In Defense of the Marginal Baby – Casey Handmer's blog

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This Father’s Day, I took some notes on parenting and put them together here. The purpose of this post is to strongly advocate for people to increment their child number, ideally recursively. If you have two, go for three! Five? Six is barely 16% more. I currently have four children, and I think I’m just getting the hang of it.

This post indexes on my own experience and is thus most likely to be helpful to younger men. It’s necessarily contingent and personal, but I think it may be useful to others. Your mileage may vary.

Here are some of my observations around having children. Some of these I was quite surprised by. I may update this list from time to time.

Children are surprisingly fun, even in the pre-verbal, highly dependent stage. The first one is a bit of a shock, but my working assumption was that family life would involve two kids, five years of frustration and pain, then some enjoyable family life, then them leaving for college as I move into late middle age. Instead, I’m in my late 30s with four children and trying to figure out how to have another four. My eldest is seven, but they’re all a lot of fun.

Babies can be messy but you don’t care. A firmware update changes how you feel about diapers. You get good at washing your hands or running clothes through the washer.

Similarly, the flaw in our evolution is that the appeal of children is not very salient until you actually have them. Evolution didn’t need us to want children, it just gave us sex drive and the rest took care of itself. This process is thwarted by the modern world. But you can just do things – like make arbitrary quantities of individually sovereign trainable natural intelligences, all with equipment you can find in your own home!

The first few months of the first baby is hard work for all involved. But you only get to experience that variety of suffering once, and adapting to irregular sleep is like altitude training. It gives you superpowers.

A Snoo is worth the money. Mostly because it becomes the first line of defence for a fussing baby who wants to go back to sleep, and breaks the reflex to go pick up a baby who just needs to fart or something.

There are few experiences better than being a napping substrate for a newborn baby.

Newborn babies are only super tiny for a few weeks. Enjoy it! The later children go by much faster.

Babies heads smell really good because they live on milk and emit ketones.

Being a new dad can be a bit nerve-wracking. Babies seem so helpless and fragile. But they’re actually very robust and have usability features, otherwise humans would have gone extinct long ago. There are only about four things that could be wrong (hungry, tired, bored, wrong temp) and you’ll just know what it is.

Babies get a software update about every week. After 50 software updates they gain walking. After about 100, talking.

Children are very adaptable and down for adventures. I know a few young families that are overwhelmed by the very concept of leaving the house. And I know others who take kids with them everywhere. Humans are a nomadic species, and children are very transportable. I have hiked all day in the Sierras with my then four year old, who never felt tired or hungry as long as she was holding my hand. We routinely do long road trips and fly in planes with our whole tribe. Remember, the ancestral environment did not contain iPads. Keep the dopamine diet under control!

Family life is an incredible adventure. You never know what will happen. It has exceeded every expectation. But you have to approach it understanding that you don’t get to unilaterally set every agenda and surprises will occur!

I had no idea what was in store when I married Christine Moran! Many excellent surprises!

98% of the parents I know regret not starting (much) sooner. Younger parents have more energy and fewer fertility issues.

Your (n+1)th child will be easier, cheaper, and more fun. You have more experience. You already have all the stuff. Your personal life is already oriented around the family. All the older siblings get a new playmate.

Children love getting a new baby in the house! My two year old regularly proclaims "I’m a BIG sister!"

Children love being around other children. Two children have one playmate. Three have two, with 7 different play configurations. Four have fifteen combinations. With two more children and a bit of work, I’ll be able to sing eight part harmony around the piano. Family life improves as the factorial of the number of children.

I don’t know anyone who regrets having children, but numerous people who regret not having them, or not having more. I only ever heard one guy say that he had too many children, and I think he was joking. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of older childless couples in uncertain health – it’s not ideal.

If you want your parents to help with your kids, don’t wait until...