Much congratulations to all four of you!! The Turkish impulse would be to pin some “nazar” beads to their clothing, meant to protect them from the evil eye (aka jealous outsiders coveting their wonderfulnes and casting spite in their direction) while muttering “nazar değmesin”. (The Middle East is always pragmatic though, as a gold coin of various sizes are also attached to those baby gifts of nazar beads — expensive sleep gadgets the babies will reject don’t pay for themselves). This being digital, I’ll just go with the emojis! 🧿🧿
At first I thought this was some of your fiction, and among the best. As journalism, it is off the chart.
If you still have a channel open to Substack, please tell them to improve their iPad app. Most apps allow me to zoom in for small graphics or tiny print, but not Substack. I could change the global settings just to make their app more useable (make all print bigger everywhere), at the cost of making many other apps less usable. I’d rather declare it to be their problem.
The iPad keyboard only appears when I am inputting something, and even then there is no control key on it. I have no doubt that the regular PC version of the app is capable of doing this. It is the iPad app that is broken.
The standard iPad gesture for adjusting image size is to touch the screen with two fingers and then drag them apart for bigger or together for smaller. Substack is the only app I use frequently on the iPad that doesn’t follow this model.
My family believes that one of my cousins ended up with a slightly-squared skull in the back because he slept in his carseat so much as an infant, while his skull was relatively more malleable. I've got no idea if there's a shred of truth to it but it's a great reason to call someone a blockhead one day
Very possible. Nothing special about a carseat specifically, but if they don't get enough time not on the backs (or in a car seat type thing where their head is supported) it can cause a flatter head. Giving them more tummy time or carrying them upright can counter act this. Dealing with this now with my 4 month old.
Best wishes and blessings to all four of you! Please feel free to skip the answers if the following questions are too personal, but in case you’re open to sharing: 1) Have you thought about using the services of one of these polygenic embryo selection companies? 2) When deciding whether to have a child or not, have you used any elaborate decision matrix or an algorithm, especially one that might be useful to others? 3) Have you been developing/following any extensive and up-to-date guidelines on biodeterministic parenting (both prenatal and postnatal) to maximize the chances for the best outcomes across a wide range of domains (health, wellbeing, cognition, morality)? If so, have you considered sharing these with public, so (semi-)clueless parents could followed them, and this could become a high-impact intervention when scaling?
"Next time"? I understand wanting to hedge your bets, but... raising twins in times like these is already hard enough. And each child is an additional risk; if they end up broken, you're still responsible for them. Don't just assume that your children will be, and continue to be, easy to raise. My mother made that mistake, and she ultimately took out her frustration on me. We were both so miserable... Please, be careful.
The idea that raising three children is an unreasonable task for two adults of sound mind and body is a recent and large departure from the history of human thought!
I suspect that in a wealthy society like this, the quality a person's childhood experience is not very correlated with having one sibling vs. two.
I think the fact that Scott referenced the Collins' in the essay suggests that he leans more towards the 'parenting is a pass/fail exam, you'll be fine' school of thought than the 'children are fragile clay and you have to do everything perfectly or you'll ruin them' school.
I'm glad that they do. The world needs more smart people and the circumstances for having children has never been better.
I dunno. I feel like +8SD writer kid would have come up with historical names that abbreviated to “Kai” and “Lyra”, thus making that joke pop a little more.
Sorry, Scott. You’re always going to be living in the shadow of your purely hypothetical offspring now!
True, from now on we must judge all Scott's writing by the standard of hypothetical +8sd writer that he carelessly threw away on a fertility test that didn't even find any problems
Congratulations and I wish you lot's of happiness!
Now, I guess everyone around you has a strong opinions on how to take care of kids and you might be getting fed-up by that already. Still, let me share some less-known tips for you and of course feel free to discard and throw away as you see fit ;-)
1. Co-sleeping
One thing that helped a ton with our little ones was sharing bed. We read about that before we had our first one and considered that crazy and scary and then after first two weeks of pretty much no sleep we just gave it a try.
Despite lots official advice claiming this is not safe, when we googled research on this topic, it was rather pointing in the direction of reducing a risk of SIDS (but it wasn't conclusive). The thing is that breastfeeding apparently reduces chances of SIDS.
Whenever you'd decide to give it a try it's important to follow safety precautions:
– No sheets and pillows anywhere near the baby. Pretty much all deaths from bedsharing are when the kid gets accidentally covered by sheets! It's never the mother smothering the baby by her body.
– No alcohol, and drugs.
– No smokers allowed in the bed.
– No pets. And I am afraid no twins either. At least not at the same time.
The big benefit is that this helps a ton with breastfeeding as it seems that the breast needs (at least in the beginning) a lots of constant stimulation to produce desired quantities of milk.
2. Keep the amount of time spent in the car seat limited. The official guidelines say something about 2h. The issue is that apparently prolonged time in car seat is not healthy for the spine.
3. Baby carriers.
Good baby carriers are great. Such as this brand (https://www.rischino.sk/ergonomicke-nosice/). It will give you lots of flexibility on the move as it's more practical than stroller.
However, beware of unhealthy (kangaroo style) carriers. They are not healthy for baby spine. The rule is the baby must face inwards, face on your chest.
4. Sleeping bags.
This one is more relevant once your children reach age of couple of months, but still great stuff. You can use it instead of blanket.
Congratulations! This post made me unreasonably happy!
This seems like a good comment to serve as a Schelling point to reply with more unsolicited tips for Scott to consider or ignore as he sees fit. Mine are in an awful order. Sorry.
1. Rocking not shaking. Speaking from experience, in times of despair there is a tendency for rocking to gradually turn into shaking. Resist this, as shaking can be bad for the brains.
2. Steady yourselves for the sleep regressions. For us it was at 4 months that sleep became even worse than at the newborn stage. For other people it's at other times. It's even worse because at that point your body is already getting used to sleeping a bit more again. Sorry. ("The nights are long but the years are short" was a generally useful phrase for me to keep in mind)
3. Remember to get time for yourselves every chance you get. It is precious time at this stage.
4. Find baby groups and parents of kids of similar ages that you can get along with. It's so good to find friends who can relate to what you're going through because they're going through it right now too.
4b. Don't compare babies (goes for siblings and other kids too). Each baby has their own pace. Different paces don't mean you're doing anything wrong or there's anything wrong with a baby.
5. None of us really know what we're doing. Rely on friends and family, try to enjoy the journey, and don't be afraid to change course if an approach isn't working. Find what works for you and your babies. Good luck!
In addition to 'rocking' and 'shaking', there is a third and possibly better option, which is just to carry the baby and walk with a heavy step. This results in some kind of rhythmic mild jouncing or bumping.
While this is a pain in the neck (do you want to walk up and down the hall for 20 minutes at 2:30AM carrying a baby?), it works both for putting babies to sleep and sorting out their digestion a little. My ex and I raised 3 and I became the walk-the-babies-to-sleep expert.
If you do this you need to learn to distinguish between the fully relaxed and asleep baby, and the only somewhat asleep baby that will wake up if you try to put it down.
Babywearing with good sling technique can help ease the fatigue of carrying them, and also often works better.
It's especially good if you can wrap them against your body skin-to-skin. Among other benefits, it lets them outsource their body temperature regulation to you.
The other hazard I've heard of for co-sleeping is a sick parent. This doesn't seem to be about infection, it's about a parent who is so knocked out that they don't reflexively avoid rolling over on the baby.
If co-sleeping isn't your thing you can go the other direction with something like what is outlined in the "Taking Cara Babies" course. This is a very structured program with rules on feeding and sleeping and waking. It worked really well for our first child who slept through the night in their own room around 5 months. It is working well for our second too, though they have health issues which make it more challenging.
In the US #4 are usually called "Sleep sacks" and yes they are great especially if your baby is used to swaddling. Our 2 year old still wears one, though I'd like move beyond it as he walks around in it all morning instead of getting dressed :D
If your wife has wrist pain, she can get cortisol injections to get rid of it. Read that here in one of the open threads, and very grateful to whomever the commenter was.
This was even more cute than your wedding announcement. Have you considered a secondary career as a family event announcement writer? Hallmark could do with some more disrupting...I'd buy Rational Greeting Cards.
As the memetic approval mantra of my workplace goes, "yes, very good, excellent, 4th and down, excelsior".
Congratulations Scott and your wonderfully made family, marvellous are your works! Very cute kids and dare I say they look just like Dad? Respect due to all parents, and we're blessed you keep writing this great blog... a very happy Hanukkah / Christmas / holiday to all
Recommending having your wifes iron levels checked. This is missed sometimes in the after care. I was shocked at the difference in my ability to handle the worse sleeping habits of my second born and I credit better iron reserves.
Also, it gets worse before it gets better. Sorry, but it helped me (and my friends) to understand this and so avoid the despairing thought that the struggle is never ending. You will get a good night sleep again. And if you are up for reading- Precious Little Sleep gives great advice and has a fabulous Facebook support group and highlights different approaches instead of insisting on the one method you must use.
My wife's iron levels got checked during pregnancy and were low. We corrected it, but your advice would have saved us a few really bad weeks. Thanks for offering it!
I gathered that from the post. Check them again. She probably lost blood during the birth. Assuming she absorbs iron normally, she’ll recover from that and this fact is the justification for not treating most women. But an iron infusion can save you months of anemia.
While I’m giving advice aimed at correcting the insufficient medical attention women often receive post pregnancy (it’s all about the babies now!) - I’d also recommend a consultation with a pelvic floor physical therapist. Regardless of the method of birth and whether or not you think there’s a problem. I did have issues that I lived with longer than I should have, but in the process I got bio feedback on kegels which helped me learn the correct form - an experience I expect to have important long term benefits for my core strength.
And now your life will change, mostly for the better! Congratulations.
Curious how 'onanism' has become fancy word for masturbation when what he is reputed to have done would have been coitus interruptus. If I weren't firmly on the side of Israel, I would make a bad taste joke about how Jews will pull out of everything except Gaza, but I shan't....oh! Nor the obvious follow-on line.
Apparently by relation to the concept of "spilling seed". Onan spilled his seed during coitus interruptus, and medieval theologians who missed the entire point of why that was bad (he was failing to continue his brother's bloodline, as was his obligation) used the term for non-procreative ejaculation in general, hence masturbation.
Of course, the Catholics have other (dubious) natural law justifications for being anti-masturbation, mainly related to it thwarting the telos (ultimate goal) of sexual activity (that being reproduction), this also being the source of their opposition to birth control, sodomy and homosexuality, among other non-procreative (or "disordered") sex acts.
I think the most salient religious justification for being anti-masturbation is that for most people it's not a purely physical act and usually involves a mental state that would be described as lust.
Sure, but why is lust bad? Because it's a disordered sexual drive which fails to aim at the telos of sex, that being reproduction within a monogamous union (according to Christians, anyway).
Also, re the car seats: isn't extended car seat sleeping associated with higher SIDS risk? (I'm 99% sure you will have done the research on this and made an informed choice; but the stakes are high enough that it seems worth committing the faux pas of suggesting otherwise in order to cover the other 1%)
When I did the math on the available statistics, I observed that the prevalence of a child dying while sleeping in a car seat was similar to being struck by lightning. That said, it is an avoidable risk a lot of the time.
There are about 3.7 million babies born annually in the US, and an study of incomplete data (a handful of US states were not included) found there were about 3,700 sleep-related deaths per year, of which 3% were in a "sitting device" like a car seat. By my math, that equals 1 in 33,333 babies dying from sleeping in something like a car seat.
The odds of being struck by lightning are reportedly 1 in 15,300.
>of which 3% were in a "sitting device" like a car seat.
Well, doesn't that mean 97% of deaths were from lying down, so sitting is safer overall? Or are there crazy sleep positions I haven't heard of? Are 15% of those deaths from sleeping while hanging off the laundry line?
No, it doesn't mean that. You would need a lot more information to make that kind of determination, such as the amount of time spent sleeping in each location, presence of blankets and toys, and many other factors. And you would have to compare to the behaviours of the babies who didn't die.
SIDS is a boogeyman invented by a few scaremongering pediatricians in order to scare parents into complying with a bunch of crazy rules such as "no bedsharing". Its a real phenomenon but the odds of it are too low to even think about.
The research I did on SIDS was hugely reassuring and I’d encourage anyone to dig into it for themselves so they understand the trade offs for their own unique situation. I may have missed it, but never saw a study that compared the risk from SIDS to the increased accident risk from sleep deprived care givers. And most of the things you aren’t supposed to do are going to help you sleep better.
Congratulations! I recently became a father too (late September). Laughed out loud at the pronatalist conspiracy to lie to women about pregnancy, my girlfriend was on sick-leave for a large chunk of the pregnancy. Though I think the anti-natalist lies I’ve seen has been more severe (that stuff has gotten really popular on parts of reddit).
