Our children had several years with their great-grandmother. We treasured that time for them and even arranged for her (my wife's grandmother) to live with us for a few days a week after she could no longer stay in her home alone. We were able to keep this arrangement for a few years. Our children aren't adults yet, so we don't know if our children will have children young enough that our parents could meet their great-grandchildren, but we're glad we didn't prevent the possibiliy by starting our family late.
The window for great-grandmothers is closing
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Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#22I (and I'm sure others) call this the idiocracy bias. While your friends are mulling over the ideal age and economic circumstances to have children, there are plenty of other families not thinking about this. They're having kids in their late teens and early twenties. That doesn't mean we're doomed to live out the idiocracy future, but it explains this blog post.
Absolutely, but for some reason pointing this out is considered massively classist in some quarters. I don't really think it's classist to say that if people who don't value science, think climate change is fake, fear outsiders, etc. have 6 kids, and people who hold different have 1 or none, it will have a large impact on public policy in a generation.
Isn't it wildly classist to so patly assume that attitudes are that transmissible?
My great grandfather had like 10 siblings and worked on a farm. What's that tell you about me?
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#23I (and I'm sure others) call this the idiocracy bias. While your friends are mulling over the ideal age and economic circumstances to have children, there are plenty of other families not thinking about this. They're having kids in their late teens and early twenties. That doesn't mean we're doomed to live out the idiocracy future, but it explains this blog post.
If that were the case, then the demographics data would not show a major shift. It would just bias of a relatively small group. However, demographic data clearly shows a trend over the past several decades. Look up "Mean Age of New Mother" statistics. E.g. here's data from the US: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db232.pdf It's more dramatic if you extend the data back to the 70's. You can see the same trend…
I don't think mean is a good measurement for this. It's probably also being skewed by new science and treatments enabling more mothers to have children in their mid 40's. I want to see distributions!
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely, but for some reason pointing this out is considered massively classist in some quarters. I don't really think it's classist to say that if people who don't value science, think climate change is fake, fear outsiders, etc. have 6 kids, and people who hold different have 1 or none, it will have a large impact on public policy in a generation.
You see, the thing is, it's deeply classist. It's also misplaced outrage. The poors have been doing this for millenia and we still have a society that progresses rapidly and much of the heavy lifting that moves us forward is done by folks you and others here are denigrating. If they believe the things you disparage it's because the governments and systems that the "smart" and wealthy have created have utterly failed…
> If they believe the things you disparage it's because the governments and systems that the "smart" and wealthy have created have utterly failed at getting those people educated and involved.
I think the issue is that there are two groups of smart & wealthy people.
There's a mid-level of people who are happy to have more than they need and don't have the Machiavellian drive to extract every last ounce of money and power.
And there's an upper-level who are fine exploiting anyone and everything.
There are of course altruistic people who are extremely wealthy. But sort of by definition, the middle-level is never going to have the drive & energy to fight that upper-level, who's willing to do anything.
I guess my point is that there are two groups of smart & wealthy people, and the ones complaining about the lower class being exploited are not the ones who are doing the exploiting. It's a classic setup where the upper class keeps the middle class happy enough to not make it worth the middle class joining the lower class in revolution. And they aim the ire of the lower class at the middle class while they exploit the lower class.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely, but for some reason pointing this out is considered massively classist in some quarters. I don't really think it's classist to say that if people who don't value science, think climate change is fake, fear outsiders, etc. have 6 kids, and people who hold different have 1 or none, it will have a large impact on public policy in a generation.
Pointing out differences in age of first child for different groups (race, class, etc.) is not necessarily classist. It's the part that so often comes next, "therefore, we should..." that causes offense. Anyway, what's wrong with having 6 kids? People used to do it all the time and society was fine. Why shouldn't we set up our society in a way that allows this as a reasonable possibility?
Because of ecological overshoot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot), which is a real problem (https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/earth-overshoot-da....). Gradual population decline through declining birth rates is the least jarring and least fascist way of getting human population down to sustainable levels.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#26I (and I'm sure others) call this the idiocracy bias. While your friends are mulling over the ideal age and economic circumstances to have children, there are plenty of other families not thinking about this. They're having kids in their late teens and early twenties. That doesn't mean we're doomed to live out the idiocracy future, but it explains this blog post.
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." - Jesus
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Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#27If you haven't read the article, it's about how people having kids later means you won't meet your great grandparents. My mom had me when she was 23, and her mom had her at 22. I'm in my forties and still have two living grandparents, and am very grateful for them. I remember a lot of days where my grandmother watched me and my sister, and she was able to do that because she was only in her late 40's herself and plen…
I got fairly unlucky in the great grandparent department. My grandmother had my mom at 15, and my mom had me at 19, and all my great grandparents were already dead!
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#28My wife is only a few years younger than I am, but she still has all of her grandparents. They are around age 80. I didn't have my first child until I was almost 40, and my grandmother on my father's side died the week we were going to tell everyone that we were having a kid. My other three grandparents all died in the 1990's. Also, many of my cousins had kids before they were 20, some of them became grandparents bef…
Some of my high school friends (a married couple, for the obvious reason) were grandparents before I had my first child. The great grandmother in this story was 50. Getting knocked up at 17 runs in families. I just checked the CDC stats and Oklahoma still has the 2nd-lowest age of mother at first birth for non-Hispanic whites, which is because that state has way too many churches and nowhere near enough sex education in schools.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#29> this source for example claims global life expectancy jumped from around 47 to 72 from 1950 to 2022
I believe this is because of reductions in child mortality more than increases in adult lifespan. So it doesn't affect the number of great grandmothers that much.
Having kids older is definitely a big change for society and individual families, though. Every day as a parent I wish I was 15 years younger and my parents were too. It would be a huge difference in our energy levels and that's so important when you're hanging out with young kids. And it's 15 years less time that we will be able to spend together with our kids.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#30If you haven't read the article, it's about how people having kids later means you won't meet your great grandparents. My mom had me when she was 23, and her mom had her at 22. I'm in my forties and still have two living grandparents, and am very grateful for them. I remember a lot of days where my grandmother watched me and my sister, and she was able to do that because she was only in her late 40's herself and plen…
My family has really long generations. Going back 7 generations for me patrilinearly is exactly 280 years; 40 years per generation. When I was young my grandparents were already in their 80s and both grandfathers gone before I was 14. Sadly, both had mental decline (stroke, Alzheimers) and I never knew them in their right mind. They'd be in their 110s today. The idea of knowing my great-grandparents, who would be in…
Same.
When my were in school and had friends who were visiting great-grandparents in nursing homes (and in one instance great-great), I had to explain that my great-grandfather was a Civil War veteran, and that I'd only met my grandfather (who worked as a sharecropper alongside freed slaves and the children of freed slaves on my great-grandfather's farm) once. One of those children lived behind us when I was growing up, and if I'd paid better attention when helping him with his garden would have taught me how to plant by the moon and stars --- he did teach me how to gut and skin a squirrel.