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The window for great-grandmothers is closing

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Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#471

Post by xotesos »

deergomoo wrote: post #208
zachmu wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the story people tell themselves, but as far as I can tell it's mostly just a story. Kids are resilient and don't need the material wealth college educated people tend to assume they will to have a good childhood. And as for parents, there's really a lot to be said for raising kids while you're young and energetic, it's just easier. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to convey to a childless p…

> The problem is that it's nearly impossible to convey to a childless person how meaningful parenthood will be to their life I 100% believe you, but at the same time there are a lot of us out there that don't feel like we're missing anything of that sort from our lives. On the contrary, if I was to have children, I would have to put a whole lot of faith in my biological wiring for parental love and fulfilment overcom…

IMO the whole idea is basically bullshit when applied to everyone as a blanket statement.

I know I would not be a good parent. I know I would resent the kid. It is bizarre to me too when someone who is married says this. Marriage isn't happening either for me so I 100% would be paying child support to a woman I absolutely resent too.

On the contrary, I think people who have children can not imagine the freedom that you have with never having children after 40. Children cost a fortune in currency and opportunity cost. I don't have to help with home work, pay for someone's college, pretend to have fun at some boring kids baseball game. Most of all though I have to live my dreams myself because there is no kid to live them through instead.

There is simply no way I would have lived the life I have if I had children. The valuation between the two situations isn't even close in my mind. I suspect there is a huge amount of coping and denial on the part of parents because once the kid is on its way, what else are you going to do?

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#472

Post by skulk »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #460
skulk wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they're neither smart enough nor quite so self-aware that it's designed to deliberately lower fertility rates So who's doing this deliberation? Again, you're pointing to a conspiracy but also denying its existence in the same breath.

No, you've confused my words. Happens in threads that stretch past a few hours. There is a desire that humanity go extinct. But this isn't a goal for them, more like a fantasy. They're not actively working towards it, and they don't like to say it out loud. They do design curricula (they're in positions where that's a responsibility, quite often). But they aren't conspiring. They're bumbling towards a doomsday, insti…

Deliciously rich to claim I'm the one stirring shit up while you accuse me of desiring the end of humanity. Get some help man.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#473

Post by lotsofpulp »

somenameforme wrote: post #363
brabel wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to convince my wife to have at least one child, but I'm afraid it's too late already. She's 43. You've just made me think it would be a bad idea anyway at this point :(. Oh well, at least I have many nieces.

I think it's more like start early > start late > start never. There's more hurdles, and less chance of success - but I definitely wouldn't say it's a bad idea. The worst that happens is nothing happens. I sincerely hope you two at least try. Good luck.

> The worst that happens is nothing happens.

The worst thing that happens is the woman or the child suffers complications that result in short term or even life long sacrifices.

Not that it might be 51% or even 11% likely, but the odds certainly go up for a woman, and will likely influence her decision.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#474

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

anonym29 wrote: post #422
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Hundreds of millions of people die from war, and avoiding war is a lot easier than what the (well-meaning) climate change evangelists/zealots want us to do. You don't need to destroy the entire modern economy and western civilization to avoid war. Also, why is it that the people constantly screaming about sea levels rising are the same millionaires and billionaires who own $$$$$ properties in places like Miami or Mar…

Your blithe dismissal of migration seems likely to me to put severely to the test.

According to the US Republican Party, the USA is already suffering from an invasion that is out of control, when climate change has barely gotten started.

What the US can and will do if and when it faces 100M people trying to get north is an open question. The US military will not be able to use ground force to keep out that sort of mass migration. Will it drop bombs on migrating populations? Is that what you call "backbone" ?

Finally, it seems as if you think that having lots of money somehow exempts you from the same cognitive biases as everybody else, as if the behavior of the rich is an indicator of "the smart move". It never has been, and it never will be.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#475

Post by rayiner »

program_whiz wrote: post #349
rayiner wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Sorry to nitpick this, but there is a subtle flaw in this thinking. The main argument of the article is that our experiences in the world (e.g. having a good teacher, getting bullied, parenting, etc) don't account for much difference in our personalities and genetically determined proclivities in the long term. Although the article says only half of personality / psych traits are genetically determined, which is stil…

The other half is mostly unshared environment (peers, etc.) Of course the parents affect both indirectly. But parenting style matters very little compared to genetics and who your kids are around.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#476

Post by somenameforme »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #473
somenameforme wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more like start early > start late > start never. There's more hurdles, and less chance of success - but I definitely wouldn't say it's a bad idea. The worst that happens is nothing happens. I sincerely hope you two at least try. Good luck.

