Live data from Hacker News

America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

theatlantic.com

171–180 of 443 posts

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah seriously. We're Catholic (the crazy kind who eschew birth control and have tons of babies). We live in the SF area and are moving to Portland and plan on buying in the city. We have lots of friends in SF who have large enough families (3 - 8 kids). These are not super wealthy people. Well, I mean, they save their money and spend wisely so they have enough. They are not hotshot doctors, lawyers, or software engi…

Not sure subjugating women to be home makers is going to win a lot support for your point. The problem is that there is no support in the U.S. for working couples who choose to move away from family for economic opportunity.

Some women want roles other than those historically performed by men. They are not subjugated. The ideal for women should not to be indistinguishable from men.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#172
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the argument that dual-income households becoming necessities for home ownership and raising a family is plausible, if unsupported. "Elizabeth Warren’s book, The Two-Income Trap, explained Before she was a politician, Warren wrote a controversial book about family life and economics. The “two-income trap,” as described by Warren, really consists of three partially separate phenomena that have arisen as families hav…

Making it easier/possible for women to join the workforce doesn't necessarily mean that married women will in addition to their spouse, so what made them do that? I think answering that is more important than focusing too much on what made it possible. Making it possible and easier for women to join the workforce is overall a good thing, it means that single women can compete (hopefully) equally with single men in te…

When few women are working, it’s attractive to some because it adds an incredible amount of disposable income. When most women are working, it becomes a necessity in order to get by (because the cost of housing, which is the single largest household expense, depends on what other households are willing to pay). It’s a ratchet that only goes in one direction.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#173
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Northern European it does seem a bit of a bad deal that women are expected to work but there isn't much of a guarantee for parental leave, affordable child care or even vacation. But I guess there isn't that much precedent for such things.

That expectation is rather cruel. For decades, women who make motherhood their "careers" have been looked down on as somehow inferior to women who pursue careers. Even the terminology used to describe such women is disparaging and loaded with shame and disappointment, as if the woman in question had chosen or had been forced to choose an inferior option. That she is in some sense a failure for prioritizing her childr…

It’s perverse that in our (supposedly) liberated world the standard that women are held to is men.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#174
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| Parks exist in most urban areas and are perfect for kids to play in. Minus the used needles and other debris that litter many of them. It’s a sad state that that’s the best place people with drug problems can go, but it seems they don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s just not where I want to bring my kid to hangout.

Where do you live that you're seeing "used needles littering many of them"? This was something that I often heard talked about by teachers and parents, but I only ever recall seeing ONE used needle laying around when I was a kid and it wasn't at a park - it was on the campus of an Ivy League college! The vast majority of the parks I've been to in the US have been clean and well kept up, even ones in the higher-crime…

Probably SF. Used needles are not an uncommon sight.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a problem for women. Men can happily have children in their 70s as the current president has shown.

Except most men marry women who are about the same age. The gap in average age at first marriage is just two years, and has steadily decreased over the past century.

Yes, then for their second and third marriage they choose younger women. The average marriage lasts o my 8 years currently.

Again this is a problem for women, not men.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#176

Birthrates are also declining outside of cities at similar rates [1]. It may be a little more apparent in expensive cities because childless people tend to not like suburbs and choose density if they can afford it, but I don't think cities are the root cause. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/10/19/us-fertilit...

I've got my money on the "We spend twenty years telling adolescents that children are terrible and having them will ruin their life, so when the time comes they have to climb over a mountain of conditioning to even consider the idea" space.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#178
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they have a high trust, homogenous culture. How many people feel comfortable taking children on public transportation or allowing to roam the middle of cities? Culture matters, and quite frankly Japanese culture is different.

> How many people feel comfortable taking children on public transportation or allowing to roam the middle of cities? Public transit? Most everyone in cities that really depend on it like NYC.

Would you let your four year old take public transit in NYC by himself? Because they do that in Japan.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#179
Urban real estate is as small as the market allows and gradually shrinks as each iteration of smaller becomes normal.

Nobody wants open offices or six hundred square foot apartments but zoning laws and the real estate economy are engineered to promote space per human trending towards zero.

Who wants to raise a child like that.

I grew up on more acres than some apartments I've lived in had square feet and the transition has been miserable.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#180
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you find a country with fewer needles on the streets and fewer people using drugs, we are happy to listen to their policies and how they accomplished it

Singapore is tiny, not much more than a city-state. Rates of drug use is also a matter of honest reporting. And wow are you really advocating execution of people with addiction and mental health issues that use drugs?

Japan is not tiny, and has a fraction of our drug use. They’re also brutal with drug crime.

I wouldn’t execute drug addicts. But their pushers? Line-em right up!

Post reply on HN