I was certainly willing to adopt children if I had no prospect of having biologically descended children. Having received my higher education at a world center of much research on adopted children and the influence of adoptive parents on those children,

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Together-Reared-Landmark-Minnesot...

I have been aware that while adoptive parents can certainly do much to remove children from the deprivation of orphanages and the like, they sometimes can do less than they hope to influence the development of children not closely related to persons in their own family lineage. I commend anyone who chooses to adopt children, and I commend anyone who declines to have children, but I also commend anyone who has children and takes great care in bringing them up. New human beings with fresh ideas and well developed ability and inclination to contribute to human society are still a net benefit to humankind, whoever takes responsibility for bringing them up.

My oldest son, the hacker, is already a self-sufficient adult, and I think he thinks deeply and seriously about how to be a benefit to the world as a whole. (The "world as a whole" means more to him than to many Americans because he has lived overseas when he was young.) My younger children appear to be on a similar track, and I had so many children precisely because I observed how my multicultural, "interracial" family seemed to be influencing each child from birth to the age when the next child was born.

Statistics: A Very Short Introduction

http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-A-Very-Short-Introduction/d...

and

Born Together - Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Together-Reared-Landmark-Minnesot...

I hope to apply things I learn from each of the books to future comments here on HN. Thanks for asking.