The purpose of this document is to summarize a wide variety of advice given to a wide variety of people into one place, so it’s clear how they integrate and work together, and hence you can understand the impacts to family, economic, and political organization. That is, you know why we are constrained to have things be a certain way.
0-2 years: in addition to the usual maternal care, vaccinations, etc. the critical input for a child is to receive a caregiver’s (typically mother’s, if the mother is middle class or lower, but can be a father, family member, or paid nanny) constant stimulation, attention, and protection from stresses.
2-5 years: Safe play areas, exposure to written language and mathematics, and interaction with others (young and old). The reinforcement of personal discipline and self-control. The education about what is dangerous and not maiming yourself, or falling into stranger danger.
6-9 years: Age-appropriate variety of physical challenges (not heavy weightlifting), being forced to play outside (of course sunscreen on the face…), and mastery in the classroom. These activities need to be alternated to avoid maiming the child through myopia. The assignment of responsibilities and enforcing consequences for bad decisions.
10-12 years: When things start getting serious. All the talks about sex and relationships, crime and gangs, and the reality of the world and all the lies of it, have to be given. If you have the means, you take them on ski trips, go-karting, teach them singing and expose them to other celebrity professions, rock climbing/serious hiking, and expose them to sports that don’t involve serious concussions, so they can identify any passions which they only can pursue as young people. You have to start letting them fail and make mistakes, so that they can exercise individual agency before the time at which a far wider variety of mistakes have lifelong consequences. You also have to give them some martial arts and self-defense/preparedness instruction.
13-16 years: From this point forward, it has to be the child’s responsibility for what they want to do. You start the weightlifting when your body is ready, and study what it means to have healthy eating, lifestyle habits, etc. You do anatomy and biology on the side, which supports those previous objectives. You get straight A’s because everything else is easier after that. You continue to explore hobbies in which you might be interested, with the goals either of identifying a youthful high-paying profession in which you clearly can succeed (e.g. sports, supermodel actress), or of identifying your future profession for which you will go to college, or of courting mates. You still don’t have time for significant amounts of video games, music, movies, or other recreational pursuits; and the biggest reason for that is because you need to find the women in your schools who are attractive and compatible with you, before they become either worthless, or attach to someone else. Not to mention – you have to make your relationship mistakes early, while people still will put up with them. You have to be well-dressed and groomed, funny, and confident – and whatever you have to do to be those things, that’s what you do.
17-18 years: It’s decision time for your career, and possibly for whether you are going to continue with whatever romantic relationships you’ve built. If that decision still hasn’t been made on the basis of your prodigy/youthful talent/going pro in something you can only do when you’re young, or extreme interest and desire, the answer is (as of 2022) you either are going to become a:
- Computer scientist (good balance of income and work-life balance possible);
- Biologist or other similar physical sciences PhD (if you really want to do something impactful, aren’t particularly relationship inclined, and don’t have expensive dreams)
- High earning medical specialty (e.g. derm, orthopedics) if you really like medicine and helping people (also, these are good for finding mates)
- Financial industry, if you are willing to work 90+ hour weeks to make many millions of dollars, because you have dreams or hobbies that require lots of money
18-starting in career: The path varies, but the basic objectives are to continue to have Korean-level focus on your academics, internships, and general knowledge about the field you will enter. The only major distraction should be finding a mate if you haven’t done so already. Work to identify how you balance health, family and friends, etc. with these two consuming tasks.
Early career (~24-30): Continue to maintain the focus on the two objectives of career advancement and growth, and finding a suitable mate, while not compromising a grossly unacceptable amount of your personal life, and staying as healthy as you can. For the average woman who really wants kids – the focus should be more heavily on finding the right man, than on the career. The career break will hurt, but with your limited fertility, it’s very risky to put off finding love.
From this point, it’s difficult to generalize recommendations, so we break out to cases:
- Homemaker/kids: Raise the kids right, for as long as you are needed. Don’t worry about going back into the workforce, but by all means take time now and then to continue interest in a future workplace, or sharpen your skills. When your kids get to that 6-10ish years of age, when your supervision isn’t so close, it’s up to you of how much you want to work outside the home. Also, you should note – if you are interested in politics, the homemaker is the best suited for a general-purpose elected official. (And in many cases, a homemaker has to get involved for her kids)
- Primary earner who found love: keep advancing in your career, but take more time to focus on your health, your spouse, your kids, and keep up with your family and friends to the extent you can. You don’t have to be perfect on any of these things – the key is to avoid getting too distracted with all the amusements of modern life, or hobbies that don’t pay.
- Still single in your late 20s or 30s: if you want that relationship and you want kids, your time quickly is running out, especially if you’re male. As tough as it is – you have to avoid idle amusement and ignore your family and friends to the extent possible, to make more time to find someone who is acceptable.
- Decision time for the leftover mates: if you are a woman who’s reached 34, or a man in his 30s or 40s who hasn’t found remotely suitable women for years, now you have to decide how much you really want biological kids. Is it enough that you are willing to give up your career, including millions of dollars in lost income, and go the single parent route? For the woman, it’s the time she needs to make that decision about biological children; for the man, it’s the time when he has to decide if he’s going to go all-in on income production to fund his surrogates and his single parenting.
- Time is running out for someone else: the foregoing discussion considered that your parents etc. were relatively young and in good health. If you have someone in your life and you know the clock is ticking with them for whatever reason, you just have to set aside other things and be with them, for whatever interval and intensity makes sense. You can always make more money.
After your youth is gone, now you’ve passed the point of most critical decisions that make or break your future/can be big mistakes/life passes you by without you realizing. What you do after that is up to you and what you want at that point in time. You now can enjoy all the hobbies and interests that you deferred because of the previously mentioned time-critical activities. By all means I (Leif Powers) personally would encourage the involvement in government as long as you have the major threats, hunger, etc. but not all people are suited to that. The critical common point for everyone in old age is to manage the end of your life properly (see separate document).