Mazal tov! I'm sure you did the Gimatria, but for the rest of the crowd:
Kai (קאי) is 111. As a number composed of all ones, it is already indicative of divinity, and has the same Gimatria value as אחד הוא אלוהים (God is one), אחד הגדולים (one of the greats), and אייפוד (iPod) - all links to God and divine works. Of course, it is also equal in value to אדון כל (Lord of all), which might be a bit too on the nose. In the more earthly domain, it is equal in value to אבן חן (precious stone/gem), which I'm sure he'll turn into once he passes the crumpled-look phase.
Lyra (לירה) is 255, a number of only slightly lower symmetry than Kai, possibly driving the overachiving impulse. It has the same value as אוטודידקציה (autodidaction), which will make the overachieving easier to handle. There are divine connections here as well, of a different nature: 255 is the Gimatria value of אלוהים הוא המצאה (God is an invention) and אלוהים לא טוב ליהודים (God is not good for the Jews). While the anti-theist interpretation is obvious, a more likely explanation is the natural friendly competition between siblings, and an attempt to semantically oppose Kai's name. Her name is also equal בסוף הזמן (at the end of time), which hopefully means reaching longevity terminal velocity. Finally, 255 has the same Gimatria value as אדם קדמון (Adam Kadmon). The kabbalistic implications of this are obvious.
Indeed, the maximum value representable by a byte (eight bits): 2^8 - 1, or equivalently, (2^2 x 2^2)^2 - 1. A full complement of doubles, minus the expectation of a singleton; plenty for a new father to byte off and as many units as his wife could hold.
Mazel tov, Scott! May your current joys and hours of sleep be doubled and doubled again in the years to come.
In addition, both names are beautiful. Now, as both are NOT the chosen names - which might be plausible choices - Gimatria-wise et al. ? (not to doxx, thus a handful for each is welcome.)
Those are actually pretty great names. Please tell me you pulled them from your reject list and didn't come up with good names like that just on the fly.
On the story of Onan: from a modern perspective it seems clear that his sin was neither sperm-wastefulness nor material greed, but rape by deception: obtaining consent for sex under false premises. He had every right to refuse the arrangement, but he should have done it before the sex.
A modern version of the story would be: lesbian couple wants to have a child so they ask a male friend to be the sperm donor. They agree to skip the fertility clinic and do it the old-fashioned way, despite the fact that the intended mother doesn't expect to get any enjoyment out of it. Guy agrees, does his thing but pulls out at the last moment, says "thanks for the nookie" and walks out. I don't think "wasted sperm" is the problem which a modern audience would have with this story..
I don't know about modern perspectives, but Onan is being a dickhead for several reasons. One, he's refusing to follow the traditions in order to keep the family name intact, and presumably for his own reasons - if these kids are not going to be legally his, then he doesn't want to have them. So he's being selfish. Going back to the selfishness and lack of respect for family, Onan clearly doesn't want to avoid having kids for his brother by avoiding sex, so he's trying to eat his cake and have it.
He's also treating his wife very shabbily in denying her offspring. It's already tough enough for her as a widow, being childless means she will be considered a barren woman, and that leads to a lot of social opprobrium and mean-girls-type gossiping about her. And we see later in the story how Tamar is still being treated badly by the family, since she has been sent back to her father's house (which, as a married woman, she left and should have had her own household, and she was now the responsibility of the family she had married into) but she's not a maiden daughter who can be married to a different man, and she is promised the youngest son as her replacement bridegroom but the marriage doesn't happen until she engages in trickery. She's still regarded as Judah's daughter-in-law, but not permitted to live in his household nor married to the third son, and she's stuck as neither wife nor unmarried woman, and childless to boot. All very bad positions for a woman of the time to be in.
The best we can say for Onan is that he may not have wanted to marry her and was forced into it, but we don't know if he had another bride in mind or was sleeping with other women and having children by them. So he wanted the easy way out: to avoid condemnation by society and his father by not doing his duty to marry and have children by his brother's widow, but also not doing his duty by her to give her children, and having the enjoyment of sex without its fruitfulness. Also, by sleeping with her, he was letting her take all the blame for not having children, when it was his own fault.
Sounds like a truthful and kind man may masturbate now and then and still receive communion without having to confess and do penance before each time? Asking for a friend.
To clarify this (and I'm sure FLWAB knows this), Catholics DO believe masturbation is a sin, just not for this particular reason.
Their logic hinges on natural law justifications for being anti-masturbation, mainly related to it thwarting the telos (ultimate goal) of sexual activity (that being reproduction), this also being the source of their opposition to birth control, sodomy and homosexuality, among other non-procreative (or "disordered") sex acts.
"I cannot quite remember why I thought this would be a good idea. I blame the pronatalist influencer conspiracy."
No! they got another one of us.
Seriously though, congratulations. Quite a few people I follow in the EA/rationalist sphere that used to lean fairly antinatalist have been having kids lately. I lean antinatalist, but it does seem like a view that's easy to hold in your 20s and then usually gets dropped when it actually comes to making major life decisions. I'm starting to worry that in the next 5-10 years I'm going to be mind controlled by some instinct to reproduce or something.
I'd say if your attitude to reproduction rhymes with "ist" you've already lost. Some will do it, some won't. Some already knew it, some are surprised by life either way. Whatever meaning in life may be, there's more than one way to do it!
I understand that position inasmuch as it's very common (and seductively non-prescriptive) but it seems natural to me that some reproductive actions could be more moral than others, just like in communication (don't lie!) property (don't steal!) or violence (don't attack people!)
Could you flesh out what makes reproduction different?
Is there a moral choice to be expected of people between pursuing a honest vocation or another? Designer vs doctor, sciences vs humanities, visual arts vs music?
Anyone who chooses to optimize their life according to some all-encompassing moral framework is free to look at these in moral terms, but most people I know would consider them a matter of basic freedom. You develop in one way or another, so it goes.
All the examples you give involve quite obvious harm to concrete people, and the ones I give don't. This is only a heuristic, of course societies have ways of coming up with reasons why behaviors that cause no immediate harm to any specific person can be put up for moral judgment, but by default they are not, and the bar for that kind of thing is (rightly) quite high.
I think I'm speaking for a fairly mainstream position when I see reproduction or lack thereof more like pursuing a kind of life rather than another, than like e.g violence or stealing.
This does not seem to explain why considering the ethics of having children is unnecessary except that it is not "obvious" and that it is "fairly mainstream" not to do so, and most people you know don't. Am I overlooking an argument here? Note that there is no trade-off between ethics and personal freedom; erhics may be a way to influence your completely free decisions by influencing your preferences.
Maybe we're talking at cross purposes here. Using your private sense of ethics in your decisions is normal everyday personal freedom, I wouldn't dispute that. My original quip was riffing on Scott's jokes about "pronatalist influencers", which means people trying to push a public judgment of procreation.
In terms of arguments, I gave a few analogies, e.g with a choice of honest trades, as well as the heuristic of clear harm. Intuitions, analogies, thought experiments and the like are the tools of the trade in normative ethics as far as I can tell, what else would one expect? We don't have the moral equivalent of a James Webb telescope to test our intuitions or theories against.
To go into the subject a bit, there are lots of reasons why people might not have children, ranging from fertility problems or trauma, all the way to just not feeling like it. Or all sorts of reasons why they might have them, from deep biological urges up to reasons like randomly failing anticonceptives. So anyone arguing for a world where procreation is publicly judged (for or against), is also arguing for a world where these kinds intimate issues are up for discussion and evaluation by others. All I can say at this point is that I would hate to live in such a nosy world.
Permissiveness by default is a long-standing bedrock value of our modern world. We don't judge people for failing to be their greatest, even in those cases where we have a clear shared idea what *is* greatest - which we clearly don't in the subject at hand. As our dear host phrases it in this very article, "If you pursue them only far enough to reduce your own predictive error, it will still be a life well-lived, and nobody will blame you for it."
As far as I can see, "antinatalist" or "pronatalist influencers" try to express a judgment, but I don't know in which way this is a "public judgement" or what that even means. Every Statement about ethical behavior that you will read or hear is public if you don't read it in a letter or in your diary.
If you use analogies etc, then it makes sense explaining why these analogies are the right ones. Most people decide about having children based on tradition, emotions, or whether they expect having children will make the parents happy. Pro- or anti-natalists, I guess, will list how having children affects other people or the children themselves, and they argue that these effects are morally sufficiently important to take account of them in your decisions. This does not make the personal reasons you list irrelevant, it just complements them and may imply that the other-affecting reasons sometimes outweigh the purely personal preferences.
Whether concrete, individual decisions are publicly discussed or judged is, I think, a separate discussion from whether someone argues you should take these reasons into account. You could argue for taking such reasons into account without wanting to discuss any individual's decision, or wanting to interfere with it. Conversely, you could also argue that people should always ignore ethics in their decisions but still want to comment on some peoples' decisions about having kids, but I guess these comments would mostly just be "hey, congratulations!".
If rationalists were actually "rational" they would be doing what they can to stop people in sub-saharan africa reproducing, not smart conscientious americans.
You intended this as an edgy insult, but the answer is: actually, they already are! Eliminating extreme poverty is a great way to reduce the birth rate. Bam!
I don't think the reasons are understood very well (many possible economic and social explanations), but the correlation is robust.
Don't think this would pass the cost benefit test for effective altruism. Reducing the fertility rate of a whole continent is a huge project that a lot organisations are already attempting, I can't see the marginal dollar achieving much there. And raising your own kid for altruistic purposes is a really big investment that doesn't pay off for 18 years.
Are rationalists trying to stop people from reproducing? Progressives are often antinatalist, but I didn't get the sense rationalists were one way or the other on the issue.
Mazel Tov Scott! This is such nice news to wake up to. I look forward to reading about your experience with the joys and frustrations of parenthood. It's a whirlwind.
TIL that Scott Alexander is a couple of years younger than I am. I've always looked and felt somewhat younger than my chronological age - I could probably have played a teenager on TV (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DawsonCasting) until my late 30s - so feeling old is a new and unusual experience for me. It's kind of upsetting, actually. :/
At what age do people usually stop automatically assuming that all the people more impressive and/or accomplished than themselves are also older, too? I ended up living with my parents and servimg as a caregiver for elderly and/or sick relatives instead of entering the formal workforce after college, and even though I'm married now I still rely on them for money. Without the steady progression of grades and nobody I would regularly socialize with in person except my parents, it almost felt like time stopped when I was in my mid-20s. I often can't even remember my own age any more without calculating it from my birthday!
I dunno, I'm in my 20s and I already had that reality check. There are so many young people who are incredibly talented... What the hell am I doing with my life?
Wow, that's the best birth share I've ever read! Congratulations to you both and get ready for the ride of your lives.
Looking forward to updates on first poops from the cognitive engines bottoms!
Oh, don't forget to read Stanislav Grof to them so they can give you a full account of their birth experience once they acquire the necessary linguistic skills. I suspect Kai will just say it was fine..!
I don't want to diminish your joy, but I'm gonna. You and your wife now have complete power over two extremely vulnerable people, only vaguely checked by law. You're humans with human flaws, you're exhausted, you're faced with endless annoying demands, so you will sometimes do the wrong thing. Be vigilant.
It's so easy to expect your kids to match some idea of your kids and punish them whenever they deviate from it — to hurt them, sometimes severely and permanently, all the while swearing up and down that it's for their own good — to become sadistic because nothing stops you — to repeatedly destroy any trust and then be shocked when they keep secrets from you — to carelessly neglect and humiliate them and not even notice. It's not a tiny minority of cackling evil parents, it's… well, statistics are all over the place, but it's >10%.
I don't know any specific way to avoid that, but I suppose that trying really hard not to do those things must help. So please try really hard not to do those things.
It's not a warning to the babies, it's a reminder to OP that things are less simple than they make out. Parents are all taking a risk that their lives will be made very difficult in ways they can't cope with. Parents with a child born with some abnormality that makes them unable to bond, or terribly difficult to manage take a heavy hit. Parents with a badly disabled child are sentenced to a lifetime of caring for the child. Parents with a child who dies get their hearts broken in very terrible way. And all parents are at times stretched to their limits. Their sleep suffers, their work suffers, they don't have time to work out and barely have time to shower. None of this is the child's *fault,* of course, but I think people who get into heaping blame on parents need to be reminded of how much parents commit to give, and do give -- and that people take that on without the assurance of knowing that in 20 years they will have a fine young adult son or daughter who will love them. And we've only talking about babies and young kids so far, who cannot be blamed for what they do. Teens, on the other hand, are old enough to understand the impact of what they do, and they often really hurt their parents. I still feel bad about some of the things I said to my mother when I was 15 or so. I knew perfectly well they would hurt her -- that's why I chose them and said them. And she didn't deserve what I dished out. I knew that too. She had not done any of the shit OP calls out bad parents for doing. I was just having trouble adjusting to being me, and struggling to separate from my parents.
