Earlier quoted context omitted.
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What a rude and deliberately-ignorant way to choose to reply.
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Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
101–110 of 1001 posts
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, nevermind the most expensive housing, education and healthcare ever, even in inflation adjusted terms. No it’s the children who are wrong. you might look at the birth rates in china or almost any other Asian country, and see how your vague rant holds up.
Let’s be a little charitable here- having and raising children has been a much, much more dangerous proposition health wise even at your parents generation to say nothing of your grandparents generation.
There’s not a lot to be charitable about in the parent comment. Some poorly researched race replacement bs?
You personally are right, it has never been safer health wise to have children. It has never been more expensive either, win some, lose some.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#103Betteridge’s Law says no, it is not reshaping the experience of childhood. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headline...
This is one area where it's wrong. Instead of having 10 or more cousins...it's now common for kids to have 0 or close to it. My kid doesn't know what a cousin is. Kinda bonkers.
The headline didn’t say “reshaping the cousin experience”. It said “childhood”. Unless we’re ready to say any change is dramatic, this is the type of unprovable puffery in a headline that Betteridge’s Law was made for.
FWIW, it’s true of my kids too. But growing up, my cousins were in a different country and I wasn’t close. So my kids didn’t have an experience much different than mine.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#104My father is 14 years younger than the next oldest sibling. My mother is 12 years younger than the next oldest sibling. Because of this my cousins were all much older than me and not people I interacted with. My little brother, my only sibling, is 14 years younger than me. My oldest is 11 and by the time my brother does have kids, if he has kids, my children will be probably be close to adults.
Fortunately my ex-wife has a lot of cousins she is close to and her sister has a daughter right in the middle of my 2 kids so they have 1 first cousin they are very close with but they have no interactions with second cousins outside of seeing them every few years at holidays.
Regardless, having no real interaction with my cousins growing up, I can't say if my life would have been better if I had.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think that is? People waiting I mean
Increasingly people feel pressure or obligation to go to college and spend their 20s getting established in a career. By the time they feel ready to have kids it's more likely they'll have trouble.
I don’t think they are mistaken though? Housing and childcare are multiples more expensive than a generation ago, makes sense people need to feel established.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#106Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Biological organisms not procreating despite living in material and caloric abundance is cosmically weird.
Evolution has equipped us with a pretty generous frontal cortex so we have a sort of escape hatch to reflect and decide on whether to act on our biological imperatives. Reduction of human beings to 'biological organisms' as if we're humping rabbits is no less weird.
Does it not strike you as strange though that so many different nations / cultures are all seeing the same downward trend at the same time? There is something about it that feels like a biological imperative.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It goes hand in hand with urbanization Haredi/Hasidic/ultra-Orthodox Jews are an interesting exception to that – a predominantly urban/suburban subculture sustaining a high TFR (over 6 in Israel). A stringent religious doctrine which promotes large families may be the only thing which can overcome urbanization's encouragement of lower TFRs. In the long-long-long term, it is possible (not certain) that subcultures w…
I can only speculate of course, but I think something that'd increase birthrates in urbanized society would "simply" be arranging things such that raising a family isn't so exclusionary. In a developed society, people are more likely to have many things they want to pursue and achieve, and due to various factors (financial and otherwise), having kids usually entails giving up on most or all of that. That probably see…
> I think something that'd increase birthrates in urbanized society would "simply" be arranging things such that raising a family isn't so exclusionary.
There's only so much you can do. You can introduce as much subsidised childcare, parental leave, flexible working conditions, free higher education, etc, policies as you like – those things can alleviate the disadvantage to other life goals of having kids, but are unlikely to ever be able to reduce it to a level at which it ceases to be significant.
Then, there is what some rich people do, outsourcing the rearing of their children to nannies, tutors and boarding schools, such that they rarely see them – but, that's not a recipe for raising well-adjusted kids, and economically is unlikely to be scalable beyond a very small rich minority
I think it is inevitable that cultures in which reproducing is just one option on the menu are always going to have significantly lower TFR than those in which reproducing is viewed as a religious duty, with those who reject it risking ostracism in this life, and the threat of punishment in the next
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#109You're baffled people aren't having kids? What bubble do you live in? People straight up can't afford housing much less children. The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now. Edit: the replies - y'all are out of touch. Visit an average family in the Midwest with a household income of < $100k/yr that doesn't own a home yet.
Have you noticed that much, much poorer places often have a much higher birth rate? I think there is something else going on. And I mean poorer in terms of actual living conditions on the ground.
Poorer places haven't financialized housing usually.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#110You're baffled people aren't having kids? What bubble do you live in? People straight up can't afford housing much less children. The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now. Edit: the replies - y'all are out of touch. Visit an average family in the Midwest with a household income of < $100k/yr that doesn't own a home yet.
I'm baffled my peers , who absolutely could afford to, still have no interest. These are people making 150-200k (and at my prior job, 200-400k).