> The worst that happens is nothing happens. The worst thing that happens is the woman or the child suffers complications that result in short term or even life long sacrifices. Not that it might be 51% or even 11% likely, but the odds certainly go up for a woman, and will likely influence her decision.

The risks of childbirth for a healthy woman, even 40+, are negligible. And the worst of issues for the child, like Downs, can be screened for with perfect accuracy. The most difficult part with aging is actually getting to the point of childbirth!

I also would emphasize that it's not like not having a child is without issues. Much of the West, including the US, is already suffering with from increasing isolation, depression, and other such issues. And aging, especially without family, is likely to only exasperate these issues. Friends that will last forever, don't. And it becomes more and more difficult to meet new people as you age. Places like Japan and South Korea may be a foreshadowing of where we're headed, and it's not pretty. See things like kodukushi - lonely deaths. [1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#477

Post by alex_smart »

Great-grandparents? The window for grandparents might be closing! If you have your kids at 35, and your kids have their kids 35, you are 75 by the time the grandchild turns 5. The amount of quality time you might have to spend with your grandchild could be approximately zero (depends of course on your health).

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#478

Post by em-bee »

rayiner wrote: post #475
program_whiz wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to nitpick this, but there is a subtle flaw in this thinking. The main argument of the article is that our experiences in the world (e.g. having a good teacher, getting bullied, parenting, etc) don't account for much difference in our personalities and genetically determined proclivities in the long term. Although the article says only half of personality / psych traits are genetically determined, which is stil…

The other half is mostly unshared environment (peers, etc.) Of course the parents affect both indirectly. But parenting style matters very little compared to genetics and who your kids are around.

wikipedia quotes a study claiming the opposite:

parents differ in their patterns of parenting and that these patterns can have a significant impact on their children's development and well-being

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles

and from my own experience i would concur. parenting styles define the relationship parents have with their kids, and that relationship absolutely matters.

i find it worth considering however that when discussing parenting styles it gives the impression that the chosen style is a deliberate choice that parents can switch around at will, when in reality i believe most parenting styles are defined by circumstances and by the experience of the parents themselves.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#479

Post by program_whiz »

rayiner wrote: post #475
program_whiz wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to nitpick this, but there is a subtle flaw in this thinking. The main argument of the article is that our experiences in the world (e.g. having a good teacher, getting bullied, parenting, etc) don't account for much difference in our personalities and genetically determined proclivities in the long term. Although the article says only half of personality / psych traits are genetically determined, which is stil…

The other half is mostly unshared environment (peers, etc.) Of course the parents affect both indirectly. But parenting style matters very little compared to genetics and who your kids are around.

when people make this argument I think they mean "assuming the person has an approximately normal parenting style". Its a bit like saying the infra doesn't matter, only the app does (assuming the infra is built with best practices for availability and scale). When in reality, its missing the forest for the trees. You're essentially claiming that a parent who neglects feeding a child, drops them repeatedly, and lives in the drug-infested dangerous area of town, abusing drugs and alcohol while pregant "matters very little", when its obviously _the_ defining factor in how this child will grow up.

Your point holds when we assume most parenting styles are roughly equal (but this would also hold for environmental factors and genes, since most of those won't be too drastically different for most people).

Put another way: perhaps the most important factor is the one furthest from the mean. If your genes are basically average but your parents are horrible (abusive, neglectful), you may not live to 12. If parents and genes are average, but your environment is war-torn 3rd world, you may not make it to 12. If your parents and environment are average but your genes are horrible, you may not make it to 12. But its clear all the factors can be extremely important, and the claim of the GP only applies "all else being roughly equal".

Back to the app example: assuming sane infra, yes the app might be "more important" to the business. But if you have an average app, but your infra is terrible (long load times, constant outages, losing data, payment system failures), well, you aren't going to succeed.

Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing

#480

Post by 082349872349872 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #398
082349872349872 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Good question! It's on my slush list, but atm I have a lot of physical things which need to be rearranged at or near the surface of the earth, so unlikely I'll dig into this before it's slid well out of HN's attention span.

> in the Mutzenbacher

Familienname, eh? I've yet to read her, but given her reputation I'm glad that makes at least two of us who are not already per Du.

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