Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 1001 posts

Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

#111

Post by vidarh »

bongodongobob wrote: post #75

You'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.

The most consistent predictor of the decline of the birth rate in a society is increased levels of wealth, which indicates it's in no way that simple.

Personally, I think it is that expectations rise, both for your own life and for that of children once your purchasing power increases. It's harder to give it up than to not have it in the first place. Having children increasingly has to compete with a lot of other rewarding things that require far less commitment and far lower costs.

Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

#112

Post by pfannkuchen »

Is it not totally obvious that the low birth rate is directly caused by availability and social acceptance of contraceptives and related technologies?

People didn’t really “choose” to have that many kids in the past. It turns out that even if you don’t really want to have kids, not having sex is a very, very hard thing to do.

Nature’s solution to making humans have kids despite being able to reason themselves out of it is to make them incredibly horny compared to most other animals. Or, put another way, the less horny humans were filtered out along the way since they didn’t produce enough offspring and were outcompeted by the more horny.

Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

#113

Post by afavour »

bruhbruh78 wrote: post #86
bongodongobob wrote: post #75

You'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.

[flagged]

Eh? If we’re in a “tech is a bubble” conversation then “the average American” conversation is out of the window. Tech workers earn way above the average. If you’re accepting that tech parents have the money to raise kids it stands to reason the OP would wonder why their peers aren’t also raising kids.

Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

#114

Post by heartbreak »

CalRobert wrote: post #109
pfannkuchen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Poorer is a relative term here. The income/birth rate discrepancy is probably happening within your local community.

Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

#115

Post by lolinder »

CalRobert wrote: post #109
pfannkuchen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn't enough of an explanation, because surviving is still harder in such places than it is in wealthy countries with low birth rates. Birth rates are inversely correlated with wealth regardless of housing affordability.

Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

#116

Post by xyzelement »

silverquiet wrote: post #28
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #16

Anecdata: I am 31 and have 3 young kids. They have 0 cousins and, on top of that, 0... second cousins? Cousins-once-removed? Whatever the one is for my cousin's kids. My kids are my grandma's only great-grandkids. And I have... 6 cousins. On top of that, at my last job, on my team of 15, I was the only one with kids, and only 1 of those 15 engineers were under the age of 30. At my current job, my team is 8, and again…

> It baffles me. Frankly, I never really got why people wanted children in the first place, so this turnabout is amusing. Perhaps you can ask some of these people that you are close with as to their reasoning.

It's the simplest answer. I find life to be worth living, I am grateful I have life and it's the most meaningful to me to be able to give life to someone else and try to make it as good and meaningful for them as possible.

And it can be so fun. I just taught my 3 year old to ride a bike and for the first time today we went for a bike ride along the boardwalk, each on our bikes. I had a pretty amazing single life but I would be hard-pressed to think of anything that matched how much fun this was for me.

I suppose we come at life from very different perspectives, shaped by our culture and our family. It is very hard for me imagine how someone must feel about their life and the world to say "nope, it ends with me." I know people do it but... I don't envy that starting point.

Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

#117

Post by Aeolun »

dalyons wrote: post #78
beaned wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't a more difficult undertaking. It was never easy, we've just been raised softly and do not value children the same way previous generations did. An outlier in many places, but not most. Only in the Western first world is this now normal.

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.

I’m fairly certain this is just misaligned expectations. You can absolutely live in a 30sqm (or less) space with 5 children, raising them on plain rice, and send them to whatever public school you can get for free. And they’d very likely still have a better life than just 100 years ago. It’s just that nobody wants to do so because the standards are so much higher.

Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

#118

Post by afavour »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #92
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #16

Anecdata: I am 31 and have 3 young kids. They have 0 cousins and, on top of that, 0... second cousins? Cousins-once-removed? Whatever the one is for my cousin's kids. My kids are my grandma's only great-grandkids. And I have... 6 cousins. On top of that, at my last job, on my team of 15, I was the only one with kids, and only 1 of those 15 engineers were under the age of 30. At my current job, my team is 8, and again…

We must live in different areas because I’m the only one without kids on my team of 8. I also kind of resent the implication that pops up in these threads that people without kids are living some kind of immoral, selfish life. Not everyone without kids is just out partying all the time. I would love to have kids, but fate it seems has different plans for me.

> I also kind of resent the implication that pops up in these threads that people without kids are living some kind of immoral, selfish life

I don’t see that implication in OP’s post at all, I’m sorry. This feels like projection.

Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

#119

Post by toasterlovin »

djha-skin wrote: post #61

My father had 10 siblings and my mother had seven. I had seven siblings myself with over 30 cousins on both sides of my family. I have four children and my and most of my siblings each have six children or so. My mother has about 24 grandkids at the last count Maybe. Further, I live on the same street as two of my sisters and I have another sister that lives down the street, with my brother living 3 mi away. Only two…

You have to be religious, right?

This is the dream for us. We reverted to Catholicism after it became apparent that the secular world was incompatible with us, then eventually found our way to a high fertility parish. It’s incredible. Kids everywhere. Average family size is 5-6 kids. Really hoping our kids choose to remain in this lifestyle and we get to enjoy dozens of grandkids.

Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

#120

Post by scythe »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #16

Anecdata: I am 31 and have 3 young kids. They have 0 cousins and, on top of that, 0... second cousins? Cousins-once-removed? Whatever the one is for my cousin's kids. My kids are my grandma's only great-grandkids. And I have... 6 cousins. On top of that, at my last job, on my team of 15, I was the only one with kids, and only 1 of those 15 engineers were under the age of 30. At my current job, my team is 8, and again…

>It baffles me.

My hypothesis, which I rarely hear anyone else mention, is that we no longer look to our children for entertainment. Life used to be really boring. Kids are excited by things adults find painfully dull. Having a weird little person around who is overjoyed playing with a stick is a pretty great thing in a world where there isn't much else to do.

Today people often seem to regard interacting with children to be a form of work. I don't think that our ancestors saw it that way. The kids certainly don't seem to see it that way; they're confused and disappointed when their parents don't want to play with them.

Many of the sociopolitical explanations of falling birth rates have been refuted by the present trends. Birth rates are now below replacement in most of Latin America and Asia, even where economic development is well below the level it was when they started falling in the rich world, and in spite of the persistence of traditional gender roles. Only Africa and the poorest parts of Asia are above replacement, and even then much less than before. Some of the highest birth rates today are in Afghanistan and Palestine. Not exactly paradise.

Post reply on HN