Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think

by Bryan Caplan

  Forget everything you think you know about the golden age of childhood. People are much safer than they used to be—especially kids. In 1950, more than 3 percent of kids didn’t live to see their first birthday. That’s about one missing child for every classroom in the country. Conditions today aren’t merely better. They improved so much that government statisticians changed their denominator from deaths per 1,000 to deaths per 100,000.

  You might think that children under five are safer because they have so little contact with the increasingly frightening outside world. What happens once kids go to school and meet our sick, twisted society? The answer: Even though school-age children were already the safest people in the country back in 1950, we managed to make them almost four times as safe.

  If the numbers seem counterintuitive or absurd, riddle me this: Have any of the horrible things you see on TV happened to you? To someone you care about? To anyone you personally know? If not, why do you place so much stock in what you see on television, and so little in what you see with your own eyes? Tragedies on Law and Order don’t even pretend to be real. Tragedies on CNN are genuine, but they’re as misleading as stories about lottery winners. They’re news precisely because they are phenomenally unlikely to happen to you. Alas, one of the few things that improved faster than our children’s safety is the media’s ability to track down the shrinking number of exceptions.

  THE FIFTIES VERSUS TODAY: A CLOSER LOOK AT THE DECLINE OF TRAGEDY

  Why did safety improve so much since 1950? To answer this question, we must think some gruesome thoughts. How often do kids die of disease? Accidents? War? Murder? Suicide? The last thing I want to do is freak you out while trying to calm you down. So don’t forget our mission: Finding out why childhood is so much less tragic than it used to be.

  Table 4.3: How Our Kids Got Safer Since 1950

  DISEASE

  Stories about sick children rarely make the news, Leave It to Beaver, or even Law and Order: SVU. Nevertheless, disease has long been youth’s leading killer. When the unthinkable happened to a child under one, disease was the cause 96 percent of the time in 1950, and 94 percent of the time in 2005. The pattern gets less lopsided as kids grow up, but disease remains deadlier than all other causes put together for all kids under fifteen years old.

  Fortunately, disease isn’t what it used to be. The greatest killer of youth has become much less deadly—about 80 percent less for younger kids, and about 70 percent less for fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds. Death from infectious disease has virtually been eradicated. Back in 1950, influenza and pneumonia were responsible for almost 14 percent of the deaths of children age one to four. By 2005, their chance of death from these diseases was about thirty times smaller. Progress on noninfectious ailments hasn’t been as rapid, but is still a great gift. Take heart disease. The death rate for children ages five to fourteen fell more than three times.

  Suppose that in 1950, a genie let you wish away one cause of death for your children. You would want to pick disease, because it is far and away the greatest threat to their lives. Since 1950, this wish practically came true without a genie’s help. And it wasn’t just one lucky family that got this wish; we all did. Children and their parents have much to be grateful for.

  ACCIDENTS

  In 1950, accidents were the second greatest killer of youth of all ages. In 2005, accidents remained the number two killer of children under fifteen and had become the number one killer for fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds. Progress? Absolutely. Accidental death rates sharply declined for every age group. Kids under fifteen are now almost four times as safe as they were in 1950. Even fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, who gained the least, are about 1.4 times as safe. Accidents became their leading killer because their death rate for disease fell even faster.

  WAR

  In 1950, American families were losing their sons to the Korean War. In 2005, American families were losing their sons—and occasionally daughters—to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A cynic might say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” At least from the American point of view, however, he’d be wrong. Since 1950, war has radically changed: It isn’t that dangerous anymore. The fatality rate of 1950 was more than fifty times as high as the fatality rate of 2005. In 1950, parents really had to worry that the government would force their sons to join the army and send them overseas to die. Now the soldiers are volunteers, and they almost always come home alive.

  HOMICIDE AND SUICIDE

  The Fifties weren’t worse in every way. Our homicide and suicide rates are two to four times as high as they used to be. Before you declare victory for despair, though, remember that homicide and suicide rates continue to be microscopic. They’re horrifying, but so rare that you can quadruple the rates for 1950 without having much effect on overall safety. Even fifteen- to twenty-four-year olds—the group most likely to die violently—are still more than twice as safe overall.

  A KIND WORD FOR THE FIFTIES

  Table 4.4: Annual Youth Mortality per 100,000: 1900 versus 1950

  Compared to modern America, 1950 was a death trap. Yet American parents in 1950 were right to feel that they had given their children a better life. By the standards of 1900, 1950 was a children’s paradise. In 1900, over 16 percent of babies didn’t see their first birthday; 1950 was almost five times as safe. In 1900, about 2 percent of kids age one to four didn’t make it through the year; 1950 was fourteen times as safe. Tragic deaths for older youths became much less common, too: Safety improved six and a half times for five- to fourteen-year-olds, and more than three times for fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds. The people of 1950 had a triumph over tragedy to celebrate. But so do we.

  VIOLENT CRIME

  The devastating loss of a child used to be commonplace. Now it’s a freak event. Every actual and potential parent should breathe a sigh of relief that she isn’t living in 1950, or—God forbid—1900. Still, there’s more to safety than staying alive. What about all the terrible crimes that people commit against children?

