Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
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Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#2Related: The Great Cousin Decline --- https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/12/cousin-re...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38719249 (169 points | 52 days ago | 332 comments)
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#3I have 11 siblings and 75 first cousins. But, we lived thousands of miles away from any of those cousins, so I never got to know them very well and now have no contact with them. In the other hand, my daughter has a single cousin around her same age who lived about three hours away growing up, so they saw each other a few times a year, Now, as adults, even though they live in different countries, they still maintain their friendship and are frequently in contact. Bottom line, you can have a lot of cousins or few, but what matters more is how frequently you see each other.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#4Neither my brother nor my sister has kids.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#5That's an interesting way to say "the West largely stopped breeding a while ago".
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#6The bigger issue is still the age depopulation bomb, which is when retired non-working seniors begin to outnumber working adults. This is made worse by both liberals and conservatives being against immigration.
https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/beware-depopulation-bom...
Yes, the cost of living affects this but even when the economy was great, Canada was already below the 2.1 birthrate in 1972. One explanation is declining male fertility (and yes, they accounted for socioeconomic factors.)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/health/sperm-counts-decline-d...
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#7I have 11 siblings and 75 first cousins. But, we lived thousands of miles away from any of those cousins, so I never got to know them very well and now have no contact with them. In the other hand, my daughter has a single cousin around her same age who lived about three hours away growing up, so they saw each other a few times a year, Now, as adults, even though they live in different countries, they still maintain…
How did your daughter only end up with 1 cousin from your 11 siblings? That's a catastrophically low TFR.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#8I have 11 siblings and 75 first cousins. But, we lived thousands of miles away from any of those cousins, so I never got to know them very well and now have no contact with them. In the other hand, my daughter has a single cousin around her same age who lived about three hours away growing up, so they saw each other a few times a year, Now, as adults, even though they live in different countries, they still maintain…
How did your daughter only end up with 1 cousin from your 11 siblings? That's a catastrophically low TFR.
Few scenarios, could be that they are the oldest and the rest of their siblings aren’t ready to have a family.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#9That's an interesting way to say "the West largely stopped breeding a while ago".
Late stage capitalism driven extinction