Do really really really smart people have kids?

[urge]

Did Einstein, Tesla, Newton.... have any kids?

I have never heard of any.

Do they know something we don't know?

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[Per4mer8]

Einstein did marry and have at least one kid. I remember reading about him thinking about theoretical physics while walking around pushing his baby stroller.

Also, as an aside, although the people you listed were extremely smart, there are plenty of people on that intelligence level. What differentiated them was their love/obsession, practically to the exclusion of everything else. In general, it is more the obsessive nature of the personalities than the level of intelligence that may have caused them to avoid raising children.

Haha. Watch the movie Idiocracy.......

 

[Gern Blansten]

Haha. Watch the movie Idiocracy.......

Haha!! That was my first thought when I read the original post.

 

[ASA6]

A great great grand something or other of einstein taught at my high school. Not as smart, but had similarly looking einstein hair. I always wondered if he tried to make it look that way on purpose.

 

[Apollyon]

Leonhard Euler (mathematician, you may recall from HS or college) wrote and published literally thousands of pages, and had, if recollection suits me, 16 kids. If that number is off, I do know affirmatively that it was more than 12.

 

[jdh71]

real G's don't pull out

 

[Apollyon]

Leonhard Euler (mathematician, you may recall from HS or college) wrote and published literally thousands of pages, and had, if recollection suits me, 16 kids. If that number is off, I do know affirmatively that it was more than 12.

Wiki says 13 kids (but only 5 lived past childhood).

He also averaged publishing one mathematical paper per week in 1775.

 

[jeesapeesa]

this thread reminds me of a book that my biochemistry professor in medical school wrote titled, "In God's Image, the natural history of Intelligence and Ethics". In this book he states:

[FONT=Courier, Monospaced]“Children do not happen, not because children have become impossible,
but principally because intelligence at the peak of intensity can no
longer find any reason for their existence...When the ordinary thought
of a highly cultivated people begins to regard ‘having children’ as a
question of pro’s and con’s, the great turning point has come. For
nature knows nothing of pro and con.”


.

 

[btbam]

A great great grand something or other of einstein taught at my high school. Not as smart, but had similarly looking einstein hair. I always wondered if he tried to make it look that way on purpose.

Einstein wasn't around THAT long ago

 

[cchoukal]

Did Einstein, Tesla, Newton.... have any kids?

I have never heard of any.

Do they know something we don't know?

I think people that are smart enough and obsessed enough to change the world, as these folks did, probably have other personality traits that make having normal relationships difficult. That is to say, these guys were probably kind of weird, and the types of understanding and compromise required of relationships are probably difficult for them.

A different way to say it is that they happened to be smart, but whether or not they had kids could easily have been dependent upon an infinite number of related or unrelated factors.

Your point, I suspect, is to try to justify that having kids isn't smart? Is this a financial argument?


FTR, I'm 36, single (well, not exactly), and have no kids, so I don't have a horse in this race.

 

[Gern Blansten]

The opening scene of Idiocracy explains it perfectly. Mike Judge is a pretty smart dude. Almost as smart as Trey Parker and Matt Stone. However, I don't know what their children situation is.🙂

 

[narcusprince]

real G's don't pull out

Hilarious. Zippy moment!

 

[lobelsteve]

Yes, I have 2 children.