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The window for great-grandmothers is closing

memoirsandrambles.substack.com

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Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#71

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

CalRobert wrote: post #3
binarymax wrote: post #2

I (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.

If you don't have children who will live in the future world, why would you deserve an opinion on how that future world should operate?

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#72

Post by keybored »

CalRobert wrote: post #3
binarymax wrote: post #2

I (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.

> 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.

“Classist” is a faux-woke term for the belief that certain socioeconomic groups are better than others. If you believe that certain socioeconomic groups are inferior compared to [probably upper-middle class people] then that is by definition classist.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#73

Post by jobigoud »

modeless wrote: post #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 parent…

When kids die as infants they don't have time to have any meaningful interactions with their great-grand parents so the point of the article still stands somewhat. The age of great-grandmothers is low infant mortality + parents making kids early.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#74

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

anonym29 wrote: post #60
titzer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A vast supermajority of the entire inhabited human planet is so far below replacement-level fertility that human extinction is now closer than the ice caps being completely 100% melted. This has been the case for several years and is a trend that still accelerating. Fun fact: human fertility per person is shrinking faster than GHG emissions per person are growing. Even with a handful of countries still breeding like…

> This has been the case for several years and is a trend that still accelerating.

Of course it will continue to accelerate. There's a mechanism that causes this. Some conspiracy theorists mistake this for an active, purposeful goal, but it may be as simple as children growing up in environments where childlessness has become a norm, internalizing that same norm. Since there are fewer children with each successive generation, the norm is amplified for the next.

> In order for humanity to be able to run, we need to not kill it right after it started crawling.

There are some who seem to want to kill humanity. They don't come right out and say it, of course, that would sound weird and awkward. If you're oblivious to that widespread sentiment, they're perfectly ok with that. The curricula they design for your children in school will slowly be modified so that they aren't quite so fond of your Star Trek visions for the future.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#75

Post by modeless »

jobigoud wrote: post #73
modeless wrote: post #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 parent…

When kids die as infants they don't have time to have any meaningful interactions with their great-grand parents so the point of the article still stands somewhat. The age of great-grandmothers is low infant mortality + parents making kids early.

People had more kids (and then some) to compensate for the infant mortality, so I don't think it reduced the number of great grandmothers much.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#76

Post by voisin »

With the economy as it is, grandparents tend to work longer and both work, so the early retirement and single-wage of yesteryear are largely gone. This trend seems to be increasing. The value of intergenerational bonds and knowledge transfer will be lost as a result.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#77

Post by vel0city »

psychoslave wrote: post #52
vel0city wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be pretty radically different from your grandparents, outliers always exist, nobody's futures are truly written in stone. But what percentage of your distant cousins are more like your great grandparents?

You don’t need to wait the answer to take into account that they most likely aren’t farmer for most of them. Though of course it doesn’t mean they all topped the social pyramid as it is by definition structurally unclimbable for most with its power distribution.

"More like" not "exactly like". I'm not expecting them to all be farmers. But say, having similar-ish religious views, similar-ish social views, etc.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#78

Post by kelipso »

parpfish wrote: post #51
vel0city wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the big households I've personally experienced that most would consider closed-minded parents might have a few of their kids complaining about the backwards views, but not necessarily the majority of the kids. I'd be interested in seeing some actual statistics other than assuming the people ranting on reddit about their families are the majority of that population. The kids who agree with their closed-minded paren…

yeah, that's why i said it wasn't a representative sample. the subreddit threads don't prove that these views are a majority, just that they are a non-zero proportion.

But then you say "children raised in big families by uneducated, closed-minded parents often rebel against their parents and espouse different views". So non-zero proportion becomes often...

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#79

Post by psychoslave »

vel0city wrote: post #77
psychoslave wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need to wait the answer to take into account that they most likely aren’t farmer for most of them. Though of course it doesn’t mean they all topped the social pyramid as it is by definition structurally unclimbable for most with its power distribution.

"More like" not "exactly like". I'm not expecting them to all be farmers. But say, having similar-ish religious views, similar-ish social views, etc.

And how should we measure that?

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#80

Post by coffeebeqn »

earthscienceman wrote: post #10
CalRobert wrote: post #3

Earlier 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…

The idiocracy thesis supposes that children will mirror their parents behavior and beliefs. As a former teenager and a parent that is very much not the likeliest outcome. It’s also on the wider society to lift all the kids to roughly a level playing field
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