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The window for great-grandmothers is closing

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Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#291

Post by afavour »

jimbokun wrote: post #262
Afton wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child. I'll leave it to my children on how it turned out in my 30s. Generally I'd expect older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally regulate, which is a really critical ability when dealing with the 4th day of 3 hours of sleep and a colicky baby (for example). Also no point. But…

Interesting how until recently people in their early 20s were perfectly capable of raising children, but today they’re not.

I don’t think anyone really thinks that. The vast majority of people in their 20s are perfectly capable of raising children, it’s just not desirable.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing (why not spend your 20s exploring?) but it’s also easily explained by financial burdens that didn’t used to exist. Housing is now very expensive, can you blame people waiting until they have the right size home before they have kids?

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#292

Post by gleenn »

CalRobert wrote: post #8

If 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…

It would be nice if our life expectancy got longer at the same pace (instead of doing exactly the opposite).

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#293

Post by ajmurmann »

selimthegrim wrote: post #185
082349872349872 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the line I've been able (most just showed up in the New World from somewhere or other...) to trace back to 7 generations, it was a little less, but they were in the colonies before the US was a thing, so more than 35, less than 40 years per generation? My wife can go back 7 as well, and her family has also tended towards high parental investment in offspring; next time I'm in the cellar I'll have to check but I'd…

I am shocked, shocked that Josephine Mutzenbacher didn’t reflect reality

Wait, given the age differences described here, the book very much reflected reality, no?

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#294

Post by ajmurmann »

vidarh wrote: post #242
angarg12 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wording here is a bit odd, almost like blaming people for delaying childbearing. The world is complicated and a number of factors have produced this outcome in the developed world. My parents were factory workers and they encouraged me to study a university degree as a sure way to a successful career. I finished my degree well into my 20s, but then the economic collapse of 2008 happened and I spent several years…

It's not that it has gotten harder to have kids, but that people come to expect and want to provide more. I had a perfectly decent living standard growing up, but I also remember very clearly in retrospect the economic uncertainty and the things my parents did to save money, and no uncertainty I've faced has been anywhere near that. Of course it's not like that for everyone, but overall, living standards are up massi…

I wonder if other parents waiting till they can offer the kids more creates pressure. Not only on the parents but the kids as well. I frequently couldn't get what I wanted as a kid, but that was the norm and in fact several kids I went to school with were clearly poorer. However, if I look at kids around me today, they have seemingly everything they could want. If I imagined the majority of the kids around me had had as much stuff, fancy vacations, expensive after-school activities etc. and I had what I had in actuality I would have felt much poorer. Just the after-school activities alone would ruin everything. My friends and family's kids now are always out at clubs and classes and that's where they see their friends. This would put poorer kids at a disadvantage.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#295

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

analyte123 wrote: post #102
titzer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted links because I've had this conversation many times over. The short version is: yeah, I used to be a techno-utopian too, 20 years ago. But none of those magic technologies are realistic, we aren't on the path to them being widely deployed, the population and emissions and resource consumption are all worse, as summarized in the conclusions of the experts who put together the Earth Overshoot Day report. If yo…

It's estimated that green ammonia costs between $800 and $1500 per ton today to produce [1]. While this is higher than conventional ammonia, it is less than how much ammonia cost in the 2022 energy crisis [2] and likely to decrease further in the future. Massive amounts of nitrogen fertilizer are wasted because it's so cheap [3]. There's headroom for bringing back crop rotation of nitrogen-fixing crops. Nitrogen-fixi…

Anybody who argues that "we're all going to die" is, from where I sit, clearly delusional.

So that's not really a problem worth refuting.

On the other hand, hundreds of millions of people dying, 10s of millions of species going extinct, massive migration causing chaos in our current understanding of "nation states", sea level rise causing the abandonment and destruction of many of the world's great cities ... these are actual likely problems. The human race will still exist in the face of them, but what will be lost?

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#296

Post by kingkawn »

Afton wrote: post #90
CalRobert wrote: post #8

If 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…

The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child. I'll leave it to my children on how it turned out in my 30s. Generally I'd expect older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally regulate, which is a really critical ability when dealing with the 4th day of 3 hours of sleep and a colicky baby (for example). Also no point. But…

It is arguable that the increased emotional regulation of older parents is responsible for the higher incidence of adhd as the kids have to fill the emotional void

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#297

Post by rglullis »

shiroiushi wrote: post #282
Afton wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child. I'll leave it to my children on how it turned out in my 30s. Generally I'd expect older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally regulate, which is a really critical ability when dealing with the 4th day of 3 hours of sleep and a colicky baby (for example). Also no point. But…

>The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child. ... Generally I'd expect older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally regulate,... This is exactly why I don't think anyone should have children until they're at least 50 years old, and better yet 75-100. We just need to solve this "aging" disease problem first. 20-somethi…

And somehow we've done it through hundreds of generations.

> just need to solve this "aging" disease.

Oh, please stop. This is the rhetoric of stunted men with Peter Pan syndrome. If you are too scared to face this type of responsibility, plenty of other men rose to the occasion just fine.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#298

Post by jd3 »

CalRobert wrote: post #8

If 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'm in my late 20s, but my mom had me when she was 42. My Dad's father died 32 years before I was born and my Mom's father died 22 years before I was born, so I've always wondered what it must have been like to grow up with grandfathers, let alone great grandfathers or grandmothers.

On the plus side, in the early 60s, my recently windowed grandmother put herself through night school while raising 4 teenage kids, one of whom eventually worked on the national security council and traveled the world; all these years later, I still wonder how she managed it all without having a nervous breakdown. Life is strange like that, sometimes.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#299

Post by gr8r »

gr8_commission wrote: post #277

When I was about 16 years old it became my life dream to get married young and to have kids young. My inspiring thought was that I could be a young grandparent and that my kids would be able to know their parents for a long time as well as their grandparents and great grandparents. I did get married at 19 and had my first son at 20. 3 years later I had my daughter. 5 months into my daughters life, the kids mother lef…

Thanks for sharing. On a tangent...

> I was very adamant on promoting young marriage/childbearing to others. In a perfect world I still think it's a good idea... ... Life is so unique and never goes according to plan ... rushing anything with anyone until they're absolutely sure and have a good plan in place

Among other reasons, social media can suddenly change a person in very unexpected ways at an unexpected pace.

Ppl are more connected to the infinite-scroll than ever before, more than to other ppl around them. It is no longer even our friends we watch and envy - its all "influencer" content.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#300

Post by shiroiushi »

rglullis wrote: post #297
shiroiushi wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child. ... Generally I'd expect older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally regulate,... This is exactly why I don't think anyone should have children until they're at least 50 years old, and better yet 75-100. We just need to solve this "aging" disease problem first. 20-somethi…

And somehow we've done it through hundreds of generations. > just need to solve this "aging" disease. Oh, please stop. This is the rhetoric of stunted men with Peter Pan syndrome. If you are too scared to face this type of responsibility, plenty of other men rose to the occasion just fine.

>If you are too scared to face this type of responsibility, plenty of other men rose to the occasion just fine.

According to the most recent fertility statistics, they're not.

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