The Economist’s Guide to Parenting: 10 Years Later (Ep. 479)
In one of the earliest Freakonomics Radio episodes (No. 39!), we asked a bunch of economists with young kids how they approached child-rearing. Now the kids are old enough to talk — and they have a lot to say. We hear about nature vs. nurture, capitalism vs. Marxism, and why you sometimes don’t tell your friends that your father is an economist. Listen and follow our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. * * * In the first Freakonomics book that Steve Levitt and I wrote, there was one chapter called “What Makes a Perfect Parent?” We put forward a collage of data suggesting that much of what modern parents do — or are encouraged to do — probably doesn’t matter all that much. Especially when it comes to what you might call “obsessive parenting” — trying to maximize your child’s potential with an abundance of culture cramming and extracurricular activities. There might be a strong correlation between obsessive parents and successful kids, but it’s not necessarily a causal relationship. In other words, the kind of parent most likely to parent obsessively was also likely to have bestowed upon their kids some even more powerful tools: a high IQ, for instance, or a strong work ethic. A few years after that first Freakonomics book, right when I started this podcast, we did an episode called “The Economist’s Guide to Parenting.” We interviewed a variety of economist parents to see how they approached the task. The results were predictably nerdy. From the very beginning of parenthood:
To preparing their kids for the real world:
We also heard some hardcore self-reflection:
At the end of that episode, we wondered aloud whether we should check in with those economists’ kids 10 years later to see how they were doing. It was kind of a joke: I’d started the podcast on a lark; I certainly wasn’t planning on doing it for 10 years. But joke’s on me. It’s been 10 years since that episode. So we decided to get back in touch with the economists and, even better, their kids. We discovered that some of them did not fall far from the economist-parent tree:
But some absolutely did:
And some of them are just really good at doing what kids have been doing to parents forever:
Today on Freakonomics Radio: 10 years later, the kids are all right. What about the parents?
* * *
Matilda Wolfers is the daughter of Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson; Matilda also has an eight-year-old brother named Oliver. Both her parents are economics professors at the University of Michigan. Stevenson has also served on the Council of Economic Advisers in the White House and as chief economist at the Department of Labor. Of all the economist parents we interviewed in our episode 10 years ago, Stevenson and Wolfers were among those most devoted to following the evidence. They’d read a lot of research in order to create what they saw as a menu of best parenting practices. As a result, Matilda was already taking music and preschool prep classes; she had been taught sign language before she could speak; she was also being raised completely sugar-free until her third birthday.
The family lived in Washington when we visited them for that first episode. Here’s Matilda, not even two years old, with Ellen, the family’s nanny.
Ellen was a former schoolteacher; Stevenson and Wolfers were paying her $50,000 a year.
I asked Matilda — 12-year-old Matilda — to name some of the things her parents did that she would be sure to copy if or when she has kids.
At 12 years old, Matilda Wolfers still has a lot of her formative years ahead of her, so it’s hard to say how much she has been shaped by her parents. Let’s hear from another economist’s kid, this one a young adult.
Bruce Sacerdote is an economics professor at Dartmouth. A lot of his research is focused on education — specifically, the impact that family can have. His wife Michele is a teacher at a Montessori school. They have two sons — 16-year-old Sam and 12-year-old Leo — and Sofia is 21.
Sofia is planning to attend medical school, also at Brown, after graduating next year. People go to medical school for all sorts of reasons. In this case, you get the sense it is the continuation of a mission that’s been underway for a while. As an undergrad, Sofia has been working at a clinic that provides medical care and housing services for people who were formerly incarcerated. How much of this mission comes from the family Sofia grew up in? In our episode 10 years ago, we talked to Bruce Sacerdote about his research on twins and adoption. When he analyzed the data on Korean children who’d been adopted into American families, he found that parents didn’t have that large an effect on their kids’ educational outcomes. But you could imagine that parents have a powerful impact on their children’s worldview. So I wanted to know if he saw Sofia’s worldview as inconsistent with the economic worldview he’s devoted his career to.
Sofia uses the pronouns “they” and “she.”