  Hard numbers again contradict popular perception. Whenever Gallup asks, “Is there more crime in the U.S. than there was a year ago, or less?” a majority of Americans almost always answers, “More.” According to crime statistics, however, violent crime has always been rare, especially for children, and recently hit its lowest rate in thirty years. The world is safe—and keeps getting safer. We fear for our children because journalists and screenwriters are scary—and keep getting scarier.

  The leading source of American crime statistics, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), began in 1973. Its goal is to measure how much crime happens, not just how much crime the police hear about. Instead of relying on police reports, the government interviews a nationally representative sample of about 75,000 households to find out whether they’ve been victimized. In 2008, it estimated a violent crime rate of 19.3 per 1,000 people over the age of eleven—less than half the 1973 rate. The most common violent crime by far is simple assault (67 percent of violent crimes), followed by aggravated assault (17 percent), robbery (11 percent), and rape/sexual assault (4 percent).

  In the NCVS, roughly 4 percent of twelve- to twenty-four-year-olds are the victim of a violent crime during the course of a year. That is about twice the overall rate. Since young people commit most of the violence, it is hardly surprising that they are also its main victims. Fortunately, the more serious crimes are much less common. For twelve- to twenty-four-year-olds, the incidence rate is about one in 144 for aggravated assault, and less than one in 500 for rape/sexual assault.

  Since this survey is based on interviews with victims twelve and older, it does not count crimes against young children. But according to police reports, kids under twelve are much safer than twelveto seventeen-year-olds. Their assault rate is about seven times lower, their robbery rate about twelve times lower, and their forcible sex rate about two times lower. The world is far from perfect, but serious crimes against childr
en are rare—and getting rarer.

  THE CASE OF KIDNAPPING

  When I was a kid, my mom and dad repeatedly warned me never to get into a stranger’s car—no matter how much candy he promised. Although they let me bike all over our neighborhood without supervision, my parents were genuinely afraid of what the FBI calls a “stereotypical kidnapping.” In a stereotypical kidnapping, the perpetrator is a stranger or slight acquaintance who (1) transports the victim fifty or more miles, (2) detains him overnight, (3) holds him for ransom, (4) intends to keep him permanently, or (5) kills him. If my parents were worried about kidnapping thirty years ago—when people were nice—how often does it happen in modern America?

  Almost never. For children under twelve years old, the chance of a stereotypical kidnapping is one in a million per year. The best source on child abduction in the United States is the Department of Justice’s Second National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children. Last conducted during 1999, this survey found a total of 115 stereotypical kidnappings for the year. Older children were more likely to be victims, but even for the highest-risk group—twelve- to fourteen-year-olds—the odds were just four in a million. Your child is about as likely to be the next Lindbergh baby as you are to win world fame for flying from New York to Paris.

  Once you know these basic facts, it is clear that Lenore Skenazy, the journalist who let her nine-year-old ride the New York subway alone, is not the “Worst Mom in America.” I say she’s one of the best. If you merely want to curry favor with other parents, go ahead and base your safety decisions on hearsay. If you really care about your children’s safety, however, do what Skenazy did: Look at the numbers. Telling your kid to buckle his seat belt is reasonable. Telling your kid he can’t walk to the mailbox alone because he might get abducted is lunacy.

  Over 200,000 children were kidnapped in 1999, but the vast majority were nothing like the cases on the news. Kidnappers of pre-teens are almost always relatives who are unhappy with their custody status. While these kidnappings are certainly distressing, they almost never lead to physical injuries. The kidnapper returns the child more than 90 percent of the time. When he doesn’t, the rest of the family almost always discovers the child’s new location—and can easily pursue legal remedies.

  IS SAFETY-CONSCIOUS PARENTING THE REASON OUR KIDS ARE SAFER?

  Walk through the baby safety department of a store with your oldest living relative asking, “Which of these things did you need?”

  —Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids

  Modern parents usually say they’re safety conscious because the modern world has become so perilous for kids. They’re wrong about the peril. Still, is it possible that parental paranoia is the cause of the massive increase in our children’s safety? Once Today’s Typical Parents learn the facts, I assume they’ll want the credit.

  Despite the weak evidence for nurture effects on children’s health, we can’t dismiss the possibility out of hand. Drastically reducing a tiny risk has almost no perceptible effect on life expectancy. Imagine a world where any child who survives his first year lives to be 100 years old. If you reduce his risk of premature death from 100 per 100,000 to zero per 100,000, you only increase his life expectancy by about five weeks. That is too small an effect for even higher-quality twin and adoption studies to rule out.

  Yet if you recall the main causes of youth mortality, it is hard to give parenting much credit. Parents are primarily hyper about accidents and crime. But the overwhelming reason our kids are safer is that disease is so much less deadly. It is unclear how hyper parents could have caused much of this decline. Still, safety-conscious parenting might have played a supporting role. Accident rates declined much less for fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds than they did for younger children. Perhaps as kids grow up, they take more and more risks that their fretful parents can no longer veto.

