The world might run out of people

Post by jdbernard » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #198

jdbernard wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the parent is saying he doesn't want kids because they are unruly, he might look to the parenting of said kids. To me your experiences only emphasize this point. Large portions of our society have decided that masculinity is inherently toxic. We've also, generally speaking, de-emphasized the role of discipline in parenting (I'm not talking about spanking). Our school system has long been stacked against young bo…

Define ‘masculinity’. Children learn from other children. Usually older children. Children are largely being raised by the state and that is never a good thing as it leads to conformity. Educational institutions look at children as future workforce and not as individuals. My 2c.

I completely agree with you wrt. to where most children are getting their actual raising from. This is amplified by the lack of direction commonly given by parents.

As far as defining masculinity, I mean it in the sense that psychologists use it: the traits that are generally common to males.

Post by Bartweiss » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #183

Bartweiss wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average middle-income family with two kids spends more than $200,000 to raise each child to age 17, followed by college costs (and/or any other support). In coastal cities, the number is more like $250k. That price is rising faster than inflation at about 3%, and college costs are rising 4%+. To begin with, let's just ignore college and just annualize it all to $15,000/year. Merrill Lynch claims that an average re…

I think we've also lost sight of something else in this kids-vs-no-kids argument: few kids. Studies probably do show that people with kids are healthier and longer-lived than childfree people. And "sucking it up" and having a kid or two like someone above says can give you this. However, this still results in a declining population, remember, which is what the main article was talking about in the first place. Every…

> I think we've also lost sight of something else in this kids-vs-no-kids argument: few kids.

This is a good point.

Even on the callous ROI level I was looking at, 1-2 kids is a particularly weird span. The first kid is most expensive and life-altering, so someone viewing kids as a retirement plan would almost certainly want to have a bunch of them. They're 'cheaper', it hedges against a kid not not taking care of you (for any of numerous reasons from a bad relationship to health problems of their own), and it makes providing care much more doable as a shared responsibility.

Honestly, a whole lot of social norms we took for granted actually seem to rely on families having 3+ kids who grow up to live nearby. Some mix of "community support" and "network effects" mean that the difficulty of raising kids has gone up substantially as family size and proximity have gone down.

Why does childrearing look so hard and expensive these days? Well, you probably don't live near family members with their own kids; my grandparents freed up time by trading 'daycare' with their multiple siblings who all had families.

Why does taking care of parents seem so rare and demanding? (Partly because we've improved longevity ahead of good health, so there are more parents who genuinely need specialized care. But also...) It's relatively easy to have a parent move across town into the spare bedroom that freed up when your kids moved out, and have your siblings come over when you're out of town. It's way harder to uproot your parents to come live in your one-bedroom apartment, or leave your job and friends to move back home and care for them alone.

Re: The world might run out of people

Re: The world might run out of people