For all Sofia’s appreciation, for all the striving from both Sofia and Bruce to see the commonalities in their worldviews, you can’t deny that Sofia Sacerdote doesn’t exactly sound like the offspring of an academic economist. Coming up after the break, we hear from the offspring of another economist who has also pointed out that parenting isn’t as influential as we think. Except maybe in the case of his kids, who happen to be twins. Twin one:
And twin two:
And we’ll hear from Steve Levitt, who’s expecting his seventh child. Surely, he must have all the answers by now:
And don’t forget to check out Levitt’s podcast; it’s called People I (Mostly) Admire. In one recent episode, he interviewed his two oldest daughters, Amanda and Lily. It is an amazing episode, and I encourage you to listen; it’s Episode 46 of the People I (Mostly) Admire podcast — which, like all shows in the Freakonomics Radio Network, you can follow, for free, on any podcast app. We’ll be right back. * * * The next stop on our tour of economists’ children brings us to a pair of 18-year-old twins.
Bryan’s wife, Corina, is a lawyer; they also have two younger children. As an economist, Caplan is best known for his libertarian views. In addition to writing about the education system, he also wrote a book arguing in favor of open borders to boost the global economy, as well as a book called Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. In that one, he argues that parenting should be fun and that parents are less influential than most people think. So how influential has Bryan Caplan been to his 18-year-old sons? I asked Aidan and Tristan to describe their economic philosophies. Aidan first:
And Tristan:
A “minarchist” being an advocate of minarchism, which is essentially libertarianism with minimal government.
“A selective nonconformist.” Someone who “doesn’t worry what society expects or cares about.” That sounds like another economist I know, the economist I know best.
Levitt is my Freakonomics friend and co-author. He has always marched to the beat of his own weird drum. In my view, that’s one reason he’s always done such interesting and unusual research, on topics that other scholars probably wouldn’t even consider. Collusion among sumo wrestlers. Discrimination among game-show contestants. And let’s not forget his ground-breaking research on the relationship between legalized abortion and crime. Levitt is also unusual — at least in 21st-century America — in having a relatively large family.
There was also a son, Andrew, the first-born, who died at age 1 from pneumococcal meningitis.
On a recent episode of his podcast People I (Mostly) Admire, Levitt had a conversation with Amanda and Lily, his other oldest daughter. Here’s a clip of Lily talking to her dad. She’s a student at Vassar College, majoring in psychology and minoring in economics:
I asked Levitt now how he felt about one of his kids wanting to impress him by following in his economist footprints.
This is a big question for any parent, whether you’ve got a Ph.D. in economics or not: how powerful are the hereditary forces of nature versus the many factors that constitute nurture, and how do nature and nurture blend in a given person? It’s plainly not a simple thing to sort out. Just think about schooling. The older a kid gets, the more time they spend outside the home, with their peers. There’s some evidence that peer influence can be very powerful; that said, parents are the ones who choose the school their kids will attend — and, to a lesser degree, what kind of peers their kids will spend time with. So if you had to summarize the nature-versus-nurture research from an economist’s perspective?
That, again, is Bryan Caplan of George Mason University.
Caplan, remember, home-schooled his twin sons Aidan and Tristan.
I asked Justin Wolfers, father of Matilda, for his take on the power of nature versus nurture.
Hey, what do you think: should we check in with Matilda — and Aidan and Tristan and Sofia — in another 10 years if we’re still around? I’d love to know what you thought of this episode; we’re at [email protected]. Thanks to Ascha Miles and several other listeners who wrote in to suggest that we do this 10-year follow-up episode. Also, one more reminder to check out the episode of Steve Levitt’s podcast, People I (Mostly) Admire, where he interviews his daughters Amanda and Lily; it’s episode No. 46. Thanks to all the young people who spoke with us today and to their economist parents, too. * * * Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Mary Diduch. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Joel Meyer, Tricia Bobeda, Zack Lapinski, Ryan Kelley, Emma Tyrrell, Lyric Bowditch, Jasmin Klinger, Eleanor Osborne, and Jacob Clemente. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; the rest of the music this week was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode: SOURCES
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EXTRAS
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