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Trudie on kids and career
At the end of a long ponder, Jane Galt asks:
So it is entirely possible that society might be better off with pro-childcare socialisation for women.
But then a little voice whispers . . . I'm one of those happy professional women. What about me, dammit?!
In the comments, Trudie responds:
Giving up a fully active career involves a higher price if that career is/was a successful one. But the "income effect" from your successful career should still put you on a higher indifference curve, unless of course you become obsessed with regret. If you can fight regret, the child/career choice will take care of itself.
The same can be said about marriage and the difficulties of two-career families. It never ceases to amaze Trudie how many agonies boil down to regret. So what are the best rational choice strategies for pre-empting the general possibility of regret?...
Trudie can think of a few approaches:
1. Practice major life shifts, so you get used to regret and thus can bear it more easily. In other words, try to make the costs of regret smaller.
2. Hire eminent psychotherapists to administer electric shocks every time you feel regret. Try to make the costs of regret higher, so that you won't regret so much.
3. Drink yourself senseless after making life commitments. Attack your memory.
4. Have so many kids there will be no time or energy for regret. One should suffice.
5. Hire someone to force the choice upon you, whether by posting a bond with a friendly blogger or approaching the Russian Mafia. Or, once you get pregnant, do something unpardonable and post it on YouTube, being sure to alert your blogger enemies.
6. Realize that you value control more than any of these options for overcoming regret, so live with the regret and enjoy that sense of control for all it is worth.
7. Get over #6 by studying Leibniz, Holbach, and other determinists.
Trudie believes that Tyler is good at managing regret. Surely we shouldn't just let regret manage us. But what is best to do?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 22, 2006 at 07:00 AM in Philosophy | Permalink
Comments
An female acquaintance of mine works as a high powered securities lawyer. She's dodging the career/child decision by having her eggs frozen. Should she wish to have children after her biological clock has stopped ticking, she plans to have them unthawed, fertilized in vitro, and implanted into a surrogate.
Posted by: Christopher Rasch at Nov 22, 2006 8:45:26 AM
A lot of women don't realize how early they should really start thinking about it. Some people are still fertile at 40+ but many are not, and if you're too late, you're too late. The freezing the eggs idea is good. You can regret not having a career too. And you don't want to rush in, marry poorly and start popping out babies just because your clock is ticking.
Posted by: economistatwork at Nov 22, 2006 11:00:20 AM
I think that if I'm having so much trouble deciding between two choices that I must be close to indifferent between the two. The closer to indifference, the harder it is to determine which I prefer. Therefore, once I've agonized over a decision for a bit, I realize I'll likely be just as happy with either option. So, I toss a coin, pick one, and never look back.
Posted by: Michael Stack at Nov 22, 2006 11:03:26 AM
Strange, I use a coin method much like Michael. To determine if I really care about a choice I pull out a coin and think about how I would feel if I determined the choice randomly. Often this makes me focus on what I really want/need and I realize I don't need to flip a coin. Sometimes I realize I don't really care and I flip the coin.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw at Nov 22, 2006 11:39:43 AM
The discussion raises an interesting question: Does regret serve any useful purpose? If not, why is it so persistent?
Posted by: mike at Nov 22, 2006 12:18:02 PM
Hey, why don't you just buy a baby when you are, like, 48. You probably can afford it, and there are probably a lot of people in their teens that can't but get pregant anyway and live in South Dakota and are happy to sell. You know, like markets in everything. Another way of doing it is to do intergenerational income distribution. Yeah, it's socialist, I know, but it should have the same effect (or possibly even encourage childbearing).
Posted by: Dan Karreman at Nov 22, 2006 12:19:35 PM
"The discussion raises an interesting question: Does regret serve any useful purpose? If not, why is it so persistent?"
Perhaps regret is a signal to others that we value them, even though we've made choices against their interests.
