty surprising conclusions. . . . I’m inclined to love any parenting expert speaking up on behalf of a more laissez-faire approach to parenting. Not just because I’m selfish and want more time and energy for my own stuff. Because I truly believe it’s better for kids. In his NYT interview, Caplan talks about the issue of ‘secondary stress’ affecting kids. Parents are stressed or unhappy and their stress rubs off on the kids. Caplan says kids cite their parents’ stress as a main issue, bigger than lack of time together.”
—Babble.com
“Economist Bryan Caplan: Kids can be cheaper than you think ...so maybe you want more of them than you think you want. He makes the case for this controversial proposition at length in his fascinating and well-argued new book.”
—Reason.com
“Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is a new book by economist and blogger Bryan Caplan. It makes a simple argument of extreme importance: you should probably have more children. Though this book is written by an economist, it’s not another cute-o-nomics pop text. It’s a serious book about family planning that’s based on his reading of child development, psychology, genetics, economics, and other fields. It’s about one of life’s most important decisions, and this is what social scientists should be thinking about.”
—Fabio Rojas, OrgTheory.net, Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University
“[T]he author’s mission is noble—encouraging individuals to parent two or more children.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Original, lively, well-researched, and wise, this book could change your life."
—Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate
“Imagine this: Parenting doesn’t HAVE to be a chore. Your kids are safer than you think, smarter than you think and besides—you have less influence than you think! So sit back, relax, and read this book with your new found free time. The sanity you save maybe your own.”
—Lenore Skenazy, author of the book and blog, Free-Range Kids
“Provocative, fascinating, and utterly original, Bryan Caplan’s book overturns the conventional wisdom about why parenting matters.”
—Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and Adapt
“This is one of the best books on parenting, ever. It will bring life into the world, knowledge to your mind, and joy into your heart.”
—Tyler Cowen, Holbert C. Harris Professor of Economics, George Mason University
“A lively, witty, thoroughly engrossing book. Bryan Caplan looks at parenting from the viewpoint of an economist, as well as a father. His conclusions may surprise you but he has the data to back them up.”
—Judith Rich Harris, author of The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike
“I loved this book. Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids should be required reading for parents—as it will be for my children, who are now having their own kids and getting caught up in the more-work, less-fun traps of parenting covered here. And as a geneticist, I can report that Bryan Caplan has the facts right. Even better, he interprets those facts in a way that will change our view of parenting.”
—Robert Plomin, Medical Research Council Research Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry