The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness • Hacker News Board

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#471

Post by erikpukinskis » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 8:10 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #459

rayiner wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s easy for women to find dates. Much harder to find competent potential life partners who want to start a family.

Well yeah, but... it's hard for men to find dates to begin with, and that's just the starting line for finding a competent potential life partner who want to start a family. I'm a parent of both a boy and a girl like OP, as well as a former single man - I do believe women have some disadvantages in modern society, but dating/romance is not one of them.

You’re making a fallacy here. You are saying “it’s easier for women to get 100 dates, therefore it’s easier for women to find what they want”.

Your OP is saying, it’s easy for women to get 100 dates but out of 100 dates only 1 will be a sensible life partner.

It may be harder for a man to get 10 dates than for a woman to get 100 but in those 10, half of them will be a sensible life partner.

It’s a little like an advertising funnel: women have a source for getting lots of clicks, but few will be well qualified for a sale.

Men have a harder time getting clicks, but generally when they do they are generally well qualified.

You’re just thinking about the clicks as if that’s the only equation that matters but it’s a multiplication of two conversion rates, not one.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#472

Post by Meekro » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 8:10 PM UTC

vfinn wrote: post #407

beat wrote: post #378

My own concerns are different. I'm in my 50s now, happily married for over 25 years, with a terrific social life. I'm not at all lonely or isolated. It's my children that I worry about. They're boy/girl twins, now 25. My daughter is in the process of breaking up with the boyfriend she's lived with for the past two years, and moving back home to re-settle her life. She has a career, and wants to get married and start…

I'm sorry to say this, but the tone in your voice towards your son sounds more detached than it should in my opinion. I mean, why would you let him slip into that bleak future you're describing for him? Shouldn't you be the one to wake him up, especially if he lives under your roof. I get it if you don't believe in discipline, but I think that's what is required here (or at least fatherly guidance).

I'm usually the biggest advocate for personal responsibility, reaping what you sow, etc. but I think you may be being too hard on the parent. For one thing, parents lose a lot of power as kids age-- how exactly do you punish a 25 year old living at home? Send him to bed without dinner? Take away his Nintendo Switch?

Also, reading between the lines of parent's post, I'm wondering if the son is depressed. Maybe suicidal? Trying to "light a fire under his ass" could drive him deeper within himself, and if someone wants to die, there isn't much you could threaten them with anyway.

I certainly appreciate the destructive feedback loop: failure contributes to depression, depression and idleness cause further failure. That lifestyle probably causes obesity, making everything worse. Then there's the datelessness, etc. But breaking the cycle requires, among other things, that the kid want to get better-- I mean really want it more than he's wanted anything in his life. Short of that, and unless you're willing to toss him out on the street and hope for the best, the options are not great.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#473

Post by dang » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 8:10 PM UTC

ikeyany wrote: post #398

* edited for good reason

Personal attacks aren't ok here.

I'm sure your intention is good, but the gruff tough-love approach which just maybe, if you have a good connection, can work sometimes in person—and even then is probably too harsh to do anything but cause pain—doesn't come across at all well in an internet comment. The genre is much too low-information and distant.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20118297 and marked it off-topic.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#474

Post by UI_at_80x24 » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

flattone wrote: post #436

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first wife might agree with you, me? Not so much. I'm not the same person I was 10 years ago, so why would I expect her to be the same women I fell in love with 10 years ago? It's not a crime to change, grow, evolve; so why punish the person you are with?

See... But I agree with you. Which is why I'm voting to not get married ever. So far.

I'm currently on wife #2 and unsure if I am going to continue it. I'm unhappy alone, I'm unhappy married. Do the benefits of being married (real food) outweigh the down-side?

I don't know. I don't know if this was the right choice, I don't know if I'm destined to be miserable forever. This really sucks.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#475

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

souprock wrote: post #201

ratsimihah wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds great! Just be careful not too become too dependent on someone else.

Becoming dependent is part of the deal. It keeps people together through the difficult times.

A life with your significant other shouldn’t be about “dependence” once you start basing your self worth and happiness on your SO, it gets a lot harder when you are upset with each other (it will happen) or even when you want to do something that they don’t - or vice versa.

Either one of you can also start feeling rejected when the other person just wants some alone time.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#476

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

ecoled_ame wrote: post #247

residentfoam wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it is that you don't bring child into the world to "increase" your own personal happiness. They are (at least in my personal case) the result of my own happiness. And yes they require a lot of work, but all the hard work is totally worth it every time your children look at smile at you.

Forget your feelings and stick to the key question - does the world need more people, less people, or do we have exactly the right amount? I think we have too many, practically every day I see people in my own city that I will never see again in the future. It's chaotic.

Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Instead, assume that unlimited human population growth is inevitable, and ask what technology or social systems do we need to develop in order to sustain that growth.

What do we need to develop/implement in order to support a population of 10B? 100B? 1T?? At some point, routine space travel needs to come into play. 100x-to-100000x improvement in the efficiency of our energy capture/storage/distribution technology. Terraforming or other world-modification technology. At 10-100 trillion population, interstellar travel and communication. At 100+ trillion population, we need to invent stuff that isn’t even in science fiction yet.

I find all this agonizing over how to keep this tiny ball of mud habitable to be... less than ambitious.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#477

Post by kadendogthing » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #374

Is it just the family, or is it also community institutions? I'm thinking specifically about the decline in church attendance. Regardless of your beliefs, church congregations (not mega-churches, but small congregations of at most a few hundred) provided a built-in community that could provide support, companionship, activities, etc. So far I haven't seen anything that really replicates all those communities had to o…

>I'm thinking specifically about the decline in church attendance.

This is an often repeated point but I don't see how it has any credence. Most people who attend churches may talk with each other for just a few hours -- and personally I've found most churches don't really foster a socially-healthy atmosphere. And that's fine, that's not the goals of churches, never has been and most likely never will be.

Churches if anything have never played a role in a healthy community -- and to this day if we map church attendance to social ills there's a pretty good correlation between the two: steady church attendance in areas tends to correlate with heavy drug problems, domestic abuse, and suicide.

However you want to dice that up, good or bad, it simply means one thing: church attendance and socially healthy communities probably aren't really related, and if they are, it probably doesn't have the effect you think it does given the available evidence.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#478

Post by astura » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

moorhosj wrote: post #248

brianmc21 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel as though having children will make a lot of people very happy. But there is also a significant part(>1%) of the population that would be miserable. I believe a lot of the unhappiness is often from someone who was pressured into a choice they didn't critically think about or didn't want but caved in. Even if the pool of people is small the experience could be quite negative. Where as all the people who always…

==I took care of my brother and sisters a lot as a child and it made it very clear that I never wanted children.== Being a parent is not the same as taking care of your siblings. Using the experience of one to justify your decisions in another is short-sighted. How many parents have you ever heard say, "I wish I didn't have kids"?

So where's the line? If your niece lives with you while your sister is incarcerated does that "count" as being similar enough to parenthood to "justify" a choice to have or not have children? If you were a full time live-in nanny? If your dead beat uncle drops your baby cousin off at your house every day? Step-parent? Foster parent? Teacher?

It seems incredibly silly to completely discount all your life experience when making important decisions...

FWIW, I've known someone who very much wanted kids then she became a full time live in nanny. That changed her mind completely about having kids of her own. She still loves working with children, and she still works with kids, just not in a live-in situation. She'll probably work with children her whole (working) life.

>How many parents have you ever heard say, "I wish I didn't have kids"?

My mother said those exact words to me every single day. Either that are similar stuff like "you ruin my life, I wish you were never born."

But, it's not something that is socially acceptable to say, so how many times you've heard is is completely irrelevant. I doubt my mother would say that to anyone else. It's like saying "how many times have you seen someone say 'I am sexually attracted to children?' None? Ok, now we can conclude pedophilia and childhood sexual abuse doesn't exist!"

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#479

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

eckmlj wrote: post #445

bytematic wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are mid-twenties they have probably heard it a million different times in a million different ways, what do you do?

Kick him out. Having my parents cut off financial support to me was the kick in the ass I needed to get into shape. Best thing that ever happened to me.

[deleted]

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#480

Post by panzagl » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 8:14 PM UTC

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #348

WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

I felt loneliness acutely this week. I live alone, spend most evenings alone, and on top, work's coding and research has been slow for 2 weeks. Collaborators are at conferences and on vacation, so I had much less work and much less face-to-face contact than usual. Given that I code on my own, distribute analyses via email, and occasionally meet if people are around, I barely talked to people some days this week. Goin…

Human nature is really weird. I can totally relate to everything you've written, and at the same time, I, as a father and husband, would love to experience a week like that really badly every now and then.

Amen. I feel so bad about how much I look forward to the occasional travel I do for work...