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Vibes among rationalists and some adjacent communities/blogs:
"Schools are bad, you need to homeschool your kids", "improve your kid's life outcomes by doing a lot of research and going through complicated procedures!"
Also:
"It is way too hard to be a parent nowadays, therefore nobody wants kids anymore."
I assume by "health-optimizing genetic manipulation" you mean embryo selection (seeing as gene editing is not possible yet). Indeed, Rationalists are more likely to be interested in embryo selection. And indeed, it is costly. But I'd say this is different from costly parenting - it's a one-time upfront cost to improve your child's genetics.
2Sherrinford
Yes, a one-time investment is different from permanent effort. But they both can be very costly. In my original post, I meant all things that raise the cost / time investment / whatever of being a parent (and did not use the term "parenting"). I also think it is totally great if people invest a lot of time, effort, money, and other things into having great children. But I think there is a tension with saying that society should lower the demands on parents, so that people have more kids. Parts of the same community seem to have really high standards, and other parts say that we need to lower the standards, and I do not yet see how the tension is resolved.
I think there is a tension with saying that society should lower the demands on parents, so that people have more kids
I think the only possible tension here is re. embryo selection. And it's not a real tension. The claim is something like "if what's giving you pause is the high demand on parents, just wing it and have kids anyway and anyhow" + "if you already know you want to have a kid and want to optimize their genes/happiness here are some ways to do it". I think most Rationalists would agree that the life of an additional non-embryo-selected, ordinary-... (read more)