  Bottom line: While there’s no hard proof that safety-conscious parenting works, there is reason to suspect a small benefit. If you have nervous energy to spare, you might as well try a little extra nagging or child proofing. Whatever you do, however, do not mess with Halloween and spoil everyone’s fun. Contrary to urban legends about poisoned candy and apples with razor blades, no child has ever been killed or seriously injured by Halloween treats.

  Whether or not you go the extra mile to protect your child, don’t lament that no matter how hard you try, you can’t recreate the Fifties. By the standards of the Fifties, almost every modern parent is doing great. If you’re especially safety conscious, you’re doing better than great. Feel free to pat yourself on the back for making your safe child even safer.

  PRUDENCE, NOT PARANOIA

  The Baudelaires had not really enjoyed most of their time with her—not because she cooked horrible cold meals, or chose presents for them that they didn’t like, or always corrected the children’s grammar, but because she was so afraid of everything that she made it impossible to really enjoy anything at all.

  —Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Wide Window

  I have an obsessive personality. It’s usually an asset: When I obsess about an idea, I absorb it; when I obsess about a project, I finish it. Sadly, I also occasionally fixate on fruitless topics. I spend hours worrying about unsolvable problems and fantastic scenarios. Sometimes I worry about literally impossible dangers. Negative thoughts stay with me like a song I can’t get out of my head.

  I know as well as anyone, then, that facts do not instantly bring peace of mind. Still, on the road to peace of mind, learning the facts about children’s safety is an important first step. Once you know the facts, you know the kind of problem you face. In an utterly deadly world, worry is a solution: You need to figure out how to protect your kids from danger. In a perfectly safe world, worry is a problem: You need to figure out how to protect yourself from your own anxiety.

  The real world is neither utterly deadly nor perfectly safe. Caring parents need to strike a balance between fearing the world and fearing fear itself—to be prudent, rather than paranoid. Unfortunately, Today’s Typical Parent strikes an indefensible balance. At minimum, our fear should have mellowed as the safety of our loved ones rose. Since our kids are almost five times as safe as they were in 1950, parents’ angst should have mostly melted away. Instead, we’ve come down with a collective anxiety disorder.

  Learning the facts about safety is the first step toward feeling better. What steps come next? Trying to prevent all conceivable dangers is tempting, but futile. Everything’s slightly risky—even leaving the house. As Lenore Skenazy wisely observes:Once you can picture an eight-year-old . . . being dragged down the street by her Hannah Montana backpack while the bus driver digs Zeppelin on his cranked-up, off-brand iPod, it certainly seems worth warning the kids to undo their backpack belts. And then—whew! That’s one worry off the checklist.

  The problem is that the checklist just keeps growing. It’s like one of those brooms in the story of the sorcerer’s apprentice. Chop one in half, and it comes back as two. Two become four.

  If parents can’t ward off their anxiety by fighting microscopic dangers, what’s the alternative? One of psychologists’ most effective treatments for anxiety is called exposure therapy. People get over their irrational fears by repeatedly facing them. Suppose you accept that leaving your twelve-year-old home alone is as safe as crossing the street, but you’re still afraid to do so. After you accept the irrationality of your fear, step two is leaving your child at home while you take a short trip to the store. The catch: You have to do it even if it terrifies you. Once a child-free trip to the store no longer makes your palms sweat, face your next phobia. Baby steps are okay. But the lesson of exposure therapy is that to stop being afraid, you have to start doing things that scare you.

  While it’s important to face the fears you’ve got, there’s no reason to channel surf for new nightmares. The horrors that parents see on the news and “realistic” crime dramas are insanely rare. If they disturb
you, stop watching. If you must watch, watch ironically. Fictional shows are merely gripping lies. Even carefully factchecked journalism is as misleading as infomercials about “making millions with no money down”; both dwell on weird outliers. The media’s job is to point cameras at the most heartbreaking story on earth. In a world with 7 billion human beings, the news will always be horrifying. That’s no reason to fear for your children.

  If you have kids, or might one day want them, never forget that we’re living in a golden age of safety. The false perception that today’s world is dangerous for children is a major source of needless parental suffering. Compared to the “idyllic” Fifties, modern children are amazingly secure. Now more than ever, parents should sleep well, knowing that their progeny are safe.

  APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 4: WHERE THE MORTALITY TABLES COME FROM

  The raw numbers for mortality from disease, accidents, homicide, and suicide come from Vital Statistics of the United States 1950, Vol.3: Mortality Data, Table 57 (for 1950), and National Vital Statistics Reports 56 (10), Table 11 (for 2005). Mortality data for 1900 come from Centers for Disease Control/National Center for Health Statistics (CDC/NCHS), National Vital Statistics System, Table HIST290.

  My only adjustment to these numbers: The 2005 numbers have separate entries for “legal intervention” (people killed by the police, execution, etc.), “undetermined intent” (violent deaths not ruled homicide or suicide), and “complications of medical and surgical care.” I decided to count deaths from legal intervention as homicides, and deaths from undetermined intent and medical complications as accidents.