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The death of partying in the USA

derekthompson.org

71–80 of 756 posts

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#71

Does anyone know why "Hours spent in childcare" started skyrocketing in the 1990s? Here is the graph from the article: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2g7_!,w_1456,c_limit...

Off the cuff that coincides pretty well with the rise of “helicopter parenting” and “tiger mom” trends.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#72

Partying is more expensive than watching TV or playing games.

I was going to disagree but then realized I now shell out at least $100 when two families and their kids show up for 3-4 pizzas with toppings and chips and dip and some juices.

And god forbid I try and provide fresh fruit and beverages on that budget…

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#73
post #2

With COVID partying meant that someone could kill you with an illness. That's a pretty hard lesson to unlearn. They carries a lot of momentum. Like with World Wars there's been a generational impact that changed how people relate to one another. The tribal momentum, of one monkey teaching the next, gets lost.

>With COVID partying meant that someone could kill you with an illness. Given the mortality rate for people typically in the partying age group (and especially those under 30), you were more likely to die in a traffic accident on your way to or back from the party, or from alcohol poisoning, than from a case of COVID acquired there. Let's not exaggerate. From the NIH: The median IFR for COVID based on age groups: 0.0…

Some people didn't want to get it even if they were guaranteed to survive, because they could pass it to others who were more vulnerable to it.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#74
post #6

The parental part bears special mention. My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list whe…

Often the kids like to play together, but the parents are the ones that are just... weird and asocial. I hate to bring agism into this, but there definitely seems to be a generational gap with the adults. Some of my kid's friends are raised by their parents, and others are (apparently) raised primarily by grandparents. When my kid wants to get together with friends whose (50-60 year old) grandparents bring them by, t…

I’ll endorse this heavily.

We bought into a nice suburban community. Good schools, low crime, the dream.

No one knows any neighbors. Kids rarely play with one another intra-neighborhood despite a very healthy blend of age ranges. In fact, I’ve loosely associate with exactly one neighbor in the three years. We went out of our way to try and meet neighbors our first month. Most treated us as if we head too many heads on our shoulders.

Despite a heavy presence of children, no one here celebrate Halloween despite it being a beloved night growing up around here. Our first year we invested heavily in decorations and spent hundreds on the King size candy bars.

Society feels… dead compared to me as an early 90s child.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#75
post #6

The parental part bears special mention. My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list whe…

Same, it’s really disappointing how few parents have reached out to play compared to how often I am trying to find one of my kids’ friends who is around to play.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#76
post #51
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened is that everything turned into playdates? When we were kids, the general direction was GTFO, and don't be late for dinner. Who did you go play with? Whoever was at the park. When you got older, you hopefully had access to the skating rink. Or maybe a bowling alley. Before that, kickball at the park. Pretty much every day. Maybe see if you can over shoot the swing again.

Totally valid observation, but things definitely changed. Neighbors don't know each other as well, so the grandma keeping an eye out the back window doesn't exist anymore. It was a village watching the kids before, its not that way now.

I suspect they didn't know each other that well back in the day, either. We just tell ourselves that they did. When we've lived in apartment complexes, as an easy example, there were a lot of people we didn't know. We just also got to know a few that we would see on a regular basis, as well.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#77
post #28

This article isn’t wrong, but it neglects to mention real estate, transportation, and lodging. A party needs a venue, and it needs guests. And the guests need a way to get to and from the venue. If they stay a long time, they need a place to sleep. People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. It’s kind of hard to throw a big party witho…

> Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. About 2/3 of households in the US own the home they live in. Renting is the minority, not the majority.

Thank you for mentioning this! There's this weird, persistent meme that large corporations are buying up all the housing and nobody owns homes anymore, which is fundamentally not supported by the data.

There are shifting trends in generational home ownership rates, but these are still just initial trends we're seeing. If you look at the data [0] owner occupied has gone down from the 2000s housing bubble, but in the grand scheme of things is not even particularly low.

People also have this mistaken belief that investors like Black Rock are buying up huge swaths of property, when in reality most "investment" properties are bought by families and individuals, consider anyone who know who owns an AirBNB rental or other rental property, they would be considered "investors".

Most Americans still live in a house, and own that house (or at least, some member of their household owns it).

0. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#78
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents just want to watch their Internet content and it's easier to just stick their kids in front of a video game or computer vs having an event that requires parenting. At least when parents are addicted to alcohol they can still be social and function as parents. Not so with Instagram/tiktok.

Oh that rings true and it's so depressive. But I think it has more to do with this notion that everything you do socially is awkward in some degree and could be seeing as bad or hurtful, smartphones didn't help us there with the chance of becoming the next national meme just a tiktok away. Also social interactions nowadays have become so "one of a kind" and disconnected from a general contract that sometimes it's har…

I think there's something to the notion that everything has to be overproduced now. The technology aspect is part of this (you have more tools to make events 'better', so if you don't you might look bad), and so is the culture of making things safer (and so necessitates more organization, more formalization). People get burned out easily and drop out from it.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#79
post #6

The parental part bears special mention. My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list whe…

>I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents Yeah if i was a kid i'd be mortified at having to do this.

My kids would totally be up for this. I don't have business cards though

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#80
post #6

The parental part bears special mention. My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list whe…

I wonder how much of this comes down to wage stagnation and the need for not only both parents to work, but to work more hours and sometimes multiple jobs, just to keep from drowning. Especially when childcare is so expensive, it's a situation that can compound and spiral.

I wonder how the generation of latchkey kids fared.
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