My New Favorite Parenting Book

​The following excerpt is from the introduction of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids by Bryan Caplan. I bought Caplan's book after listening to this conversation regarding his book. 

Adoption and twin research provides strong evidence that Parents barely affect their children’s prospects…

…[Researchers] find that when adopted children are young, they resemble both the adopted relatives they see every day and the biological relatives they’ve never met. However, as adopted children grow up, the story has a shocking twist: resemblance to biological relatives remains, but resemblance to adopted relatives mostly fades away. Studies that compare identical to fraternal twins reach the same conclusion.

The lesson: it’s easy to change a child but hard to keep him from changing back. Instead of thinking of children as lumps of clay for parents to mold, we should think of them as plastic that flexes in response to pressure—and pops back to its original shape once the pressure is released. (pages 4-5 of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids by Bryan Caplan)

One more sentence from the first chapter, “The best available evidence shows that large differences in upbringing have little effect on how kids turn out.” (pg 34)


We can all chill out about parenting. My previous advice stands: don't abuse your kids, avoid poverty, and love them. The rest, I agree with Caplan's conclusions regarding the science of nature vs nurture, is not going to have a large lasting difference on who your kids become.