focusing on higher education in the middling twenties and then after fifty spending most time on grandchildren whose parents followed the same patter and focus their late 20s and 30s on other goals.
Proposed algorithm:
Step one ends at about the early 20s, just as cognitive performance peaks. Still leaving time to make use of it for other achievements in the middling 20s. The obvious exception is really hard math, but fortunately most people in a viable population don't need to deal with really hard math.
Step three builds up resources and acheives other goals you estimate you won't be able to acheive after step four.
Step four raise your grandchildren or if you don't have those someone else's pre-teen/early-teen kids.
Current algorithm (for the demographic many LWers find themselves belonging to):
I would argue that the quality of childcare isn't significantly diminished (if it is at all). There is indeed some opportunity cost here since is sub optimally employed cognitive horsepower. But the neat trick is that the new algorithm increases available cognitive horsepower every generation, while perhaps doubling or even tripling the number of highly trained rationalists. Also raising small children may leave you physically exhausted and be a time sink, but if you are provided resources by your parents or a community, that still leaves plenty of time to familiarize yourself with what you'll be doing in step two or even get the higher education done with. If parental funds are unavailable or insufficient there is work you can do to help cover the shortfall.
People can still do horizontal meme and mindware transmition with minimal losses in efficacy during "other goal" period or after they are done with phase four. Wasting peak reproductive time for that, is a really big waste of resources unless you are that rare exceptional person that started building the bedrock of the community.
I get it now... The point is that while you're performing steps 2 and 3, your children will be taken care of by your parents (their grandparents), right?
So I found this post quite interesting:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/03/gnxp-readers-do-not-breed.php
(I'm quite sure that the demographics of this site closely parallel the demographics on Gene Expression).
Research seems to indicate that people are happiest when they're married, but that each child imposes a net decrease in happiness (parents in fact, enjoy a boost in happiness once their children leave the house). It's possible, of course, that adult children may be pleasurable to interact with, but it seems that in many cases, the parents want to interact with the children more than the children want to interact with the parent (although daughters generally seem more interactive with their parents).
So how do you think being child-free relates to rationality/happiness? Of course, Bryan Caplan (who is pro-natalist) cites research (from Judith Rich Harris) saying that parents really have less influence over their children than they think they have (so it's a good idea for parents to spend less effort in trying to "mold" their children, since their efforts will inevitably result in much frustration). And in fact, if parents did this, it's possible that they may beat the average.
(This doesn't convince me in my specific case, however, and I'm still committed to not having children).