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The window for great-grandmothers is closing

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411–420 of 494 posts

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#411
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The notion that parents have much to do with how kids turn out is a myth. This is honestly fascinating. It's obviously not true, just by taking into account the consequences of it being actually true. Am I missing something? The study says, at some point "We would essentially be the same person if we had been adopted at birth and raised in a different family.". Are they limiting this to the genetic composition of a…

> "We would essentially be the same person if we had been adopted at birth and raised in a different family.".

If you look at twins that are raised apart this is freakishly true. Twins raised apart have outcomes that are far closer than 2 unrelated kids raised together.

> And what about all the studies about the consequences of father absence?

If you look at children with an absent father vs children with a dead father you find that 80% of the effect disappears in the second group. And that still doesn't entirely eliminate the genetic component because genes influence behavior that can lead to death. This strongly suggests that sharing genes with a deadbeat dad is worse for you than not being raised by a father.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#412
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apologies, I probably misunderstood your comment and I'm sorry if you missed out on something you hoped for.

I agree, today's society in many places can make it very hard for young people to start a family.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#413
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The notion that parents have much to do with how kids turn out is a myth. This is honestly fascinating. It's obviously not true, just by taking into account the consequences of it being actually true. Am I missing something? The study says, at some point "We would essentially be the same person if we had been adopted at birth and raised in a different family.". Are they limiting this to the genetic composition of a…

> "We would essentially be the same person if we had been adopted at birth and raised in a different family.". If you look at twins that are raised apart this is freakishly true. Twins raised apart have outcomes that are far closer than 2 unrelated kids raised together. > And what about all the studies about the consequences of father absence? If you look at children with an absent father vs children with a dead fath…

> This strongly suggests that sharing genes with a deadbeat dad is worse for you than not being raised by a father.

I find that the implications of this being true are very troubling.

Maybe you could attribute the outcomes to the difference between your father abandoning you vs. your father unfortunately passing away? I'm sure both cases would have different effects on a person.

I have the hope that someone with a deadbeat dad being adopted by a caring family will have a better prospect than someone thrown into the system.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#414

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…

Here in NL it is quite common for grandparents to help parents out with day care on their workdays. School pickup is rife with grandparents…

yeah this is also fairly common in many East and South-Asian countries. In countries like China, many people leave their children behind in the village with the grandparents, while they go work in the cities.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#415
post #399

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.

Zero? Doesn't seem a very good faith assessment of the concept proposed.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#416
post #378

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…

Even leaving aside the ethics (which...yikes) I think this kind of falls down, logically. Parents want to become grandparents after having the experience of being parents. If you cut the "being parents" out of that cycle, why would you even want grand kids? And having been parents prepares grandparents to step in if needed. If you skip the parenting step, why would they be any better at it just because they're 20 yea…

what are your ethical qualms?

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#417
The framing of this essay bothers me, because it suggests that losing great-grandmothers is a bad thing.

But why can't we focus on the enormous positive effect of girls having the option to fully mature into women before bearing their children?

Maybe instead of focusing what we lose with the absence of great-grandmothers, we should focus on what we gain with the decline of girl-mothers.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#418
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 2100 Too bad hundreds of thousands of species are going to have gone extinct by then. Hope we don't kill the wrong ones. Just a sidenote, I know.

question for you: how many species have already gone extinct without us really noticing because the impact on humanity was too small to measure? 100,000? 1,000,000? 10,000,000?

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indoctrin…

> This is financial dependence, not independence.

Do you really think that somebody who owns their own house and has supplementary income is less independent than somebody who works full time and owns nothing? The first has the option to stop working, the second will be out on the streets if they do.

> 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.

Both women and men, and yes, the indoctrination is massive to convince the young generations that they want to work full time at an extremely elevated productivity and still not afford to own their homes to have families.

> 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.

Then you are ignorant of history regarding this, which is your problem and not mine. I trust that you will deny this even if you read about it and find out. Just say "Nonsense!" and shut it out.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is due to those Indian women not having the opportunity to earn money. If you look at American women who are children of Indian immigrants, the rate is much higher, because women have a far easier time obtaining higher income jobs in the US (or UK/Aus/Can/other developed countries). But that is rapidly changing amongst the upper classes in India too, almost everyone will support their daughter to get as good of an…

Children of immigrants rapidly absorb the core culture of their new country. Especially when in grants them greater independence. The upper classes in India are a rounding error, maybe the population of Spain at most. Edit: you are right that it's a trade-off. In Bangladesh keeping women at home may mean starvation, so they are grudgingly allowed to work.

28% of Indian students are enrolled in higher education. The gender split is 52:48 in favor of males.[1] For the US those numbers are 39% and 45:55 (more women than men).[2] Since they're from different sources the participation rates might not be directly comparable shrug but the gender stats should still be applicable.

At least going by that, there doesn't appear to be a great deal of "lock your girls and women away" going on over in India.

1. https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/news/i...

2. https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-enrollment-sta...

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