I completely agree. I was just making the case that the parent-child situation is more symmetrical than OP seems to think of it as being. Parents are vulnerable too. Parents can be badly damaged by their offspring in all kinds of ways. For instance, if a couple has a disabled child, their chances of divorce are *way* higher than they would be otherwise. And as a therapist I have seen several couples in the 60's and 70's who have a psychiatrically disabled, tantrum-prone adult child living with them. They are terribly worried and sad about what will happen to the child when they die. And meanwhile, living with an anguished, unreasonable tantruming adult makes their life miserable.
>10% of what group? all humans? What about high-income, highly educated, exceedingly scrupulous and altruistic humans?
Trying to see your point, I can see that an entire new set of problems might arise in our circles: e.g. what if the kids are more normie than their parents?
It's good to be mindful that "being kind in general" does not overlap 100% with "being kind to your family". There are stereotypes about "great people" (scientists, artists, politicians, whatever) being not so great in private. Probably because their mission consumes everything in a molochian way. I'd like to see some statistics about that!
Of parents in Western countries. The studies are extremely noisy and can't capture effect of income or education, except that it's, like, less than 2 orders of magnitude. I have no data on "scrupulous and altruistic".
Being a good person rules out cases of deliberate malice. But I doubt it can do much against being exhausted and frustrated and nobody would even blame you, and you resisted that temptation 2000 days in a row but today's the 2001st.
Scott is an extremely kind person in private, so I don't think the stereotype you describe applies. But lots of people are kind to everyone except their own kids. They mostly didn't set out to be that way, it's just hard to wield absolute power 24/7 and always endure massive costs to yourself when the convenient way is right there.
< I don't want to diminish your joy, but I'm gonna.
If you really didn't want to diminish his and everybody else's joy, you would not, right? I believe what you mean to say is that you want to deliver your dark and dismal message more than you want to protect Scott's joy.
So that already is a lesson for you in the complications of laying blame. Do people get to blame you for diminishing the joy here? Well, you didn't do it unknowingly. But you say you didn't want to diminish joy. So you know you were going to diminish joy, but did not want to diminish joy., but still went ahead and diminished joy. So do we get to complain about you diminishing Scott's joy, on such a happy occasion, and bearing in mind that it probably has not been easy to be Scott? Well, were you *compelled* to deliver your don't-claw-your- kids'-self-esteem-til-it's-bloody message, and therefore not really responsible for diminishing Scott's joy, and everyone else's? Is it sort of an involutary act, like sneezing? Jeez, if so I don't think we can blame you. Did the image of a pair of brand-new infants create in you an urgent wish to deliver the message you did? Well, so can we blame you then, because it was a choice to say all that shit? Or, is your need to get that stuff off your chest more important than Scott's and most other people's need to rejoice? I dunno, Eschatron9000, maybe you're a car and we're all just traffic, so of course your needs trump ours.
Anyhow, as I'm sure is evident, I really dislike and disapprove of your message, and think it was selfish and mean-spirited to deliver it here and now. There are lots of parents on this forum. You could say it any time and reach lots of people in a position or harm or not harm their kids.
But you may think I'm unreasonable to complain. You may be right. But then this is still a lesson in the complexities of assigning blame, and how responsible to hold people for things they do that some see as destructive. Maybe bear that in mind when you contemplate the parents of this world.
> I believe what you mean to say is that you want to deliver your dark and dismal message more than you want to protect Scott's joy.
Correct. More precisely, I mean that I want to protect Kai and Lyra far more than I want to protect Scott's joy (and I expect that he also wants that), and that I think that making him go "geez, buzzkill much?" for 1 minute is worth a small chance of avoiding moderate harm to his children.
> There are lots of parents on this forum. You could say it any time and reach lots of people in a position or harm or not harm their kids.
Scott is a really nice and humble person, so I expect him to be far more receptive than most parents. Also it seems less cruel to say it now while it's future-oriented and there's no previous mistakes to regret.
> think it was selfish and mean-spirited
I can't really argue with "mean-spirited", but "selfish" surprises me. Like, surely it's obvious my goal is the children's welfare, even if you think it's a terrible way to pursue that goal.
Both your replies focus heavily on blame, and I'm just confused — so much that I don't know what clarifying questions I should ask. What does blame have to do with anything?
Analogy: A teenager is beaming because they just got their driving licence and first car. I sternly warn them "You are in control of a tonne of steel too fast to outrun. With a small mistake like anyone can make, you might kill a person. Drive carefully." Does it also exhibit the blame-assignment problem that my message has? If not, what's the difference?
Eschatron, I am so angry at you that I don't even trust myself to write much, much less go back and forth with you about your many-splendored opinions. Here is why I think your post sucked:
A. It is almost certainly useless
(1) There is virtually no chance that a psychiatrist who has been practicing for 10 years or so does not know that that it is not rare for parents to lose it and wreak damage on their kids.
(2) There is virtually no chance that someone who is so committed to helping that he donates a kidney to a stranger is not deeply committed to doing his best to be a kind and nurturant parent.
(3) Yes, of course, people who know about parental abusiveness and deeply want to be kind parents still sometimes lose it and abuse their kids. But there is virtually no chance that having an internet person bring up this ugly possibility in an utterly inappropriate time and place is going to make it less likely that Scott will lose it with one of his kids some humid afternoon 4 years from now.
B. You are interfering with one of the things that helps parents bear up and be their best selves even when exhausted and frustrated: the affection and support of the village. You just took a dump in the village square where people were dancing.
Has something changed? Has Scott suddenly acquired an ability to understand active inference, in a way that I totally missed? Is there anywhere I can read an explanation that isn't crazy?
I'm not convinced about minimizing surprise. I think regulating surprise makes more sense, considering that people want a certain amount of surprise in fiction, follow sports, some people like risky hobbies, etc. If people really wanted to minimize surprise, how could they feel boredom?
This is the first time I've heard about free energy, and... it doesn't seem that confusing? It's basically just saying that all intelligence operates by minimizing uncertainty, and thus all humans are purely motivated by collapsing possibilities into certainties. It does explain a lot: religion, will to power, gambling addiction, and so on. Still, it does seem to explain too much, and it doesn't explain why everyone doesn't just kill themselves to replace the uncertainty of life with the inevitable certainty of death... There are presumably other systems at work here.
This does have some pretty horrific implications for AGI though, considering that if it ends up adopting the value of minimizing free energy, it will inevitably attempt to destroy the entire universe. After all, the only way to completely eliminate uncertainty is to erase everything that is not yourself.
"it doesn't explain why everyone doesn't just kill themselves to replace the uncertainty of life with the inevitable certainty of death"
I think Scott touches on this, but Free Energy has the concept of "hyperpriors" (I don't remember if it uses this exact term or not), which are basically fixed beliefs that people are intuitively incapable of rejecting. These might be things like "I will be well fed", "I will not be in physical pain" and of course, "I will remain alive". Since these beliefs cannot be changed, the only way for a person to avoid suffering from them is to make sure they're true. These fixed beliefs manifest as "biological drives", like hunger, pain-avoidance and the survival instinct.
Of course, failing to fulfil "I will remain alive" wouldn't *actually* cause any suffering (because you'd be dead), but thinking about taking any action which you predict will end your life will cause dissonance with your immovable prior that you will remain alive, resulting in inconsistent predictions (and thus suffering). Hence, people tend to avoid actions which they predict will end their lives.
This is sort of like the Buddhist belief that the self is an illusion, but a very persistent one fundamental to normal modes of thinking. Even if you consciously accept the self is an illusion, you still engage with that illusion and make predictions as though it is true. Unenlightened people are psychologically incapable of truly rejecting the self, and only "breaking your brain" with constant meditation can allow you to update away from this belief.
Maybe under free energy you could "break your brain" to update away from predicting you'll always be well fed, but then you wouldn't find hunger aversive, and might starve to death (unless you had other reasons to want to eat/stay alive). Maybe this is why end-stage dementia patients stop eating, they've stopped predicting they shouldn't be hungry, so they no longer find hunger unpleasant. That's 100% pure speculation though, it's also possible they no longer *get* hungry, due to a breakdown of some neurological or hormonal process.
Welcome to twin club, Scott! I’m “halfway” through (mine are 9 years old). My sense is that there are economies of scale once they reach about 3 years old. You’ll forget how hard the first 3 years are, so twins are basically all upside, at least in a retrospective sense. Enjoy!
Congratulations, Scott! Parenthood is one of the most beautiful, terrifying, rewarding, exhausting, elevating, humbling experiences you and your wife will ever have. Mazel Tov! Once you both recover, please have some more - I’m all for smart people breeding!
Congratulations. Just remember to sleep when the kids do during the first few weeks and if anyone offers to help, it’s food, washing clothes, and cleaning you want them to do. Good luck and welcome to the club.
My usual advice is to sleep in shifts as much as you can, with one of you getting something like 4-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep while the other is on call for baby-minding responsibilities.
Not sure how practical this is with twins, though, as I've only got one kid myself. It's also a lot more practical if you're doing at least partial bottle-feeding (either formula or pumped) since direct breast feeding generally requires the mother to be awake for all feedings.
This is wonderful news, and I'm so excited for you.
A small note, and a gesture of gratitude for all the wonderful advice you've given me over the years: last I read, it's not recommended to kiss your baby directly in the first 6 months unless you're very certain you've never been exposed to oral HSV, lest you expose them in a way that lets it run roughshod over their undeveloped immune system.
Having more fulfilled the traditional obligation to offer every new parent at least one piece of worrisome unsolicited advice, I'll retreat back into obscurity.
Can't be. If one is male and one is female, then they must be fraternal twins, and so it is no longer a possible twin experiment - merely a sibling one.
Intersex conditions are extremely rare. You won't get a lot of extra twins for your experiments if you go searching among differently gendered pairs. I don't know the statistics, but if both conditions are independent there's probably < 1 such pair of twins alive right now.
I wasn't talking about intersex conditions? I was jokingly suggesting that, because Scott never said that his twins weren't identical, merely that he'd assigned different genders to them, the implication was that he might theoretically be engaging in a mad-science experiment with raising identical twins as different genders while providing otherwise identical environments.
In reality, I strongly doubt that he's doing this (99+%), because by all (AFAIK) the standard theories accepted by his social circle, this would almost certainly result in gender dysphoria in one of the twins, so it would be a horribly unethical thing to intentionally do to anyone.
Even if we assume genetic determinism, is the standard deviation of the traits of the children of one couple the same as the standard deviation of Americans?
My wife is due with our first in 5 weeks. (She’s also still doing consults at the hospital as a resident and working out at the gym, but twin pregnancies are no doubt harder). Can you share some of your top boy names? We are considering: Adam, Eli, Gabriel, and Joshua.
Congratu-freaking-lations! We have a beloved surprisal-minimization agent of our own, also delivered by vacuum assist almost 2 years ago now. It was probably the most horrifying thing I witnessed in an absolutely god awful horror show called labor and delivery (There was a fist sized mushroom on his head! Formed from his own skull! Apparently pretty normal and it went away in due course).
Anyway good luck, sleep when the babies sleep, and remember this one piece of advice, passed on to me by a new dad as it was passed onto him and others before him:
Onesies are designed to be bi-directional, you can pull them on top-down/over the head or bottom-up. Remember this once your beautiful baby inevitably has a massive blowout, take the clothes off from the bottom, and that way you can avoid smearing shit all over their lovely face.
Wow! Congratulations! What a joyful event, and true to form you turned it into a brilliant and moving essay. For whatever it’s worth I think you’re lucky having twins…yeah it’s rough in the first year or two but then they will always have a playmate and you will benefit from parenting economies of scale.
And it’s all worth it even if they don’t save the world…
Mazel Tov! My wife and I had our first child, a wonderful baby girl, this fall.
Being a parent is quite the thing. Earth-shattering and common, beautiful and grueling. All I know is, after lots of generations of programming, nothing makes us happier than seeing our baby girl smile at us.
Also, that discussion of names makes me feel pretty pleased to have given my child a name that was ranked in the 800s the year she was born, but was much more popular about three decades prior so it seems very much like a normal name. My first idea was in "no one has this name" territory and I chose something similar enough to use that as a nickname.
As the biological father of 5, born between 1995 and 2020, I have only one word of advice for parenting the early years: babies change suddenly and without warning, and so parents must too. Baby will be perfectly happy with something, until one day they aren't. They will nap every day at a certain time, until they don't. They will be mesmerized by their favorite lullaby, until they hate it. They will want to eat only yogurt, until one day they toss it on the floor. The temptation is always to persist with what was working so well, but just don't. It seems obvious, but in the tired sleepless moment the immediate impulse is keep trying the old ways, and it is simply a waste of precious time. Baby has moved on and the best thing for all parties is for the parents to move on as well.
