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The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

phys.org

171–180 of 325 posts

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#171
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are incompatible choices. You have to live by the rules of the said small tight knit community. since gp said indian, in indian communities you have to marry within the community otherwise you "bring shame" to the community. This coercion doesn't even have to be explicit like that it acts on you in insidious ways . Its the classic tradeoff between security and freedom.

> in indian communities you have to marry within the community Is this not evidence for the original point?

Marrying within the community is not marrying (near) cousins. Once you are beyond 2nd cousins, you might as well be not related (for disease purposes), and the old Hindu scriptures go even further than that.

Specifically, men and women would not be married within the same village, but within the same community in other villages (which may only be within a radius of 50km, but that is a lot of people).

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#172
post #67
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that we actually give kids massive amount of attention compared to historical standards ... calling current situation "degenerate" is absurd. Also considering that by many statistics, children do better then they used to just a few decades ago.

For some definitions of attention, yes, but not necessarily historically massive amounts of physical contact and (non -neurotic) care. Think of the images from the world over of indigenous women going about their days largely with their young children strapped to them.

> Think of the images from the world over of indigenous women going about their days largely with their young children strapped to them.

Note how the extent you went is imagery rather than hard numbers, you don't have a leg to stand on.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#173
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that we actually give kids massive amount of attention compared to historical standards ... calling current situation "degenerate" is absurd. Also considering that by many statistics, children do better then they used to just a few decades ago.

> Given that we actually give kids massive amount of attention compared to historical standards ... This is literally based on a comparison with hunger-gatherer societies. To the extent that there is any accuracy to your "compared to historical standards", its probably based on a low point reached (in the "developed" world) somewhere between the first industrial revolution and mid-20th century,

The accuracy of most statements in this thread are the same.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#174
post #48

> childcare needs to give parents an actual break. In my experience caring for your small children is really demanding work. On the one hand you need to be focused on the situation in order to protect the children and on the other hand there is not much going on for entertaining yourself. Creative or focused deep work where you get a positive feeling of accomplishment also counts as a break from childcare for me. So…

I'm already hearing the comments on Monday, people asking me how my "break" was, since I took off all of last week (I mean, I had to since the preschool our twins attend and the daycare our singleton attends were closed). Work is typically a break from what happens in the home, but when things at work are stressful it feels like coming out of the frying pan and into the fire. We also have a similar experience, where…

> the folks who have kids that we are truly good friends with live far away. Nearby we have playdates and dinners with other families but I wouldn't want to cohabit with them, not even for an overnight stay

many such cases

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#175
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Kids need the space to develop as you mentioned, and it’s somewhat trivial to determine where to live to avoid children using granular census and school availability data if desired.

it’s somewhat trivial to determine where to live to avoid children given the discussions of how much more housing most cities need, i actually think this is not trivial at all. not wanting to live near children pretty much comes down to not living near people.

I will think on how to improve this.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the word "exceptionally" arises when comparing with other animals, the amount of effort a human child needs from its parents and family until an advanced age is unprecedented in other terrestrial companions.

Yeah maybe that’s why women live longer in order to help with the exhausting process of raising their grandchildren [1]. We love to take care of babies, regardless of (or maybe because of) how clingy and dependent they are. From an Evolutionary point of view, This relationship between needy babies and abnegated caregivers might have given rise to a complementary schimogenesis according to Gregory Bateson, in which ba…

>I cannot understand how come there are so many parents bearing children worldwide.

one might call it a survival bias

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#177
post #141
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question here is one of alignment. I child may think "I need to eat right now" but that doesn't necessarily mean the "right now" part is correct. Open world problems are difficult to define, even the word 'properly' you use has a vast amount of interpretability as to what you believe the 'proper' outcome should be.

There is absolutely no parent who's problem is a child who thinks "I need to eat right now".

Of course there are. That's one of the three states of infants (asleep, hungry, soiled). It's one of the major causes of upset and bad behavior in toddlers. It's obviously the case for children who don't get enough to eat due to deprivation.

That doesn't mean my toddler wouldn't prefer ice cream over whatever is for dinner, though.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#178
post #162
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only for the upper class. The lower class still has to go man the gas stations, grocery stores, warehouses, and factories.

Don’t think it has to do with class. Surgeons and dentists still need to show up to work. Even in tech, the higher up you are, the more likely you will want to be in the office.

The upper class at least gets the choice. The lower class does not.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#179

The book Hunt, Gather, Parent touches on this a bit. It takes 3-4 humans, not necessarily adults but cousins and whatnot, to take care of a child. Two? 6-8. Since western societies broke up tight knit communities, the support system for this in the west has been lacking and jerry rigged with tired parents and nannies etc ever since. The reason for the breakup is fun - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/ro…

The linked article is pretty ridiculous. I am pretty sure it leaves out a lot of nuance from the underlying work - as these types of press releases normally do - but there is a bunch of stuff in there that just does not make sense. First the taboo against consanguineous marriages was most likely because of genetic diseases. Biology may not have been very advanced, but people were smart enough to pick up on patterns.…

The whole point of the hero monomyth is that the hero is a hero. They're an exceptional individual, sometimes the child of a god, sent on an exceptional quest that nobody else can accomplish. And even so, they are reluctant to leave society at first, and eventually return to it. I don't think its purpose is primarily to facilitate individual aspiration.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah maybe that’s why women live longer in order to help with the exhausting process of raising their grandchildren [1]. We love to take care of babies, regardless of (or maybe because of) how clingy and dependent they are. From an Evolutionary point of view, This relationship between needy babies and abnegated caregivers might have given rise to a complementary schimogenesis according to Gregory Bateson, in which ba…

> I cannot understand how come there are so many parents bearing children worldwide. Because the best thing you can do for the world is to raise children well. If they raise theirs, etc. its a cycle of good over thousands of years, that will have more positive impact than anything you could do in your life as an individual.

Given that we're quickly destroying the environment we need to survive and have enough nuclear weapons pointed at one another to annihilate civilization multiple times over, it seems that a lot of people thousands of years ago didn't raise their kids well enough.

Maybe instead of having more children as the OP notes, we can take care of the tens of millions of neglected ones we already have, or try to work towards providing a healthier environment for those who are already here. The idea that we need more, when we're currently screwing up the ones we have, is silly.

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