Suppose two players repeatedly play different, non-zero sum games with each other. Suppose in the current game, Player A chooses among two sets of payoffs (say, [(A: 10, B: 1), (A: 6, B: 6)] (even better if the payoffs are somewhat uncertain, at least the payoffs to others or suppose the payoffs are not known to B)
Afterwards, A could cheaply claim that she still wants to cooperate in future games. It would be much more convincing to B, though, if A shows regret, which implies that A suffers a decrease in payoff. This may also convince B that the choice A made really was better, given the pain incurred by the regret.
It would be an interesting experiment if people feel more regret for choices that only impact themselves versus choices that impact others (including unborn children?).
-Kevin
Posted by: Kevin Postlewaite at Nov 22, 2006 1:53:56 PM
We're expecting our 10th. I sometimes have regrets when I hear people talk about their vacations and restaurant meals, but they don't generally last long. My college and high school age kids, in particular, are bright and fun to talk to.
Posted by: Bill at Nov 22, 2006 2:33:42 PM
How about if the husband stays home if he has the worse carreer. Oh, how freaking brilliant I am!
Posted by: josh at Nov 22, 2006 3:57:16 PM
When I'm old and my memory fails me, my children, whom I've loved and nurtured with all my heart, will help fill in the gaps and I will smile with joy.
I can't image a career or some other material pursuit being more fulfilling. For G-d's sake, choose one - a career or children - but don't do both! Your children deserve better!
Posted by: Mike at Nov 22, 2006 6:01:00 PM
Embrace the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. When facing a decision which has the prospect of creating future regret, choose based on the outcome of a 'random' quantum event. Then, if ever facing regret in the future, console yourself that an alternate-reality version of yourself has experienced the other path.
(As one of the earlier coin-flip commenters noted, merely to contemplate placing yourself at the mercy of a random process may reveal other aspects of your preferences. If there's one path you know you can't resist even if the 'flip' goes the other way, you can skip the flip -- and also perhaps, the regret -- since one path is no longer plausible.)
Posted by: Gordon Mohr at Nov 22, 2006 10:49:52 PM
A colleague and I were talking this morning about past events. I offered that, "considering the counter-factual is a fun intellectual exercise."
His response was, "Come off it, John. That's just another word for having regrets."
Posted by: EclectEcon at Nov 23, 2006 10:36:01 AM
Have a child while a teen. If you have one at fifteen you will only be 27
when it is 12 and hopefully has considerable ability to look after itself.
That leaves you the rest of your life to have a career in. It also gives
you plenty of time to look for a husband while you're still young if you
are interested in one of those things.
Posted by: Ronald Brak at Nov 23, 2006 4:48:05 PM
"Hey, why don't you just buy a baby when you are, like, 48. You probably can afford it, and there are probably a lot of people in their teens that can't but get pregant anyway and live in South Dakota and are happy to sell."
I am from South Dakota. Is there a reason we may seem like babysellers more so than residents of other states?
Posted by: Jake at Nov 23, 2006 9:33:55 PM
To answer my own question (a relative 'duh' for a resident of the state): our attempted abortion ban. I guess I should add that our abortion ban failed, but it is still difficult to get an abortion.
So, as Dan suggests, SD might be a buyer's market.
Posted by: Jake at Nov 23, 2006 9:54:30 PM
What some of the people here are forgetting - and I'm noticing people referring to children as "it", as well as the "why can't we just buy a baby" cohort- is that the children themselves will have lives.
Maybe I'm perverse, but that's the reason why I will never buy the "you must give up your career if you're a girl!" schtick. Because it is 50% likely that each child will be a girl. And after all this effort you pour into her to give her the best untouched-by-non-biological-relatives care possible, she in turn will have to give up whatever SHE wants to do, for the same reason. And so on ad infinitum...
Posted by: Helen at Nov 30, 2006 10:16:40 PM
Well, actually, for a lot of other good reasons as well...
Posted by: Helen at Nov 30, 2006 10:18:12 PM
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