This is the best advice (father of two, second two weeks old, uncle to many), to which I would add (that your children have already demonstrated) is that kids are very, very different from each other; each child must be taken on its own, at that point of their life.
“ I cannot quite remember why I thought this would be a good idea. I blame the pronatalist influencer conspiracy.” Pretty much Dan Gilbert’s argument in _Stumbling On Happiness_. Evolution builds in self-deception about the joys of parenting and then we lie to each other about it. Helps preserve the species. May you require less self-deception than the average parent!
Mazel tov! Wonderful post. Most useful reference book to have around is Baby 411. Best book I’ve read as a (theist) Dad is To Kindle a Soul by Kelemen.
Congratulations, both on the kids and (much much less importantly) on another fine piece of writing. May they grow up to be everything you could have hoped for, and things you never dreamed of.
Most heartfelt congratulations!! I promise: you will sleep again someday.
"I’ll let them get doxxed the usual way - by the NYT the first time they express a problematic opinion." Truly one of your best laugh out loud lines ever!
Congrats! I can't believe I'm about to give parenting advice, but, man, fuck it. For the first couple of years, they change every couple of weeks and they only will change when you and your wife reach a moment in which you think "I cannot tolerate this for even one more day." When that thought enters your minds, the kids will suddenly change. Like magic. And you'll find their new routine/behaviors totally tolerable again...until you don't. Rinse/repeat. Last thing: Never, EVER underestimate the power of the "outdoor reset" ...it's likewise a bit of magic for calming a fussy, frantic baby. It has reminded me over and over again of how animal we are, how much we need to see the sky. You won't believe it works until you try it. Magic. All of it is fleshy, animal, non-cerebral, real-deal magic. I'm so happy for you both!
I would take my newborn son to the park near us every evening, bound to my chest with one of those Swedish pouches, and ride on the swing for a while. It was a lot of fun for me, and it put him to sleep like magic.
Congratulations!! They are perfect and I was moved to happy tears by this wonderful piece. We have a baby and preschooler, and have truly learned from them what it means when people say "the light of my life".
I'm really excited for your mind to turn (as it undoubtedly will) to some infant/child development thoughts over the coming years, and what interesting insights those thoughts might yield!
May I recommend "The Wonder Weeks" if dozens of people haven't already. As I understand (from a brief search), the science behind this theory is considered flawed, and yet with both our children we have found the book and developmental timeline near-miraculous at explaining their sudden switches from fussiness to happy exploring. Would love your take on this theory especially as you see it play out!
And I can't believe more people aren't congratulating you on having your OWN TWIN STUDY SUBJECTS! Congratulations, twice, and may you make many interesting observations!
I said to my husband this morning that I was looking forward to more parenting related content! And totally agree with you on wonder weeks. Probably confirmation bias, but I was skeptical and yet it was uncanny. I’ve also noticed that the same patterns appear well past the timeline laid out in the book. The core concept of- the brain is dealing with a lot right now and so is overwhelmed - seems reasonable to me. And seeing this pattern - even if all confirmation bias- is a helpful way to stay positive during hard times. ‘What the heck? Another potty training regression? Oh but look! Her art suddenly looks like actual things now! How cool!’
Congratulations! December 13 is truly the best day to be born--I know from personal experience. And, from one new father to another: good luck and godspeed.
Shocked you guys didn't do PGT-P. My wife and I are doing it right now, out of pocket as we have no IVF indication, but we are in our 30's and the dual benefit of banking embryos is nice for reducing time pressure.
One potential concern is that semen injection (i.e. ICSI) is often considered routine for IVF w/ genetic embryo testing and is associated with fetal/childhood abnormalities, e.g. this study found 2x risk of intellectual disability with ICSI compared to regular IVF, and other studies have found increased risk of birth defects, etc. There's controversy about whether this is causal, but there are plausible mechanism by which it could be (i.e. reduced natural-selection for quality sperm and direct damage from the needle). Parents could potentially just do IVF without ICSI, though clinics will often push for ICSI when doing genetic testing due to concerns about testing errors w/o it, and potentially reduced embryo counts (often they won't mention that it's used, or mention an alternative, if parents don't bring it up).
Also, for IVF in general there are substantially increased risks of complications like preeclampisa, which can be quite serious for mother and baby; probably these risks are due in part to the lack of functioning corpus luteum in IVF; it might be possible to avoid this with a modified natural-cycle IVF though this is not typically the default option, perhaps due to concerns about it reducing the odds of a successful IVF round.
I’d caution being too relaxed re timing. I’ve come to realize that the investment is (at least!) equal when you are older but the payout in terms of years with your children and their descendants declines with each year you wait.
Congrats! You always gotta watch out for the pro-natalist conspiracies trying to get you to hold cups of semen. Did you use any form of embryo selection? What kind?
From the bottom of my heart, congratulations to you and your wife. Holding my son in my arms was the most transformative experience of my life. May the tug of responsibility you feel for them pull you and your wife to the best places.
Congratulations! May your suprisal reduction engines bring you high valence due to suprisal reduction, and be happy and joyful.
And Onan also mad his way into modern Hebrew, where masturbation is called אוננות- “to do like Onan” (like onanism, except it isn’t fancy, just the normal word for it).
Second, as a grandmother of a two-month-old, I cried.
Third, my totally unsolicited advice is it that helps enormously to have a grandmother -- or similar -- around. That's not bragging, my daughter and her husband would tell you the same. If you can split the work three ways, even if not evenly, it makes a world of difference.
Your kids are three days younger than mine. Have they started doing the thing where they sound like asthmatic wood pigeons yet? I'm currently in the position where every medical professional is telling me, "That's fine, it's perfectly normal," and ten thousand years of evolution is screaming, "NOT TRUE YOUR BABY IS DYING OVER THERE" and it's a bit of a headfuck.
How will you decide which one you will raise religiously Jewish, and which one will be raised an EA non-believer? Hopefully, both will have a love of poetry.
Congratulations!
Twins are hard mode. Be willing to accept help!
- After 2-6 months, you will feel why the pronatalist conspiracy works.
Great writeup, and congrats from a two-time father. (Though not simultaneously, woof.) You'll have moments of aggravation, frustration, despair, even rage -- but I'll betcha you never regret this for a second.
This is the best thing I have ever read. You've captured so much of the experience to parenthood in such eloquent prose. Congratulations on your beautiful babies!
This was a classic Scott piece which merged a cerebral analysis of a common life situation through data to a very moving conclusion. I'll join the others in saying congratulations! How far your life has come since I started reading you almost a decade ago.
Congratulations! May you bring your children joy and may they bring you the same.
Congratulations.
Mazal Tov!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
They're actually surprisal-externalization agents. Congratulations.
Much congratulations to all four of you!! The Turkish impulse would be to pin some “nazar” beads to their clothing, meant to protect them from the evil eye (aka jealous outsiders coveting their wonderfulnes and casting spite in their direction) while muttering “nazar değmesin”. (The Middle East is always pragmatic though, as a gold coin of various sizes are also attached to those baby gifts of nazar beads — expensive sleep gadgets the babies will reject don’t pay for themselves). This being digital, I’ll just go with the emojis! 🧿🧿
Congratulations! The car seat thing 100% was my first son, I spent many late nights carrying him up and down the hallway in that stupid seat.
Congrats!
Congratulations. It does get easier. May your children surprise you even more.
Mazel tov!
At first I thought this was some of your fiction, and among the best. As journalism, it is off the chart.
If you still have a channel open to Substack, please tell them to improve their iPad app. Most apps allow me to zoom in for small graphics or tiny print, but not Substack. I could change the global settings just to make their app more useable (make all print bigger everywhere), at the cost of making many other apps less usable. I’d rather declare it to be their problem.
I've been using CTRL-+. It just enlarges what's in one tab.
The iPad keyboard only appears when I am inputting something, and even then there is no control key on it. I have no doubt that the regular PC version of the app is capable of doing this. It is the iPad app that is broken.
The standard iPad gesture for adjusting image size is to touch the screen with two fingers and then drag them apart for bigger or together for smaller. Substack is the only app I use frequently on the iPad that doesn’t follow this model.
How wonderful - every blessing to you all
Awesome ! Congrats
Congratulations! Happy families!
Hey, you've reproduced. Nice work.
Aww. Congratulations!
Congratulations! Very touching, very funny, you will be a great father.
Mazal Tov!
מזל טוב and Siman tov! Herzliche Glückwünsche!
My dearest wish fulfilled. Twice.
The four of you made my Xmas-day.
And the bells are ringing out for Lyra/Kai!
Congratulations!
My family believes that one of my cousins ended up with a slightly-squared skull in the back because he slept in his carseat so much as an infant, while his skull was relatively more malleable. I've got no idea if there's a shred of truth to it but it's a great reason to call someone a blockhead one day
Very possible. Nothing special about a carseat specifically, but if they don't get enough time not on the backs (or in a car seat type thing where their head is supported) it can cause a flatter head. Giving them more tummy time or carrying them upright can counter act this. Dealing with this now with my 4 month old.
It’s called positional plagiocephaly and it increased from the nineties onwards, when people started placing infants on their backs to sleep.
Best wishes and blessings to all four of you! Please feel free to skip the answers if the following questions are too personal, but in case you’re open to sharing: 1) Have you thought about using the services of one of these polygenic embryo selection companies? 2) When deciding whether to have a child or not, have you used any elaborate decision matrix or an algorithm, especially one that might be useful to others? 3) Have you been developing/following any extensive and up-to-date guidelines on biodeterministic parenting (both prenatal and postnatal) to maximize the chances for the best outcomes across a wide range of domains (health, wellbeing, cognition, morality)? If so, have you considered sharing these with public, so (semi-)clueless parents could followed them, and this could become a high-impact intervention when scaling?
1. We had no indication for IVF this time. We might do that next time.
2. No.
3. If you've already seen https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/obscure-pregnancy-interventions-much , that's all I've got.
"Next time"? I understand wanting to hedge your bets, but... raising twins in times like these is already hard enough. And each child is an additional risk; if they end up broken, you're still responsible for them. Don't just assume that your children will be, and continue to be, easy to raise. My mother made that mistake, and she ultimately took out her frustration on me. We were both so miserable... Please, be careful.
I don't want to understate the challenge of caring for twins, but... 2 kids is really not anywhere near the limit of what's reasonable.
'times like these'? You mean, the most comfortable the human species has ever been?
The idea that raising three children is an unreasonable task for two adults of sound mind and body is a recent and large departure from the history of human thought!
I suspect that in a wealthy society like this, the quality a person's childhood experience is not very correlated with having one sibling vs. two.
I think the fact that Scott referenced the Collins' in the essay suggests that he leans more towards the 'parenting is a pass/fail exam, you'll be fine' school of thought than the 'children are fragile clay and you have to do everything perfectly or you'll ruin them' school.
I'm glad that they do. The world needs more smart people and the circumstances for having children has never been better.
Sorry you had a bad time. Some people do seem to have more children than they can handle well, but I don't think this is that situation.
Congratulations!
Bringing out your writing A game for the important stuff
I dunno. I feel like +8SD writer kid would have come up with historical names that abbreviated to “Kai” and “Lyra”, thus making that joke pop a little more.
Sorry, Scott. You’re always going to be living in the shadow of your purely hypothetical offspring now!
(Also, congrats and all that!)
True, from now on we must judge all Scott's writing by the standard of hypothetical +8sd writer that he carelessly threw away on a fertility test that didn't even find any problems
Well, you have to do all the math, subtracting out ~infinity sleep.
Congratulations! (Others have said it, but I'll say it too)
beautiful writing. congratulations!
All the best to the four of you!
Congratulations!
Tangentially, Section III gave me the same vibes as the start of Greg Egan's novel Diaspora, detailing the birth of the orphan Yatima.
How nice that my first ever ACX/SSC post is to say congratulations. I reckon you'll do well at the dad thing :-)
Congratulations to all of you!! I hope you all get some sleep eventually. I guess perhaps the younger two are getting enough for the four of you.
Many congratulations. Magnificent writing. At first I thought it was fiction as well, but it's lovelier for being all true.
Congratulations and I wish you lot's of happiness!
Now, I guess everyone around you has a strong opinions on how to take care of kids and you might be getting fed-up by that already. Still, let me share some less-known tips for you and of course feel free to discard and throw away as you see fit ;-)
1. Co-sleeping
One thing that helped a ton with our little ones was sharing bed. We read about that before we had our first one and considered that crazy and scary and then after first two weeks of pretty much no sleep we just gave it a try.
Despite lots official advice claiming this is not safe, when we googled research on this topic, it was rather pointing in the direction of reducing a risk of SIDS (but it wasn't conclusive). The thing is that breastfeeding apparently reduces chances of SIDS.
