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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?

#141

Post by xyzelement »

I was lucky that my wife convinced me to move close to her family (it would have never occurred to me.) Now we live just a few doors down from her brother who's got 4 kids, and we have 2. Watching the cousins intermingle is an amazing and unique experience.

It's kinda sad but it's also obvious that people are majorly missing out. On having kids, on living close to family, on all of it.

Ironically, this is evolution in action. The folks that "remember" how to have a family and raise kids have an uncontested claim to the future. The "it's too hard to have kids" crew is selecting against themselves, evolutionary speaking. That won't last.

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

#142

Post by danielvaughn »

Interesting to hear this. My personal experience is the complete opposite. My sister has 2 kids, my wife’s sister and husband have 2 kids, my wife’s brother has 3 kids with one on the way, and we’re having our first in about 3 weeks.

That’s 12 cousins just in our little circle.

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

#143

Post by pie_flavor »

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.

That opinion itself is reflective of a bubble. The people not having kids are all well-off; the lower class is still having lots of kids, whether they own houses or not (and most do - the only places unaffordable are the centers of big cities). You drop below 2.0 kids somewhere around the 40th percentile of income, and pass 50% homeownership around the 20th.

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

#144

Post by maxdoop »

ekianjo wrote: post #124
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

[flagged]

How is it selfish to not have kids? Selfishness implies another party; if the kid doesn’t even exist, what is selfish?

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

#145

Post by somenameforme »

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.

In the past, if you could not afford to feed your family, you could literally starve to death. And people saved money by doing things like crafting clothes out of feed sacks. [1] It became common enough that companies would start selling their feed in sacks with floral designs, specifically with the intent of then being reused as clothing.

And that's just one among a vast array of lifestyle differences. Now a days the worst case scenario is that you end up on government assistance and have a less pleasant life. As for Asia, don't make the mistake of conflating Asia with just China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. Asia's big, and those places are outliers in terms of fertility, with China's issues being entirely self inflicted. The average fertility rate across Asia is 2.3 [2], which is not great - but at least sustainable.

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

[2] - https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/c416afed-en/index.html?i...

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

#146

Post by paul7986 »

datavirtue wrote: post #45
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…

I've worked with plenty of people who have no visible significant other, even. It's fucking weird. Thirty+ (40+) year old guys living alone in huge houses, never married. I'm guessing they are just hitting up sex workers. These are smart, well adjusted people who would have made good fathers.

Maybe They haven't found the one who they want and or wants them ..too maybe they aren't into women. With society being more accepting of same sex situations I'm pretty sure I read the number of those who identify something other then straight has increased.

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

#147

Post by xyzelement »

silverquiet wrote: post #128
xyzelement wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When it ends, it ends, and that's it regardless of how many others you created who will now go on to face their own ends. I get that somehow people are able to live in denial of the ultimate extinction of their being, but I never really seemed to be able to get the hang of that. To each their own.

This sounds familiar, perhaps you and I have discussed it before.

My life matters to me as a vehicle for what truly matters: if my descendants are thriving, and my values are upheld, whether I am physically here once I've contributed to it, is completely irrelevant to me.

I will fight to live as long and as well as I can, but only because that increases my opportunity to contribute what I want. Merely "existing" is not my highest value and therefore is not the thing I worry about solely.

Hard to explain if you don't get it.

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

#148

Post by silverquiet »

afavour wrote: post #123
silverquiet wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From experience, I can tell you that women are far more attracted to the beer-swilling bros who jump out of airplanes than the quiet, introverted engineers who retire each night to their homes to relax while cooking dinner and watching TV. That doesn't make for a particularly interesting date. So it goes.

As a quiet introverted engineer who went out on many dates and got married I couldn’t disagree more. Maybe it depends on age. What you say is probably true at age 21, by 29 most of the women I met were very set on meeting a serious life partner, not a bro. I found that actually talking to them about their interests and engaging with that did wonders, even if my introverted instincts didn’t tell me to.

That's exactly the age I have the most experience with. Your mileage may vary I suppose.

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

#149

Post by xyzelement »

latentcall wrote: post #132
xyzelement wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

// The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now And yet somehow places I visit (which lately has been between NY, Ohio, and Florida) has young families living in houses. I am not saying there's no challenge but your comment would imply that these houses are standing empty because nobody can afford them when in reality each one coming to the market is immediately snapped up mainly by families l…

In my area these houses are snatched up by real estate companies and turned into rentals within a week of closing.

Who is living in those rentals?

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

#150

Post by thaumasiotes »

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.

> You're baffled people aren't having kids? What bubble do you live in? People straight up can't afford housing much less children.

This is incoherent; children are not expensive.

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