Backsolving Parenting Strategy based on Preferred Outcome at Age 35

In order to optimize around how to raise an individual child, we first need to consider what is the end results we plan on achieving a per child basis.

To begin to figure out how we want to raise kids, we must ultimately consider the final destination.

From my earlier post, we concluded that the global optimization problem is:

Optimization = sum[age 25- 65](yearly income - yearly cost)[discounted at 6%] + [(number of offspring at age 65) x ($10M) + combined family net worth at age 65][discounted at 6%].

Viewed this as an optimization problem, this means we need to raise kids such that on average, they have a lot of kids, do so early, and build net worth. Net worth is used as a measurable proxy for socioeconomic status.

Careers for Success

A career such as a entrepreneur is the best for building net worth, however it has a very long wind-up time before an entrepreneur can generate enough income to support a large family even if he or she are building net worth on paper. This is doubly complicated if you are a women — mat leave is not really an option if you are a business owner. For a son, this is nevertheless a possible route but would require you bankrolling their family expenses potentially until the age of 30 or so. And well, they will have to lucky enough to find a wife who can put up with them working long hours and making low incomes while she has to disproportionally raise the kids. A hard sell — but possible in the right circumstances.

A career in high finance (private equity, hedgefunds, venture capital) is a good alternative, but often requires living in a high cost of living area — difficult for raising a family. It also has a painful start-up cost as university quality matters a considerable amount. Maybe in 20 years these jobs will be more remote though which would remove a few of the negatives. This can be feasible for both men and women, though women will need to delegate a lot of things to sisters / husbands / paid labor.

Streaming

There is also another angle. What if we stream? Due to the power law distribution of capital (rich get richer), in theory you only need a small number of your kids to succeed in building net worth to substantially increase the family’s net worth. Your other kids just need to make enough money to eventually sustain raising a family.

What are some good options for those child-friendly careers?

Obvious options are daycare business owners (do what you do already just with a few kids that are not yours) and teachers (good leave policies, potential for homeschooling if stipends for homeschooling take off further). Other good options are STEM field jobs that are particularly remote and work-life balance friendly — basically think big tech. These jobs are also fairly immune to AI & automation, they are all some of the hardest jobs to automate (daycare, teachers) or automation itself creates more of these jobs (STEM).

Stream 1: Net worth stream. Stream for kids that will likely have slightly less kids considerably later but expand family wealth. Career options: high finance, entrepreneurship.

Stream 2: Family creation stream. Stream for kids that can have the most kids and the earliest to achieve financial independence. Career options: teachers, daycare owners, remote engineering jobs.

Unfortunate reality is that Stream 1 is really difficult to do for a women in this world — it is very hard to find a husband who will do disproportional amounts of childcare. Maybe things will change in 20 years but I am skeptical.

Steam 2 is feasible for both men and women.

I will also create a 3rd category, I will call it the support stream. It’s always good to have a doctor/nurse in a family even if they themselves do not have too many kids. Having in-kind medical advice is highly valuable in a large family, especially given how often kids get sick. Women generally make better doctors (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/people-treated-by-female-doctors-tend-to-have-better-health-outcomes-study-finds#:~:text=The%20researchers%20reported%20that%20the,as%20a%20clinically%20significant%20difference) and I also want to make sure if I have a daughter that really does not want children there’s a career option for her that’s well suited to the global objective.

Stream 1: Net worth stream (men)

a. Entrepreneur

b. High Finance

Stream 2: Family creation stream (men & women)

a. Daycare owner

b. Teacher

c. Remote big tech engineer

Stream 3: Medical stream (women)

a. Doctor

b. Nurse

A Commentary on Gender Roles

There is a common thread in the culture I live in (Western, North American) to believe men and women must be raised with assumption that they will have completely identical and equal lived experiences. The challenge is that our actual social structures and our biology disagree with that proposition.

For example, if you push all your daughters to be entrepreneurs, they will struggle to raise a large family. Why? Well firstly, women are uniquely responsible for childbirth (maybe in 200 years this will not be true but right now it is) and male spouses are typically not eager to shoulder >70% of childrearing responsibilities (whether this is due to nurture or nature we will not discuss).

On the other hand, it is a risky strategy to push your sons to be teachers due to norm of generally preferring a spouse that makes more money than them. It’s possible, but the reality it is easier to find a spouse as a man when you earn more. Women do not have the same problem. Teachers are not the greatest example as they make decent salaries in many (blue) states but stands as an example nevertheless.

Now just because we acknowledge the existence of biological and sociological differences between men, women, does not mean we suddenly should revert to the other cultural extreme of aspirational single earner households and trad wife memes. The simple truth is that the world has changed a lot, single earner households are extremely difficult to financially manage — the reality is that dual income households have a massive competitive edge. Elizabeth Warren’s dual income trap covers this topic well so I do not feel the need to deep dive further into it. Not having income in a relationship naturally also results in a power imbalance, which means that ultimately where my daughter lives, how many kids she has, when she has them becomes more dictated by her chosen partner more than by her own values (values that my spouse & I would hope to influence). The Hasidic Jewish community also shows that female employment and large families can co-exist completely fine so it does not have to be the fertility dampener that its often touted to be if planned well.

Conclusion

So what is the conclusion? To maximize the optimization proposed, I will aim to steer my sons into careers that maximize net worth potential (high finance, entrepreneurship) while my daughters into careers that are well suited to achieve financial independence while having a large family as early as possible (teachers, daycare owners, laid back remote engineering jobs). A third stream will be supported to daughters who wish to become a doctor or nurse. If some of my sons wish to go down the 2nd stream (family creation oriented), I will also encourage it.

What About the Child’s Interests?

A common thread in modern Western parenting is to let your child pursue any desire they are interested in and eventually pick any degree for university.

This mentality described here goes heavily against that reasoning and this is highly intentional. Maybe 30 years ago, when life was easier in the West, you could have let your child pursue any education they wanted to, however, these days that strategy is likely to result in nothing but college debt and bitterness.

My own parents were immigrants to Canada and largely raised me to be exactly who I became. They got me into mathematics when I was 5, computer science when I was 11, then science fair & AI when I was 14, only for me to get an Engineering degree in AI at Canada’s top university, and now run a AI startup. My father, coming from a finance background saw that the future is in computer science and AI early on and largely pressured me to go into that space. There is no way I would focused on AI as early as I did if it was not for my father because a teenager cannot be expected to possibly know what the world values and what the world will value in 10 years — an adult, who is a good parent, should be. I aim to replicate the same strategy while balancing earning potential with family rearing.

I do acknowledge that all kids are a little different and need some degree of choice in their lives. This is why I am largely keeping the streams open ended and allowing 2 very different options for each gender.