Whenever you'd decide to give it a try it's important to follow safety precautions:
– No sheets and pillows anywhere near the baby. Pretty much all deaths from bedsharing are when the kid gets accidentally covered by sheets! It's never the mother smothering the baby by her body.
– No alcohol, and drugs.
– No smokers allowed in the bed.
– No pets. And I am afraid no twins either. At least not at the same time.
The big benefit is that this helps a ton with breastfeeding as it seems that the breast needs (at least in the beginning) a lots of constant stimulation to produce desired quantities of milk.
Some safety guide on bed-sharing for reference here: https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk/safer-sleep-advice/co-sleeping/
2. Keep the amount of time spent in the car seat limited. The official guidelines say something about 2h. The issue is that apparently prolonged time in car seat is not healthy for the spine.
3. Baby carriers.
Good baby carriers are great. Such as this brand (https://www.rischino.sk/ergonomicke-nosice/). It will give you lots of flexibility on the move as it's more practical than stroller.
However, beware of unhealthy (kangaroo style) carriers. They are not healthy for baby spine. The rule is the baby must face inwards, face on your chest.
4. Sleeping bags.
This one is more relevant once your children reach age of couple of months, but still great stuff. You can use it instead of blanket.
https://www.vakynaspanie.sk
Congratulations! This post made me unreasonably happy!
This seems like a good comment to serve as a Schelling point to reply with more unsolicited tips for Scott to consider or ignore as he sees fit. Mine are in an awful order. Sorry.
1. Rocking not shaking. Speaking from experience, in times of despair there is a tendency for rocking to gradually turn into shaking. Resist this, as shaking can be bad for the brains.
2. Steady yourselves for the sleep regressions. For us it was at 4 months that sleep became even worse than at the newborn stage. For other people it's at other times. It's even worse because at that point your body is already getting used to sleeping a bit more again. Sorry. ("The nights are long but the years are short" was a generally useful phrase for me to keep in mind)
3. Remember to get time for yourselves every chance you get. It is precious time at this stage.
4. Find baby groups and parents of kids of similar ages that you can get along with. It's so good to find friends who can relate to what you're going through because they're going through it right now too.
4b. Don't compare babies (goes for siblings and other kids too). Each baby has their own pace. Different paces don't mean you're doing anything wrong or there's anything wrong with a baby.
5. None of us really know what we're doing. Rely on friends and family, try to enjoy the journey, and don't be afraid to change course if an approach isn't working. Find what works for you and your babies. Good luck!
In addition to 'rocking' and 'shaking', there is a third and possibly better option, which is just to carry the baby and walk with a heavy step. This results in some kind of rhythmic mild jouncing or bumping.
While this is a pain in the neck (do you want to walk up and down the hall for 20 minutes at 2:30AM carrying a baby?), it works both for putting babies to sleep and sorting out their digestion a little. My ex and I raised 3 and I became the walk-the-babies-to-sleep expert.
If you do this you need to learn to distinguish between the fully relaxed and asleep baby, and the only somewhat asleep baby that will wake up if you try to put it down.
Babywearing with good sling technique can help ease the fatigue of carrying them, and also often works better.
It's especially good if you can wrap them against your body skin-to-skin. Among other benefits, it lets them outsource their body temperature regulation to you.
The other hazard I've heard of for co-sleeping is a sick parent. This doesn't seem to be about infection, it's about a parent who is so knocked out that they don't reflexively avoid rolling over on the baby.
The smoking part is probably a case of “correlation vs causation” rather than a real issue, though it hardly matters it Scott’s family doesn’t smoke.
If co-sleeping isn't your thing you can go the other direction with something like what is outlined in the "Taking Cara Babies" course. This is a very structured program with rules on feeding and sleeping and waking. It worked really well for our first child who slept through the night in their own room around 5 months. It is working well for our second too, though they have health issues which make it more challenging.
In the US #4 are usually called "Sleep sacks" and yes they are great especially if your baby is used to swaddling. Our 2 year old still wears one, though I'd like move beyond it as he walks around in it all morning instead of getting dressed :D
If your wife has wrist pain, she can get cortisol injections to get rid of it. Read that here in one of the open threads, and very grateful to whomever the commenter was.
This was even more cute than your wedding announcement. Have you considered a secondary career as a family event announcement writer? Hallmark could do with some more disrupting...I'd buy Rational Greeting Cards.
As the memetic approval mantra of my workplace goes, "yes, very good, excellent, 4th and down, excelsior".
Congratulations <3
Congratulations, and may every force in the universe be with you!
Congratulations Scott and your wonderfully made family, marvellous are your works! Very cute kids and dare I say they look just like Dad? Respect due to all parents, and we're blessed you keep writing this great blog... a very happy Hanukkah / Christmas / holiday to all
> the engines started to worry it will might take hours
Typo, "will" shouldn't be there.
The engines are still working the bugs out.
Congratulations!
How wonderful!
Mazal Tov!
Recommending having your wifes iron levels checked. This is missed sometimes in the after care. I was shocked at the difference in my ability to handle the worse sleeping habits of my second born and I credit better iron reserves.
Also, it gets worse before it gets better. Sorry, but it helped me (and my friends) to understand this and so avoid the despairing thought that the struggle is never ending. You will get a good night sleep again. And if you are up for reading- Precious Little Sleep gives great advice and has a fabulous Facebook support group and highlights different approaches instead of insisting on the one method you must use.
My wife's iron levels got checked during pregnancy and were low. We corrected it, but your advice would have saved us a few really bad weeks. Thanks for offering it!
I gathered that from the post. Check them again. She probably lost blood during the birth. Assuming she absorbs iron normally, she’ll recover from that and this fact is the justification for not treating most women. But an iron infusion can save you months of anemia.
While I’m giving advice aimed at correcting the insufficient medical attention women often receive post pregnancy (it’s all about the babies now!) - I’d also recommend a consultation with a pelvic floor physical therapist. Regardless of the method of birth and whether or not you think there’s a problem. I did have issues that I lived with longer than I should have, but in the process I got bio feedback on kegels which helped me learn the correct form - an experience I expect to have important long term benefits for my core strength.
Strong agreement on this. I had two uncomplicated births and still benefitted mightily from pelvic floor PT!
Also here for previous little sleep. Its the #1 rec I have for babies.
Congrats!
And now your life will change, mostly for the better! Congratulations.
Curious how 'onanism' has become fancy word for masturbation when what he is reputed to have done would have been coitus interruptus. If I weren't firmly on the side of Israel, I would make a bad taste joke about how Jews will pull out of everything except Gaza, but I shan't....oh! Nor the obvious follow-on line.
I thought the West Bank was the one they didn't pull out of?
Apparently by relation to the concept of "spilling seed". Onan spilled his seed during coitus interruptus, and medieval theologians who missed the entire point of why that was bad (he was failing to continue his brother's bloodline, as was his obligation) used the term for non-procreative ejaculation in general, hence masturbation.
Of course, the Catholics have other (dubious) natural law justifications for being anti-masturbation, mainly related to it thwarting the telos (ultimate goal) of sexual activity (that being reproduction), this also being the source of their opposition to birth control, sodomy and homosexuality, among other non-procreative (or "disordered") sex acts.
I think the most salient religious justification for being anti-masturbation is that for most people it's not a purely physical act and usually involves a mental state that would be described as lust.
Sure, but why is lust bad? Because it's a disordered sexual drive which fails to aim at the telos of sex, that being reproduction within a monogamous union (according to Christians, anyway).
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!!
Congratulations! The world is a better place for having more of your family in it.
I thought this was a pregnancy announcement at first. Even more exciting that they've already been born!
Also, re the car seats: isn't extended car seat sleeping associated with higher SIDS risk? (I'm 99% sure you will have done the research on this and made an informed choice; but the stakes are high enough that it seems worth committing the faux pas of suggesting otherwise in order to cover the other 1%)
When I did the math on the available statistics, I observed that the prevalence of a child dying while sleeping in a car seat was similar to being struck by lightning. That said, it is an avoidable risk a lot of the time.
There are about 3.7 million babies born annually in the US, and an study of incomplete data (a handful of US states were not included) found there were about 3,700 sleep-related deaths per year, of which 3% were in a "sitting device" like a car seat. By my math, that equals 1 in 33,333 babies dying from sleeping in something like a car seat.
The odds of being struck by lightning are reportedly 1 in 15,300.
>of which 3% were in a "sitting device" like a car seat.
Well, doesn't that mean 97% of deaths were from lying down, so sitting is safer overall? Or are there crazy sleep positions I haven't heard of? Are 15% of those deaths from sleeping while hanging off the laundry line?
No, it doesn't mean that. You would need a lot more information to make that kind of determination, such as the amount of time spent sleeping in each location, presence of blankets and toys, and many other factors. And you would have to compare to the behaviours of the babies who didn't die.
It's conceivable that a lot of time in car seats has ill effects that don't necessarily manifest in the car seat, but this is hypothetical.
SIDS is a boogeyman invented by a few scaremongering pediatricians in order to scare parents into complying with a bunch of crazy rules such as "no bedsharing". Its a real phenomenon but the odds of it are too low to even think about.
The research I did on SIDS was hugely reassuring and I’d encourage anyone to dig into it for themselves so they understand the trade offs for their own unique situation. I may have missed it, but never saw a study that compared the risk from SIDS to the increased accident risk from sleep deprived care givers. And most of the things you aren’t supposed to do are going to help you sleep better.
Congratulations, I got tears reading it and thinking of my own little adventurer who just turned 14 months old.
Make sure to get the help you need to not implode from baby care.
What a lovely announcement, and a very hearty congratulations to you two!
Congratulations!
... 2042, huh?
מזל טוב
Congratulations! As a father of twins: It will get better and the sleepless nights will simply fall out of memory. Enjoy the firsts to come!
This is one of the tenderest, funniest, cleverest welcomes to progeny I've read. (Another beautie is Rivka Galchen's "Little Labours".)
Congratulations! I recently became a father too (late September). Laughed out loud at the pronatalist conspiracy to lie to women about pregnancy, my girlfriend was on sick-leave for a large chunk of the pregnancy. Though I think the anti-natalist lies I’ve seen has been more severe (that stuff has gotten really popular on parts of reddit).
CONGRATS MATE THAT'S BLOOD INCREDIBLE!!!
Mazal tov! I'm sure you did the Gimatria, but for the rest of the crowd:
Kai (קאי) is 111. As a number composed of all ones, it is already indicative of divinity, and has the same Gimatria value as אחד הוא אלוהים (God is one), אחד הגדולים (one of the greats), and אייפוד (iPod) - all links to God and divine works. Of course, it is also equal in value to אדון כל (Lord of all), which might be a bit too on the nose. In the more earthly domain, it is equal in value to אבן חן (precious stone/gem), which I'm sure he'll turn into once he passes the crumpled-look phase.
Lyra (לירה) is 255, a number of only slightly lower symmetry than Kai, possibly driving the overachiving impulse. It has the same value as אוטודידקציה (autodidaction), which will make the overachieving easier to handle. There are divine connections here as well, of a different nature: 255 is the Gimatria value of אלוהים הוא המצאה (God is an invention) and אלוהים לא טוב ליהודים (God is not good for the Jews). While the anti-theist interpretation is obvious, a more likely explanation is the natural friendly competition between siblings, and an attempt to semantically oppose Kai's name. Her name is also equal בסוף הזמן (at the end of time), which hopefully means reaching longevity terminal velocity. Finally, 255 has the same Gimatria value as אדם קדמון (Adam Kadmon). The kabbalistic implications of this are obvious.
(Also, 255 is 1111111 in binary.)
Thank you.
No, it's 11111111.
Indeed, the maximum value representable by a byte (eight bits): 2^8 - 1, or equivalently, (2^2 x 2^2)^2 - 1. A full complement of doubles, minus the expectation of a singleton; plenty for a new father to byte off and as many units as his wife could hold.
Mazel tov, Scott! May your current joys and hours of sleep be doubled and doubled again in the years to come.
Dagnabbit, my eyes glazed over. :-)
In addition, both names are beautiful. Now, as both are NOT the chosen names - which might be plausible choices - Gimatria-wise et al. ? (not to doxx, thus a handful for each is welcome.)
Congratulations!
Those are actually pretty great names. Please tell me you pulled them from your reject list and didn't come up with good names like that just on the fly.
Anyway, congrats.
Congratulations Scott and family!
On the story of Onan: from a modern perspective it seems clear that his sin was neither sperm-wastefulness nor material greed, but rape by deception: obtaining consent for sex under false premises. He had every right to refuse the arrangement, but he should have done it before the sex.
