391–400 of 727 posts
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> To a degree parents live through their kids. Are you enjoying your work? Have you found a girlfriend? It's like living through that age again. Or maybe they just...you know...cared.
Isn't that the same thing? When you care about someone, don't you put yourself in their shoes?
I don't think parent-child relationships were fundamentally better in the past, just read some Dickens or George Eliot or Henry James and you'll find plenty of agonizing both ways. The article headline suggests there's a "shift" but doesn't really go into enough detail to explain why a shift from relationships based on duty to relationships based on fulfilment would fuel estrangement. A little more data on that would…
I will try not to complain about my parents, but one of the big side-effects is that I do not want kids and have had a vasectomy to prevent that. Not the only reason, but a relevant one. I think more people should choose not to have kids and our societies/governments should stop pushing so hard to have more due to traditional values or so economies can grow. It is time for us to focus on quality and not quantity. I t…
Wonder how much of this is driven by social media and the internet today. The word 'Toxic' is just thrown around now and everything is 'Toxic'. Its a word that has ceased to have any real meaning but virtually every behavior that used to just be normal every day activity is Toxic. Everyone has flaws and no one has all the answers. Parents are just people doing the best they can and for the most part making what they…
I'm not willing to be this generous by default. Beyond the basic manslow hierarchy of needs, people choose their priorities. Career, Friends, Family, Children, Recreation, Education, Health -> These are all facets of an adult priorities and they choose how much to allocate to each of these.
Many of those that have children do it out of obligation, ego, legacy, society. Many have unrealistic expectations about how much control they have in shaping their spawn, and do not handle well when this new independent human does not match their expectations.
These people end up causing genuine harm, and when we look back at what they did we should absolutely call out their prioritization and choices as harmful or toxic, and learn from them.
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None of those things would result in the complete extinction of human beings. The Black Death was pretty horrible and yet European society still exists.
Why did you just shift the goalposts from societal collapse to complete human extinction?
When I was around twenty my Mom used to call me every other day or so just to have a chat. One day, after she asked me how my day was, I shot back something along the lines of: "I don't have anything to tell you, really. You're calling so often that nothing new manages to happen in between the calls." So, she stopped calling. I would go home every other week as usual and everything seemed fine. It was only much later…
You post almost made me cry. My father passed away a few years ago and one of the things I regretted the most was that the last time I talked to him was 'a few months ago'. It took me a long time to come to terms with that and to stop beating myself up for it. People, call your parents.
I don't think parent-child relationships were fundamentally better in the past, just read some Dickens or George Eliot or Henry James and you'll find plenty of agonizing both ways. The article headline suggests there's a "shift" but doesn't really go into enough detail to explain why a shift from relationships based on duty to relationships based on fulfilment would fuel estrangement. A little more data on that would…
I think the article really under-emphasizes the role of capitalism in this. If I need help with my kid, I don’t call my mom, I hire a babysitter. If my mom needs medical help, she won’t call me, she’ll pay a nurse. Goods and services that used to be procured through social bonds are now procured with cash - which creates a feedback loop where people then neglect their social bonds to acquire more cash.
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None of those things would result in the complete extinction of human beings. The Black Death was pretty horrible and yet European society still exists.
I’m not going to bother arguing about it, but suffice to say I don’t share your sunny optimism vis-a-vis nuclear holocaust.
We'd be 10 thousand not 10 billion and life would suck but we would survive. And the fallout would clear within a few decades or centuries.
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I think they meant that their examples are things that would have been "shoved under the rug" or hidden in the past and are no longer taboo. If you were gay in 1900 you hid it, if you are gay in 2020 you are out (usually). Abuse may consist of a lot of things, but using physical abuse as an example. If you beat your kids (more than just spanking) in 1900 it was still taboo (but maybe less so)
I think your view of the past is colored by 21-st century social norms. In 1900, a husband beating his wife wasn't even illegal in most of the world. [1] Beating children and other animals would barely even register as unusual. [1] It wasn't practically illegal in most of the US, both on the state & federal level until the late 20th century - https://www.cji.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/domestic_abus...