Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood? • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by incompatible » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 5:45 AM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #119

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.

Not necessarily. My parents also both have quite a few siblings, and aren't particularly religious. They were born in the 1930s when it wasn't unusual.

I may have a couple of dozen first cousins, I don't really know, but they are geographically distant. I haven't met one since childhood, and I can't remember getting along with them very well.

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

#192

Post by Spivak » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 5:46 AM UTC

vundercind wrote: post #186

echelon wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids aren't expensive. They're a distraction from dopamine and career advancement. My peers are all wealthy and they'd rather jet set than settle down. By all means they could raise families of two to four kids and still be incredibly comfortable. Vacation home comfortable. Instagram is the anti-child. Instagram and the endless feed of social media, internet, and things to do. Once you have children, the dopamine end…

> Kids aren't expensive. They're a distraction from dopamine and career advancement. They really are. You can pay for some of it by letting your and their quality of life suffer, instead of with money (cram 3 kids into the 2-bedroom you already own; don’t worry that the schools are bad and dangerous and that’s why the place was cheap; that kind of thing) but not all of it, and most people don’t find making those comp…

It's not even the schools that have that dynamic first. Lots of daycares are sketchy as hell and they also charge crazy high prices so you can't just pay for better. You have to take time out of your day and go suss them out and dig up inspection reports.

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

#193

Post by defrost » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 5:46 AM UTC

beaned wrote: post #179

smallmancontrov wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only in the Western first world is this now normal It ain't just us, my friend. Births Per Woman: 1.64 USA 1.34 Japan 1.28 China 0.84 Korea > we've just been raised softly and do not value children Now that women are part of the formal economy and everyone has options for entertainment other than unprotected sex, the mechanism by which the formal economy used to offload the entire cost of child rearing while reapin…

I will admit that I was a bit off-the-cuff in terms of the Western aspect of my comment. There are lots of factors, of course, and the trend isn't limited to only the west. Though it has certainly become a more normal trend in developed and developing countries than those with a higher level of poverty and poor. I still contend however that it has never been easy. My grandparents had four children starting at age 20.…

> You, here, right now reading this are the absolute last leaf, the most extended branch, the most outstretched and sun-bleached arm of a tree of life that has been proceeding for four billion years. You are the last link in a chain that has not been broken for four billion years.

It's 3.7 billion, not four.

More importantly it's a vast tree of life, not a chain and not a hierarchy with humans at an upper lever with only royalty, priests, and God above.

If the sapiens go the stromatolites will still remain, with a lineage far older than apes.

Humans aren't about to go extinct but it's high time their population numbers stabilised, perhaps even reduced a bit.

The case can certainly be made by those that care that should the human branch be pruned the remaining mass of the tree of life on earth might very well thrive and surge in breadth and depth after a rather large number of other prunings at the hands of humankind.

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

#194

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 5:46 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #167

lumost wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing this math frequently of late. I'm 35, have one child and of my high school class ... maybe 25% have children? there is certainly a bias from polling social media. But the anecdata would say that we're closing on the point where millenials have chosen to simply not have children.

Kids aren't expensive. They're a distraction from dopamine and career advancement. My peers are all wealthy and they'd rather jet set than settle down. By all means they could raise families of two to four kids and still be incredibly comfortable. Vacation home comfortable. Instagram is the anti-child. Instagram and the endless feed of social media, internet, and things to do. Once you have children, the dopamine end…

The cost to raise a child from 0-18 is $310k per the Brookings Institute. This does not include daycare or college.

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

#195

Post by voidfunc » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 5:46 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #140

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.

This is unnecessarily confrontational and inaccurate. According to census.gov, the current national homeownership rate is hovering at about 66%, which is about the same rate that it's been (+/- 3%) since they started tracking in 1964 [0][1]. This isn't restricted to old people either: 49% of 30 to 34 year olds and 58% of 35 to 39 year olds owned a home in Q4 2023 [2]. There are certainly regional differences in housi…

HN has a blindness for the vast land area of America that isn't The Bay Area, NYC, Seattle, Boston, and a handful of other insanely expensive locations. Home ownership has probably plummeted in those markets (I don't have the data) but it leads to certain types of comments being passed around as fact.

The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless is really exhausting.

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

#196

Post by dotnet00 » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 5:46 AM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #185

dotnet00 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would only make sense if the issue was biological and not socioeconomic. No one's getting selected out when the issue isn't a biological predisposition to avoiding procreation.

I genuinely haven’t met anyone who deeply wanted children and then didn’t because of “socioeconomics”. I met plenty of ppl who talk about the climate or cost of housing as the reason for other ppl but I never knew of anyone making a decision this way. You know someone?

By socioeconomics, I'm referring to all those different factors.

The point is that "I don't want to have children because I'm worried about the impact of climate change" (social) or "I don't want to have children because I think it'll be too expensive" (economic) is not caused by biology and thus there is no selecting such concerns out of the gene pool.

Not even mentioning that evolution doesn't even meaningfully work at these short timescales. Modern humans are essentially identical to ~40,000 years ago, simply not enough time and pressure for evolution to do its thing.

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

#197

Post by echelon » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 5:48 AM UTC

vundercind wrote: post #186

echelon wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids aren't expensive. They're a distraction from dopamine and career advancement. My peers are all wealthy and they'd rather jet set than settle down. By all means they could raise families of two to four kids and still be incredibly comfortable. Vacation home comfortable. Instagram is the anti-child. Instagram and the endless feed of social media, internet, and things to do. Once you have children, the dopamine end…

> Kids aren't expensive. They're a distraction from dopamine and career advancement. They really are. You can pay for some of it by letting your and their quality of life suffer, instead of with money (cram 3 kids into the 2-bedroom you already own; don’t worry that the schools are bad and dangerous and that’s why the place was cheap; that kind of thing) but not all of it, and most people don’t find making those comp…

> cram 3 kids into the 2-bedroom you already own; don’t worry that the schools are bad and dangerous and that’s why the place was cheap; that kind of thing

Everyone used to do exactly that.

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

#198

Post by zigman1 » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 5:48 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #187

zigman1 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what is also anti-child? Having parents that were completely unprepared to be parents. Stop with this dopamine epidemic nonsense excuse for everything that isn't working the way you want

[flagged]

Recorded history you mean the history of domestic and emotional abuse, alcoholism, family disputes, lying and nromalised cheating? Then we are doing fine.

Congratulations on your millions. My dad beat and cheat on my mother, and his dad beat and probably cheat my grandmother.

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

#199

Post by voidfunc » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 5:49 AM UTC

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #99

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.

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).

I just don't have any interest in kids. They're expensive and they require a ton of sacrifice. I'd rather travel, golf, do hobbies and generally enjoy my life. The only people that seem to want me to have babies are my parents so they can have grand kids... too which I've told them "Thank you for having me, but that's not a valid reason for me to sacrifice my life". I don't really care about the preservation of the human species. I'm going to be dead in the next 40 years or so, why should I care?

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

#200

Post by caturopath » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 5:49 AM UTC

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.

I think this is very confused. People these days are really rich compared to people in the past who had more kids, poorer people in countries like the US have more kids on average than richer ones, and poorer countries on average have more kids than richer ones. (People don't seem to have fewer kids because they're poor; they seem to have fewer kids because they're rich!) Despite major housing issues, people live in bigger, fancier houses than ever, homeownership rates in the US are higher than most of the history of the US, and homelessness, though tragically common, still only directly affects a tiny minority of people, on the order of a fifth of a percent, which is not the sort of thing that seems very connected to the widespread change to having fewer children.