A modern version of the story would be: lesbian couple wants to have a child so they ask a male friend to be the sperm donor. They agree to skip the fertility clinic and do it the old-fashioned way, despite the fact that the intended mother doesn't expect to get any enjoyment out of it. Guy agrees, does his thing but pulls out at the last moment, says "thanks for the nookie" and walks out. I don't think "wasted sperm" is the problem which a modern audience would have with this story..
A novel interpretation, I like it. It's fun especially because the wife in question later does a similar thing to her father in law.
I don't know about modern perspectives, but Onan is being a dickhead for several reasons. One, he's refusing to follow the traditions in order to keep the family name intact, and presumably for his own reasons - if these kids are not going to be legally his, then he doesn't want to have them. So he's being selfish. Going back to the selfishness and lack of respect for family, Onan clearly doesn't want to avoid having kids for his brother by avoiding sex, so he's trying to eat his cake and have it.
He's also treating his wife very shabbily in denying her offspring. It's already tough enough for her as a widow, being childless means she will be considered a barren woman, and that leads to a lot of social opprobrium and mean-girls-type gossiping about her. And we see later in the story how Tamar is still being treated badly by the family, since she has been sent back to her father's house (which, as a married woman, she left and should have had her own household, and she was now the responsibility of the family she had married into) but she's not a maiden daughter who can be married to a different man, and she is promised the youngest son as her replacement bridegroom but the marriage doesn't happen until she engages in trickery. She's still regarded as Judah's daughter-in-law, but not permitted to live in his household nor married to the third son, and she's stuck as neither wife nor unmarried woman, and childless to boot. All very bad positions for a woman of the time to be in.
The best we can say for Onan is that he may not have wanted to marry her and was forced into it, but we don't know if he had another bride in mind or was sleeping with other women and having children by them. So he wanted the easy way out: to avoid condemnation by society and his father by not doing his duty to marry and have children by his brother's widow, but also not doing his duty by her to give her children, and having the enjoyment of sex without its fruitfulness. Also, by sleeping with her, he was letting her take all the blame for not having children, when it was his own fault.
So all around, not a great guy.
Sounds like a truthful and kind man may masturbate now and then and still receive communion without having to confess and do penance before each time? Asking for a friend.
Catholics don't believe masturbation is a sin because of Onan: they're not Evangelicals!
To clarify this (and I'm sure FLWAB knows this), Catholics DO believe masturbation is a sin, just not for this particular reason.
Their logic hinges on natural law justifications for being anti-masturbation, mainly related to it thwarting the telos (ultimate goal) of sexual activity (that being reproduction), this also being the source of their opposition to birth control, sodomy and homosexuality, among other non-procreative (or "disordered") sex acts.
Beautiful essay—congratulations. You’ll be an incredible dad.
Mazal Tov!
Congrats!
Congratulations! Your post made me weep like a child
"I cannot quite remember why I thought this would be a good idea. I blame the pronatalist influencer conspiracy."
No! they got another one of us.
Seriously though, congratulations. Quite a few people I follow in the EA/rationalist sphere that used to lean fairly antinatalist have been having kids lately. I lean antinatalist, but it does seem like a view that's easy to hold in your 20s and then usually gets dropped when it actually comes to making major life decisions. I'm starting to worry that in the next 5-10 years I'm going to be mind controlled by some instinct to reproduce or something.
I'd say if your attitude to reproduction rhymes with "ist" you've already lost. Some will do it, some won't. Some already knew it, some are surprised by life either way. Whatever meaning in life may be, there's more than one way to do it!
I understand that position inasmuch as it's very common (and seductively non-prescriptive) but it seems natural to me that some reproductive actions could be more moral than others, just like in communication (don't lie!) property (don't steal!) or violence (don't attack people!)
Could you flesh out what makes reproduction different?
Is there a moral choice to be expected of people between pursuing a honest vocation or another? Designer vs doctor, sciences vs humanities, visual arts vs music?
Anyone who chooses to optimize their life according to some all-encompassing moral framework is free to look at these in moral terms, but most people I know would consider them a matter of basic freedom. You develop in one way or another, so it goes.
All the examples you give involve quite obvious harm to concrete people, and the ones I give don't. This is only a heuristic, of course societies have ways of coming up with reasons why behaviors that cause no immediate harm to any specific person can be put up for moral judgment, but by default they are not, and the bar for that kind of thing is (rightly) quite high.
I think I'm speaking for a fairly mainstream position when I see reproduction or lack thereof more like pursuing a kind of life rather than another, than like e.g violence or stealing.
This does not seem to explain why considering the ethics of having children is unnecessary except that it is not "obvious" and that it is "fairly mainstream" not to do so, and most people you know don't. Am I overlooking an argument here? Note that there is no trade-off between ethics and personal freedom; erhics may be a way to influence your completely free decisions by influencing your preferences.
Maybe we're talking at cross purposes here. Using your private sense of ethics in your decisions is normal everyday personal freedom, I wouldn't dispute that. My original quip was riffing on Scott's jokes about "pronatalist influencers", which means people trying to push a public judgment of procreation.
In terms of arguments, I gave a few analogies, e.g with a choice of honest trades, as well as the heuristic of clear harm. Intuitions, analogies, thought experiments and the like are the tools of the trade in normative ethics as far as I can tell, what else would one expect? We don't have the moral equivalent of a James Webb telescope to test our intuitions or theories against.
To go into the subject a bit, there are lots of reasons why people might not have children, ranging from fertility problems or trauma, all the way to just not feeling like it. Or all sorts of reasons why they might have them, from deep biological urges up to reasons like randomly failing anticonceptives. So anyone arguing for a world where procreation is publicly judged (for or against), is also arguing for a world where these kinds intimate issues are up for discussion and evaluation by others. All I can say at this point is that I would hate to live in such a nosy world.
Permissiveness by default is a long-standing bedrock value of our modern world. We don't judge people for failing to be their greatest, even in those cases where we have a clear shared idea what *is* greatest - which we clearly don't in the subject at hand. As our dear host phrases it in this very article, "If you pursue them only far enough to reduce your own predictive error, it will still be a life well-lived, and nobody will blame you for it."
Thanks for your response.
As far as I can see, "antinatalist" or "pronatalist influencers" try to express a judgment, but I don't know in which way this is a "public judgement" or what that even means. Every Statement about ethical behavior that you will read or hear is public if you don't read it in a letter or in your diary.
If you use analogies etc, then it makes sense explaining why these analogies are the right ones. Most people decide about having children based on tradition, emotions, or whether they expect having children will make the parents happy. Pro- or anti-natalists, I guess, will list how having children affects other people or the children themselves, and they argue that these effects are morally sufficiently important to take account of them in your decisions. This does not make the personal reasons you list irrelevant, it just complements them and may imply that the other-affecting reasons sometimes outweigh the purely personal preferences.
Whether concrete, individual decisions are publicly discussed or judged is, I think, a separate discussion from whether someone argues you should take these reasons into account. You could argue for taking such reasons into account without wanting to discuss any individual's decision, or wanting to interfere with it. Conversely, you could also argue that people should always ignore ethics in their decisions but still want to comment on some peoples' decisions about having kids, but I guess these comments would mostly just be "hey, congratulations!".
If rationalists were actually "rational" they would be doing what they can to stop people in sub-saharan africa reproducing, not smart conscientious americans.
You intended this as an edgy insult, but the answer is: actually, they already are! Eliminating extreme poverty is a great way to reduce the birth rate. Bam!
I don't think the reasons are understood very well (many possible economic and social explanations), but the correlation is robust.
Don't think this would pass the cost benefit test for effective altruism. Reducing the fertility rate of a whole continent is a huge project that a lot organisations are already attempting, I can't see the marginal dollar achieving much there. And raising your own kid for altruistic purposes is a really big investment that doesn't pay off for 18 years.
Are rationalists trying to stop people from reproducing? Progressives are often antinatalist, but I didn't get the sense rationalists were one way or the other on the issue.
I enjoyed this post so much. It’s beautiful. Thank you (and your family) so much. Blessed Be. Mazel Tov. L’Chaim.
Congratulations!
Mazel Tov Scott! This is such nice news to wake up to. I look forward to reading about your experience with the joys and frustrations of parenthood. It's a whirlwind.
Congratulations!
Congrats!
Congrats!!!
TIL that Scott Alexander is a couple of years younger than I am. I've always looked and felt somewhat younger than my chronological age - I could probably have played a teenager on TV (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DawsonCasting) until my late 30s - so feeling old is a new and unusual experience for me. It's kind of upsetting, actually. :/
At what age do people usually stop automatically assuming that all the people more impressive and/or accomplished than themselves are also older, too? I ended up living with my parents and servimg as a caregiver for elderly and/or sick relatives instead of entering the formal workforce after college, and even though I'm married now I still rely on them for money. Without the steady progression of grades and nobody I would regularly socialize with in person except my parents, it almost felt like time stopped when I was in my mid-20s. I often can't even remember my own age any more without calculating it from my birthday!
I dunno, I'm in my 20s and I already had that reality check. There are so many young people who are incredibly talented... What the hell am I doing with my life?
What a beautiful work of writing, Scott.
You did good, Scott.
No, really. You did.
And are doing.
And (because I just know things) will do.
Congratulations!! Makes me really happy to hear this.
Wow, that's the best birth share I've ever read! Congratulations to you both and get ready for the ride of your lives.
Looking forward to updates on first poops from the cognitive engines bottoms!
Oh, don't forget to read Stanislav Grof to them so they can give you a full account of their birth experience once they acquire the necessary linguistic skills. I suspect Kai will just say it was fine..!
Yay!
Congrats x2!
Congratulations! I hope you've been practicing your dad jokes.
>things so good it’s not even clear you would still call them writing and not some entirely new semi-divine form of art.
Some kids can write their name in the snow; this kid can write Les Miserables.
>So that’s why I decided to name my children Napoleon Herschel Siskind and Hatshepsut Tzeitel Siskind.
Welcome, "Nappy" and "Hats"!
You have the once in a lifetime opportunity to do some ethically ambiguous twin studies.
How dare you suggest such a thing?! Such a study would be N=1 and not even gender-matched.
https://gwern.net/doc/fiction/2011-yvain-thestoryofemilyandcontrol.html
Congratulations, Scott
Mazal Tov!
I don't want to diminish your joy, but I'm gonna. You and your wife now have complete power over two extremely vulnerable people, only vaguely checked by law. You're humans with human flaws, you're exhausted, you're faced with endless annoying demands, so you will sometimes do the wrong thing. Be vigilant.
It's so easy to expect your kids to match some idea of your kids and punish them whenever they deviate from it — to hurt them, sometimes severely and permanently, all the while swearing up and down that it's for their own good — to become sadistic because nothing stops you — to repeatedly destroy any trust and then be shocked when they keep secrets from you — to carelessly neglect and humiliate them and not even notice. It's not a tiny minority of cackling evil parents, it's… well, statistics are all over the place, but it's >10%.
I don't know any specific way to avoid that, but I suppose that trying really hard not to do those things must help. So please try really hard not to do those things.
Kids damage parents too.
If you'd like to write a warning to Kai and Lyra, you're free to do so, but I worry they might not be receptive to it at this current point in time.
It's not a warning to the babies, it's a reminder to OP that things are less simple than they make out. Parents are all taking a risk that their lives will be made very difficult in ways they can't cope with. Parents with a child born with some abnormality that makes them unable to bond, or terribly difficult to manage take a heavy hit. Parents with a badly disabled child are sentenced to a lifetime of caring for the child. Parents with a child who dies get their hearts broken in very terrible way. And all parents are at times stretched to their limits. Their sleep suffers, their work suffers, they don't have time to work out and barely have time to shower. None of this is the child's *fault,* of course, but I think people who get into heaping blame on parents need to be reminded of how much parents commit to give, and do give -- and that people take that on without the assurance of knowing that in 20 years they will have a fine young adult son or daughter who will love them. And we've only talking about babies and young kids so far, who cannot be blamed for what they do. Teens, on the other hand, are old enough to understand the impact of what they do, and they often really hurt their parents. I still feel bad about some of the things I said to my mother when I was 15 or so. I knew perfectly well they would hurt her -- that's why I chose them and said them. And she didn't deserve what I dished out. I knew that too. She had not done any of the shit OP calls out bad parents for doing. I was just having trouble adjusting to being me, and struggling to separate from my parents.
All true. Parenting can be a terrible disappointment, but so too can any worthwhile endeavor. It's still worth trying in the face of possible failure.
I completely agree. I was just making the case that the parent-child situation is more symmetrical than OP seems to think of it as being. Parents are vulnerable too. Parents can be badly damaged by their offspring in all kinds of ways. For instance, if a couple has a disabled child, their chances of divorce are *way* higher than they would be otherwise. And as a therapist I have seen several couples in the 60's and 70's who have a psychiatrically disabled, tantrum-prone adult child living with them. They are terribly worried and sad about what will happen to the child when they die. And meanwhile, living with an anguished, unreasonable tantruming adult makes their life miserable.
