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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

#391

Post by resource_waste »

jzb wrote: post #381
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 weirds me out a lot when people talk about parenting and family planning like this. Like, having kids should be planned around strategically based on factors like "are my parents young enough to be supplemental child care" over "do I have the mental and financial readiness to be responsible for raising a human being? And do I even want to do that?" If people want earlier parenting, then create a society that suppo…

>"are my parents young enough to be supplemental child care"

My first kid(late 20s) didn't get my parents watching the kid because they were working.

My next 3 kids (early 30s) got grandparents attention because they were retired.

Although I feel like the baby/kid thing has lost its magic on the grandparents. But on the flip side, the kids are basically old enough to take care of themselves(4+ yr old).

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#392

Post by DHPersonal »

rendang wrote: post #388
jzb wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It weirds me out a lot when people talk about parenting and family planning like this. Like, having kids should be planned around strategically based on factors like "are my parents young enough to be supplemental child care" over "do I have the mental and financial readiness to be responsible for raising a human being? And do I even want to do that?" If people want earlier parenting, then create a society that suppo…

Do you have evidence for the second paragraph? The wealthiest countries are generally those with lower birth rates, although the very lowest fertility is in upper-middle income regions like Eastern Europe and E Asia

Sweden doesn't have exactly the things that was mentioned, but it is far more supportive of parents than the United States: https://www.norden.org/en/info-norden/parental-benefit-swede...

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#393

Post by arkey »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #324
tuatoru wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (lack of) social prestige for pregnancy and motherhood among UMC women is a bigger factor. Women have been indoctrinated to place career first and only. Try saying "soccer mom" with an admiring tone instead of a sneer if you want to understand this.

Is it possible women could want financial independence without being indoctrinated? Or are they incapable of desiring power over their own lives, perhaps unlike men?

Independence is cool and all that, but I'd rather go with the teamwork of marriage and family.

Power over their own lives... well, I'd say both men and women give it up in marriage, at least in a functioning, idealistic one.

If you want absolute power over your own life, and your goal in life is financial independence, that's okay, but maybe marriage and family is not for you.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#394

Post by lotsofpulp »

carlosjobim wrote: post #367
lotsofpulp wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible women could want financial independence without being indoctrinated? Or are they incapable of desiring power over their own lives, perhaps unlike men?

Of course a lot of people would like financial independence. Young working women (and men) of today normally have almost no financial independence, because they are indebted or renters. They have to work a salary job or be out on the streets. A stay at home mother in the past with a part time job had much more financial independence together with her husband than most working young people have today, even though they…

> Young working women (and men) of today normally have almost no financial independence,

A greater proportion of women today have more financial independence than they have ever had in the past.

> A stay at home mother in the past with a part time job had much more financial independence together with her husband

This is financial dependence, not independence.

> Basically the current elderly generation used indoctrination to turn their children into serfs in some kind of foolish attempt to end humanity.

Nonsense. I imagine it is pretty insulting for a woman to read that they could only be capable of wanting control of their own lives if they were fooled into it.

> Also to remember is that traditionally in most cultures, the wife in the family controlled the household's finances.

Also nonsense. In almost every culture, for almost all of time, women did not have power over the family’s assets, much less the ability to earn enough to power a family. They were and are literally married off because they were liabilities. Inheritances passed down to sons instead of daughters. And umpteen other examples.

This is ignoring that even with legal/social mechanisms that provide women equal access to power as men, biology throws them a curveball every month with the effects of menstruation cycles and the effects and risks of pregnancy/childbirth.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#395

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

skulk wrote: post #245
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ge…

How does your second paragraph ("they design") not directly fly in the face of your first ("mistake this for an active, purposeful goal")?

Because the two aren't connected. They do want to design school curricula... "to make it better". But they're neither smart enough nor quite so self-aware that it's designed to deliberately lower fertility rates. One might say they're doing it subconsciously, but that seems more like mumbo jumbo to me.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#396

Post by dr-detroit »

circlefavshape wrote: post #347
rayiner wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It’s just something old white guys said in the 1960s without support Oh please. You think the nature versus nurture argument was invented in the 60s? You think that a pop psych article from a behavioral geneticist is the last word in the matter?

[dead]

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#397

Post by jncfhnb »

ako wrote: post #285
jncfhnb wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure the probability of making it to adulthood has never been below 50% excluding war, plague, or famine (which were common, so hard to normalize)

Wikipedia seems to suggest you might be wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_over... For example, for Ancient Rome it says “ while the ~50% reaching age 10 could expect another 40 years of life”.

Hmm I’m surprised.

But if 50% reaches an average age of, say 2, assuming it’s right skewed for those who died before 10; then an average life expectancy of 50 for the remainder means the average life expectancy overall just 26. That squares with the numbers stated I suppose.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#398

Post by ajmurmann »

082349872349872 wrote: post #328
ajmurmann wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, what I took away from Zweig is that 19 yo men were very much interested in 19 yo women, but (although some were for rent) they couldn't successfully date them due to competition from men "of substance". EDIT: hmm, was it really a change in mores, or did WWI just kill off enough 20-40 yos to reset this dynamic?

Isn't that how it was in the Mutzenbacher as well? I mostly recall her having sex with much older men even before she enters prostitution

I wonder how much this change was due to the modern idea of romantic love taking over rather than older men becoming unavailable

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#399

Post by latexr »

hateful wrote: post #373

I've always had this weird thought - that doesn't really pass the ethics test, but here it is anyway. I was raised by my grandmother - let's just say my parents were not ready. And I know a lot of parents that want their kids to have kids but the kids aren't ready. What if it would become the norm for Grandparents to raise the children? That way the second generation can focus on their careers, etc and the first gene…

> The whole point is that this happens all the time

What happens all the time is an adult raising their our children and then later on raising their grandchildren. But what you’re suggesting is having old people with zero experience raising anyone taking care of their grandchildren. I don’t quite see that as a clearcut case of success.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#400

Post by helpfulmandrill »

arkey wrote: post #354
helpfulmandrill wrote: post #352

I wish I lived in a society where I could have a kid at 25 rather than 35 without messing up my life. I feel like we ignore how nice it must be to have another 10 years with your parents in your life.

Why can't you have a kid at 25 without messing up your life? Some people do.

That deadline has passed, but I was living in a one bedroom flat making no money at all at 25, as were most of my friends.
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