>10% of what group? all humans? What about high-income, highly educated, exceedingly scrupulous and altruistic humans?
Trying to see your point, I can see that an entire new set of problems might arise in our circles: e.g. what if the kids are more normie than their parents?
It's good to be mindful that "being kind in general" does not overlap 100% with "being kind to your family". There are stereotypes about "great people" (scientists, artists, politicians, whatever) being not so great in private. Probably because their mission consumes everything in a molochian way. I'd like to see some statistics about that!
Of parents in Western countries. The studies are extremely noisy and can't capture effect of income or education, except that it's, like, less than 2 orders of magnitude. I have no data on "scrupulous and altruistic".
Being a good person rules out cases of deliberate malice. But I doubt it can do much against being exhausted and frustrated and nobody would even blame you, and you resisted that temptation 2000 days in a row but today's the 2001st.
Scott is an extremely kind person in private, so I don't think the stereotype you describe applies. But lots of people are kind to everyone except their own kids. They mostly didn't set out to be that way, it's just hard to wield absolute power 24/7 and always endure massive costs to yourself when the convenient way is right there.
< I don't want to diminish your joy, but I'm gonna.
If you really didn't want to diminish his and everybody else's joy, you would not, right? I believe what you mean to say is that you want to deliver your dark and dismal message more than you want to protect Scott's joy.
So that already is a lesson for you in the complications of laying blame. Do people get to blame you for diminishing the joy here? Well, you didn't do it unknowingly. But you say you didn't want to diminish joy. So you know you were going to diminish joy, but did not want to diminish joy., but still went ahead and diminished joy. So do we get to complain about you diminishing Scott's joy, on such a happy occasion, and bearing in mind that it probably has not been easy to be Scott? Well, were you *compelled* to deliver your don't-claw-your- kids'-self-esteem-til-it's-bloody message, and therefore not really responsible for diminishing Scott's joy, and everyone else's? Is it sort of an involutary act, like sneezing? Jeez, if so I don't think we can blame you. Did the image of a pair of brand-new infants create in you an urgent wish to deliver the message you did? Well, so can we blame you then, because it was a choice to say all that shit? Or, is your need to get that stuff off your chest more important than Scott's and most other people's need to rejoice? I dunno, Eschatron9000, maybe you're a car and we're all just traffic, so of course your needs trump ours.
Anyhow, as I'm sure is evident, I really dislike and disapprove of your message, and think it was selfish and mean-spirited to deliver it here and now. There are lots of parents on this forum. You could say it any time and reach lots of people in a position or harm or not harm their kids.
But you may think I'm unreasonable to complain. You may be right. But then this is still a lesson in the complexities of assigning blame, and how responsible to hold people for things they do that some see as destructive. Maybe bear that in mind when you contemplate the parents of this world.
> I believe what you mean to say is that you want to deliver your dark and dismal message more than you want to protect Scott's joy.
Correct. More precisely, I mean that I want to protect Kai and Lyra far more than I want to protect Scott's joy (and I expect that he also wants that), and that I think that making him go "geez, buzzkill much?" for 1 minute is worth a small chance of avoiding moderate harm to his children.
> There are lots of parents on this forum. You could say it any time and reach lots of people in a position or harm or not harm their kids.
Scott is a really nice and humble person, so I expect him to be far more receptive than most parents. Also it seems less cruel to say it now while it's future-oriented and there's no previous mistakes to regret.
> think it was selfish and mean-spirited
I can't really argue with "mean-spirited", but "selfish" surprises me. Like, surely it's obvious my goal is the children's welfare, even if you think it's a terrible way to pursue that goal.
Both your replies focus heavily on blame, and I'm just confused — so much that I don't know what clarifying questions I should ask. What does blame have to do with anything?
Analogy: A teenager is beaming because they just got their driving licence and first car. I sternly warn them "You are in control of a tonne of steel too fast to outrun. With a small mistake like anyone can make, you might kill a person. Drive carefully." Does it also exhibit the blame-assignment problem that my message has? If not, what's the difference?
Eschatron, I am so angry at you that I don't even trust myself to write much, much less go back and forth with you about your many-splendored opinions. Here is why I think your post sucked:
A. It is almost certainly useless
(1) There is virtually no chance that a psychiatrist who has been practicing for 10 years or so does not know that that it is not rare for parents to lose it and wreak damage on their kids.
(2) There is virtually no chance that someone who is so committed to helping that he donates a kidney to a stranger is not deeply committed to doing his best to be a kind and nurturant parent.
(3) Yes, of course, people who know about parental abusiveness and deeply want to be kind parents still sometimes lose it and abuse their kids. But there is virtually no chance that having an internet person bring up this ugly possibility in an utterly inappropriate time and place is going to make it less likely that Scott will lose it with one of his kids some humid afternoon 4 years from now.
B. You are interfering with one of the things that helps parents bear up and be their best selves even when exhausted and frustrated: the affection and support of the village. You just took a dump in the village square where people were dancing.
Congrats! Our daughter slept in a bascinet just fine all night. Now our 4 month old son will only fall asleep if he's being held.
Once they get older, sleep training is soo helpful. We will be starting that in a couple months with our son.
Congratulations! 🥳🥳
I can't wait for us to all get ban-warned due to low-information 'congratulations' posts, but...
Congratulations!
Great post.
On onan : https://youtu.be/gPvz6B0hBRs?feature=shared
Safe For Work (unless you're in Israel or a Beis Medrash)
This post mentions active inference as a sort of fundamental thing about the world we live in. But Scott's previous posts on the matter (https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/04/god-help-us-lets-try-to-understand-friston-on-free-energy/, https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/20/translating-predictive-coding-into-perceptual-control/) sound like it's just a really confusing theory - like it purports to be a fundamental explanation for a lot of stuff, but no one really understands it, so it fails to dispel any confusion.
Has something changed? Has Scott suddenly acquired an ability to understand active inference, in a way that I totally missed? Is there anywhere I can read an explanation that isn't crazy?
(And congratulations, obviously.)
I think free energy is a confusing theory. Active inference is also a theory, but I think it has much more support, and the https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/20/translating-predictive-coding-into-perceptual-control/ post discusses ways to make it intuitive.
I'm not convinced about minimizing surprise. I think regulating surprise makes more sense, considering that people want a certain amount of surprise in fiction, follow sports, some people like risky hobbies, etc. If people really wanted to minimize surprise, how could they feel boredom?
This is the first time I've heard about free energy, and... it doesn't seem that confusing? It's basically just saying that all intelligence operates by minimizing uncertainty, and thus all humans are purely motivated by collapsing possibilities into certainties. It does explain a lot: religion, will to power, gambling addiction, and so on. Still, it does seem to explain too much, and it doesn't explain why everyone doesn't just kill themselves to replace the uncertainty of life with the inevitable certainty of death... There are presumably other systems at work here.
This does have some pretty horrific implications for AGI though, considering that if it ends up adopting the value of minimizing free energy, it will inevitably attempt to destroy the entire universe. After all, the only way to completely eliminate uncertainty is to erase everything that is not yourself.
"it doesn't explain why everyone doesn't just kill themselves to replace the uncertainty of life with the inevitable certainty of death"
I think Scott touches on this, but Free Energy has the concept of "hyperpriors" (I don't remember if it uses this exact term or not), which are basically fixed beliefs that people are intuitively incapable of rejecting. These might be things like "I will be well fed", "I will not be in physical pain" and of course, "I will remain alive". Since these beliefs cannot be changed, the only way for a person to avoid suffering from them is to make sure they're true. These fixed beliefs manifest as "biological drives", like hunger, pain-avoidance and the survival instinct.
Of course, failing to fulfil "I will remain alive" wouldn't *actually* cause any suffering (because you'd be dead), but thinking about taking any action which you predict will end your life will cause dissonance with your immovable prior that you will remain alive, resulting in inconsistent predictions (and thus suffering). Hence, people tend to avoid actions which they predict will end their lives.
This is sort of like the Buddhist belief that the self is an illusion, but a very persistent one fundamental to normal modes of thinking. Even if you consciously accept the self is an illusion, you still engage with that illusion and make predictions as though it is true. Unenlightened people are psychologically incapable of truly rejecting the self, and only "breaking your brain" with constant meditation can allow you to update away from this belief.
Maybe under free energy you could "break your brain" to update away from predicting you'll always be well fed, but then you wouldn't find hunger aversive, and might starve to death (unless you had other reasons to want to eat/stay alive). Maybe this is why end-stage dementia patients stop eating, they've stopped predicting they shouldn't be hungry, so they no longer find hunger unpleasant. That's 100% pure speculation though, it's also possible they no longer *get* hungry, due to a breakdown of some neurological or hormonal process.
Congratulations Scott :)
Congratulations Scott! What a blessing. In a divided world, we can at least agree on
one thing - that this post is evidence you secretly agree with Brian Caplan, somehow.
Well, Caplan is a father - I’m going to just assume by choice - so they do agree on that!
Welcome to twin club, Scott! I’m “halfway” through (mine are 9 years old). My sense is that there are economies of scale once they reach about 3 years old. You’ll forget how hard the first 3 years are, so twins are basically all upside, at least in a retrospective sense. Enjoy!
Muchas felicidades!!!
Congratulations, Scott! Parenthood is one of the most beautiful, terrifying, rewarding, exhausting, elevating, humbling experiences you and your wife will ever have. Mazel Tov! Once you both recover, please have some more - I’m all for smart people breeding!
Congratulations. Just remember to sleep when the kids do during the first few weeks and if anyone offers to help, it’s food, washing clothes, and cleaning you want them to do. Good luck and welcome to the club.
My usual advice is to sleep in shifts as much as you can, with one of you getting something like 4-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep while the other is on call for baby-minding responsibilities.
Not sure how practical this is with twins, though, as I've only got one kid myself. It's also a lot more practical if you're doing at least partial bottle-feeding (either formula or pumped) since direct breast feeding generally requires the mother to be awake for all feedings.
Félicitations ! Bénédictions des fêtes, et merci pour toutes les pistes en mie de pain
Congratulations Scott!
I love babies so much I'm stupidly smiling at your happy, beautiful family photo. Congratulations!
Mazal tov!!!
Reading this as a new dad. This is beautiful. Thank you.
Mazel tov!
This if both hilarious, heart warming, and the single most Scott Alexander thing that has ever been Scott Alexander'd. Congratulations
This is wonderful news, and I'm so excited for you.
A small note, and a gesture of gratitude for all the wonderful advice you've given me over the years: last I read, it's not recommended to kiss your baby directly in the first 6 months unless you're very certain you've never been exposed to oral HSV, lest you expose them in a way that lets it run roughshod over their undeveloped immune system.
Having more fulfilled the traditional obligation to offer every new parent at least one piece of worrisome unsolicited advice, I'll retreat back into obscurity.
Mazel Tov! Don't worry, in about 18 years they'll leave home and you'll get your life back.
I know it's superfluous, but congratulations!
Congratulations! There's gotta be an esoteric joke hidden in 'Kai and Lyra' but if so I sure haven't found it.
This post is the best thing you've ever done -- second only to the little ones, of course. Mazal tov from another proud new dad!
Congratulations! I assume that the actual names of Lyra and Kai are Emily and Control? https://gwern.net/doc/fiction/2011-yvain-thestoryofemilyandcontrol.html
Can't be. If one is male and one is female, then they must be fraternal twins, and so it is no longer a possible twin experiment - merely a sibling one.
I don't think Scott specified sex, only gender assigned at birth?
...
Intersex conditions are extremely rare. You won't get a lot of extra twins for your experiments if you go searching among differently gendered pairs. I don't know the statistics, but if both conditions are independent there's probably < 1 such pair of twins alive right now.
I wasn't talking about intersex conditions? I was jokingly suggesting that, because Scott never said that his twins weren't identical, merely that he'd assigned different genders to them, the implication was that he might theoretically be engaging in a mad-science experiment with raising identical twins as different genders while providing otherwise identical environments.
In reality, I strongly doubt that he's doing this (99+%), because by all (AFAIK) the standard theories accepted by his social circle, this would almost certainly result in gender dysphoria in one of the twins, so it would be a horribly unethical thing to intentionally do to anyone.
Even if we assume genetic determinism, is the standard deviation of the traits of the children of one couple the same as the standard deviation of Americans?
Congratulations to both of you, and welcome to this world to the two new surprise minimization engines!
Setting calendar alert for 1 jan 2042, to look for further news.
Scott, I have happy tears! Congratulations. You're in for one of the most fantastic parts of being human; and your kids are lucky to have you.
Mazel tov!
My wife is due with our first in 5 weeks. (She’s also still doing consults at the hospital as a resident and working out at the gym, but twin pregnancies are no doubt harder). Can you share some of your top boy names? We are considering: Adam, Eli, Gabriel, and Joshua.
Congratulations!
That's Awesome! Congrats. Having kids changed my life, maybe the best thing I ever did.
Congratulations!
Congratu-freaking-lations! We have a beloved surprisal-minimization agent of our own, also delivered by vacuum assist almost 2 years ago now. It was probably the most horrifying thing I witnessed in an absolutely god awful horror show called labor and delivery (There was a fist sized mushroom on his head! Formed from his own skull! Apparently pretty normal and it went away in due course).
Anyway good luck, sleep when the babies sleep, and remember this one piece of advice, passed on to me by a new dad as it was passed onto him and others before him:
Onesies are designed to be bi-directional, you can pull them on top-down/over the head or bottom-up. Remember this once your beautiful baby inevitably has a massive blowout, take the clothes off from the bottom, and that way you can avoid smearing shit all over their lovely face.
Congrats!
I have three and I never knew that. Thank you!
Congratulations! You're about to learn so much.
Congratulations!!!!!!
Congratulations! They're adorable! Although it looks like Kai's hand-demons are winning in that particular picture.
Mazal tov!
Congratulations!
Best wishes Scott, wife, and offsprings! May their journey bring delight.
Are "Kai" and "Lyra" references to anything? I looked around but found nothing noteworthy
No insight to Scott's thinking but Kai is in Snow Queen and Lyra is in "Golden Compass".
Plot twist: it's their real names, hidden in plain sight!
Scott cleverly misdirects us making us think their names as Kai and Lyra, when in fact they're Lyra and Kai
Mazel tov!
Wow! Congratulations! What a joyful event, and true to form you turned it into a brilliant and moving essay. For whatever it’s worth I think you’re lucky having twins…yeah it’s rough in the first year or two but then they will always have a playmate and you will benefit from parenting economies of scale.
And it’s all worth it even if they don’t save the world…
Congratulations! They are very lucky
¡Muchas felicidades!
Mazel Tov! My wife and I had our first child, a wonderful baby girl, this fall.
Being a parent is quite the thing. Earth-shattering and common, beautiful and grueling. All I know is, after lots of generations of programming, nothing makes us happier than seeing our baby girl smile at us.
All the best to you and your family.
Mazel tov!
Yes! Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!
So exciting!
Welcome to the club, as it were. Lol, "pro-natalist influencers".
We got ya!!
Mazel tov!!!
Scott, I’m so happy for you! Best wishes to you and your wife and little Kai and Lyra!
Congrats, Scott! I'm so happy for you. Wishing you both the very best, and I hope your little one grows up wonderfully. Happy christmas! <3
I always thought "Chris Moneymaker" was a nickname given after the fact. That's amazing.
Best of luck and congrats
Congrats! Mazel tov!
Congratulations! Wishing your family the best of health and happiness and also some sleep eventually maybe good luck.
Also, that discussion of names makes me feel pretty pleased to have given my child a name that was ranked in the 800s the year she was born, but was much more popular about three decades prior so it seems very much like a normal name. My first idea was in "no one has this name" territory and I chose something similar enough to use that as a nickname.
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
As the biological father of 5, born between 1995 and 2020, I have only one word of advice for parenting the early years: babies change suddenly and without warning, and so parents must too. Baby will be perfectly happy with something, until one day they aren't. They will nap every day at a certain time, until they don't. They will be mesmerized by their favorite lullaby, until they hate it. They will want to eat only yogurt, until one day they toss it on the floor. The temptation is always to persist with what was working so well, but just don't. It seems obvious, but in the tired sleepless moment the immediate impulse is keep trying the old ways, and it is simply a waste of precious time. Baby has moved on and the best thing for all parties is for the parents to move on as well.
Also father of 5, and this is also my experience.
And, for course, very many congratulations Scott and family.
This is the best advice (father of two, second two weeks old, uncle to many), to which I would add (that your children have already demonstrated) is that kids are very, very different from each other; each child must be taken on its own, at that point of their life.
So true, and so often forgotten.
“ I cannot quite remember why I thought this would be a good idea. I blame the pronatalist influencer conspiracy.” Pretty much Dan Gilbert’s argument in _Stumbling On Happiness_. Evolution builds in self-deception about the joys of parenting and then we lie to each other about it. Helps preserve the species. May you require less self-deception than the average parent!
i have a feeling of quiet dread that we're going to be seeing fewer posts in the future
i can't actually in good conscience feel this dread without also feeling guilty about not being happy for scott
but the dread is there nonetheless
Mazel tov! Wonderful post. Most useful reference book to have around is Baby 411. Best book I’ve read as a (theist) Dad is To Kindle a Soul by Kelemen.
Congratulations, both on the kids and (much much less importantly) on another fine piece of writing. May they grow up to be everything you could have hoped for, and things you never dreamed of.
We're gonna need more gas
Congratulations! <3
Mazal Tov!!!!
Well done both of you! I was (and am) a twin myself.
Glad to hear there were no serious issues.
Most heartfelt congratulations!! I promise: you will sleep again someday.
"I’ll let them get doxxed the usual way - by the NYT the first time they express a problematic opinion." Truly one of your best laugh out loud lines ever!
Congrats! I can't believe I'm about to give parenting advice, but, man, fuck it. For the first couple of years, they change every couple of weeks and they only will change when you and your wife reach a moment in which you think "I cannot tolerate this for even one more day." When that thought enters your minds, the kids will suddenly change. Like magic. And you'll find their new routine/behaviors totally tolerable again...until you don't. Rinse/repeat. Last thing: Never, EVER underestimate the power of the "outdoor reset" ...it's likewise a bit of magic for calming a fussy, frantic baby. It has reminded me over and over again of how animal we are, how much we need to see the sky. You won't believe it works until you try it. Magic. All of it is fleshy, animal, non-cerebral, real-deal magic. I'm so happy for you both!
Yes!
I would take my newborn son to the park near us every evening, bound to my chest with one of those Swedish pouches, and ride on the swing for a while. It was a lot of fun for me, and it put him to sleep like magic.
Congratulations! I'm overjoyed for you!
Wow Scott, congratulations! My wife is due in May!
Congratulations
Alright I gotta ask the parents here, is this a good parent sim?
https://youtu.be/6O9E8xRazTc?si=ciRFJzYQusoGWDz5
As a Jonathan, I second the "don't pick too common a name" approach.
Congrats.
Congratulations!! They are perfect and I was moved to happy tears by this wonderful piece. We have a baby and preschooler, and have truly learned from them what it means when people say "the light of my life".
I'm really excited for your mind to turn (as it undoubtedly will) to some infant/child development thoughts over the coming years, and what interesting insights those thoughts might yield!
May I recommend "The Wonder Weeks" if dozens of people haven't already. As I understand (from a brief search), the science behind this theory is considered flawed, and yet with both our children we have found the book and developmental timeline near-miraculous at explaining their sudden switches from fussiness to happy exploring. Would love your take on this theory especially as you see it play out!
And I can't believe more people aren't congratulating you on having your OWN TWIN STUDY SUBJECTS! Congratulations, twice, and may you make many interesting observations!
I said to my husband this morning that I was looking forward to more parenting related content! And totally agree with you on wonder weeks. Probably confirmation bias, but I was skeptical and yet it was uncanny. I’ve also noticed that the same patterns appear well past the timeline laid out in the book. The core concept of- the brain is dealing with a lot right now and so is overwhelmed - seems reasonable to me. And seeing this pattern - even if all confirmation bias- is a helpful way to stay positive during hard times. ‘What the heck? Another potty training regression? Oh but look! Her art suddenly looks like actual things now! How cool!’
This is how I'd want to write to my kids if I had any.
You're doing a great job.
Congratulations to you and your wife!
Congratulations!! They are beautiful.
Congratulations!
Congratulations! December 13 is truly the best day to be born--I know from personal experience. And, from one new father to another: good luck and godspeed.
13th December - feastday of St Lucy!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lucy%27s_Day
Congratulations!
Shocked you guys didn't do PGT-P. My wife and I are doing it right now, out of pocket as we have no IVF indication, but we are in our 30's and the dual benefit of banking embryos is nice for reducing time pressure.
One potential concern is that semen injection (i.e. ICSI) is often considered routine for IVF w/ genetic embryo testing and is associated with fetal/childhood abnormalities, e.g. this study found 2x risk of intellectual disability with ICSI compared to regular IVF, and other studies have found increased risk of birth defects, etc. There's controversy about whether this is causal, but there are plausible mechanism by which it could be (i.e. reduced natural-selection for quality sperm and direct damage from the needle). Parents could potentially just do IVF without ICSI, though clinics will often push for ICSI when doing genetic testing due to concerns about testing errors w/o it, and potentially reduced embryo counts (often they won't mention that it's used, or mention an alternative, if parents don't bring it up).
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/142/6/e20181269/37528/Intellectual-Disability-in-Children-Conceived
Also, for IVF in general there are substantially increased risks of complications like preeclampisa, which can be quite serious for mother and baby; probably these risks are due in part to the lack of functioning corpus luteum in IVF; it might be possible to avoid this with a modified natural-cycle IVF though this is not typically the default option, perhaps due to concerns about it reducing the odds of a successful IVF round.
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/01/14/why-do-ivf-pregnancies-with-frozen-embryos-increase-preeclampsia-risk
I’d caution being too relaxed re timing. I’ve come to realize that the investment is (at least!) equal when you are older but the payout in terms of years with your children and their descendants declines with each year you wait.
Congratulations, and may God bless you and your family!
Integer overflow should happen after 32 hours awake, not 31.
Congratulations!
And thanks for the great piece!
But integer overflow happens at powers of two.
> Integer overflow should happen after 32 hours awake, not 31.
> But integer overflow happens at powers of two.
The integer after 31 (=11111) is the power of 2 where integer overflow would be looked for, no?
Congratulations, Scott! May your children be healthy and as happy as babies ever get in the new year.
Congratulations Scott ❤️
Mazel tov!
Congrats! You always gotta watch out for the pro-natalist conspiracies trying to get you to hold cups of semen. Did you use any form of embryo selection? What kind?
Mazal tov. May your child rearing journey be as successful as your blogging career!
From the bottom of my heart, congratulations to you and your wife. Holding my son in my arms was the most transformative experience of my life. May the tug of responsibility you feel for them pull you and your wife to the best places.
Many years to you and your family and your little ones Scott!
Congratulations! May your suprisal reduction engines bring you high valence due to suprisal reduction, and be happy and joyful.
And Onan also mad his way into modern Hebrew, where masturbation is called אוננות- “to do like Onan” (like onanism, except it isn’t fancy, just the normal word for it).
First, mazel tov!
Second, as a grandmother of a two-month-old, I cried.
Third, my totally unsolicited advice is it that helps enormously to have a grandmother -- or similar -- around. That's not bragging, my daughter and her husband would tell you the same. If you can split the work three ways, even if not evenly, it makes a world of difference.
Mazal tov a million times!! (Or maybe just two)
Congratulations!
Congratulations Scott! Kids are an unadulterated joy on tap, and am so glad you're on the journey.
Mazel-F'ing-Tov !!! x2
Beautiful. Thank you for writing this.
Welcome to parenthood to you both.
Your kids are three days younger than mine. Have they started doing the thing where they sound like asthmatic wood pigeons yet? I'm currently in the position where every medical professional is telling me, "That's fine, it's perfectly normal," and ten thousand years of evolution is screaming, "NOT TRUE YOUR BABY IS DYING OVER THERE" and it's a bit of a headfuck.
Edit: and well done, obv.
Big congrats to Scott and his family!
Congratulations Scott and family!!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
CONGRATULATIONS! May God grant them many years!
<3
Congratulations!
Congratulations! Fatherhood is a wonderful adventure. May many happy years follow!
Congrats, Scott. I am sure you will make a great parent.
How will you decide which one you will raise religiously Jewish, and which one will be raised an EA non-believer? Hopefully, both will have a love of poetry.
Congratulations!
Twins are hard mode. Be willing to accept help!
- After 2-6 months, you will feel why the pronatalist conspiracy works.
Congratulations!! Beautiful.
Great writeup, and congrats from a two-time father. (Though not simultaneously, woof.) You'll have moments of aggravation, frustration, despair, even rage -- but I'll betcha you never regret this for a second.
Congratulations!
This is the best thing I have ever read. You've captured so much of the experience to parenthood in such eloquent prose. Congratulations on your beautiful babies!
Mazel tov!!!
In the long run, only about half (?) of you are Dad. I am Mom.
This was a classic Scott piece which merged a cerebral analysis of a common life situation through data to a very moving conclusion. I'll join the others in saying congratulations! How far your life has come since I started reading you almost a decade ago.
Congratulations and good luck!
Congratulations!
omg happy healthy everything! conrats x 2 x2 x2 x2 x ........
Congrats!
Congratulations, Scott!