The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness • Hacker News Board

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#211

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #149

1zee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty general, sweeping claim to make without a source.

Current data suggests that net unhappiness is associated with raising children, but it's because of the cost of raising children and not the children themselves. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/cost-rais...

>but it's because of the cost of raising children and not the children themselves

that's the equivalent of saying "if I control for skin colour I observe no discrimination". The cost of raising children both financially and in time, is intrinsically linked to raising children.

It is often asserted that spousal relationships suffer from the routine chores that come with raising children, and that is not going away. Don't control for the thing you want to measure.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#212

Post by WalterGR » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #167

xenospn wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think having kids is scientifically proven to make you unhappy and greatly increase your stress levels. It’s no wonder people just put off having kids until they can, or pass on having them altogether.

The "science" you're referring to shows that parenting makes people less "happy" in any given moment while doing it and more "content" overall, more "satisfied" in older age. Moreover, there are significant country-by-country differences in these stats that seem to be tied to availability of high-quality, low-cost childcare and healthcare. One place to look for some overview of some of these studies is https://contem…

Why did you put science in scare quotes?

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#213

Post by jniedrauer » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

residentfoam wrote: post #195

jniedrauer wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bringing a child into the world to increase my own personal happiness, when nothing else I could do has such a direct and massive climate impact, is not something I can justify personally. Not to mention, my child would have to live to see the impacts of climate change. There is coming a point (it has already passed, in my opinion), where we can no longer justify our purpose for existence as "creating more humans."

The way I see it is that you don't bring child into the world to "increase" your own personal happiness. They are (at least in my personal case) the result of my own happiness. And yes they require a lot of work, but all the hard work is totally worth it every time your children look at smile at you.

My point is not that they require a lot of work. My point is that they have a massive impact on climate change. You could spend your entire life flying to conferences, living on a cruise ship, dumping trash in the ocean, and none of it would even hold a candle to the environmental impact of having a child.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#214

Post by bazooka_penguin » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

daemonk wrote: post #94

codingslave wrote: post #7

I would argue that the decline of the family is directly linked to feminism, or better stated, the liberation of women from the home and from conservative sexual values. The two forces behind that are birth control and women entering the work force. These two are magnified by online dating and social media. I am not saying at all that these are bad things, just that we have yet to see the true effects of feminism on…

Perhaps the more interesting question is whether the traditional nuclear family is the "optimal" mode of human society? Is the unhappiness that we may be observing with the decline of family a product of this transition period from traditional family structure to individualism? Is our current society just not well equipped yet to handle this mode of living? Maybe in 50 years, this will become the norm and people who…

I really doubt the traditional nuclear family is natural and hence "optimal" although I guess that depends on your goal. I think as an extension or outcome, perhaps the purpose of civilization, nuclear families provide safety and security rather than producing the best offspring for the species as a whole. What's better, people of every level of fitness and intelligence pairing off to produce God knows what sort of mutants that will be protected on some level by society, or a handful of males who are naturally predisposed to good health, fitness, and intelligence, turbo Chads if you will, seeding large groups of females.

I'm not saying one is better for than the other overall, but one is surely better than the other for certain outcomes. Do we want an equitable society where low status individuals, but particularly males, have a better shot at reproduction and may contribute more to building a society that propagates that "culture" of safety and equity? Or do we go with what is probably more natural? I mean i can guess why and how religions of old and civilizations formed and why they were patriarchal

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#215

Post by nonwifehaver3 » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

kilowatt wrote: post #71

nugget wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of wading into deeply controversal territory, I'll add some personal observations. One of the harsh realities I have seen is that it's very difficult for women to "have it all" meaning a fulfilling personal, family, and professional life, especially in the most competitive fields. Yet for many years this idea has persisted in a mythical sense as broadly achievable. I am now in my late 30s. I've watched my…

> It makes me sad because while they have awesome professional accomplishments, they would have been awesome mothers and parents as well. I just wanted to point out politely how strange this language reads to me. It's ultimately the decision of each person whether to have kids or not. This being "sad" for them is an overreach, morally, IMO--and part of the fight feminism led was to carve out a space for women in soci…

Making a choice properly requires having knowledge about the particular options. Fertility education particularly in regard to age is not part of the sexual education curriculum in the UK [1] nor in international guidance documents [2,3] (just Ctrl-F "fertility"). And a recent poll in the US showed that 77% of women did not properly understand the relationship between age and fertility [4]. At some point this stops being choices made with appropriate knowledge and starts being a massive and tragic policy failure.

[1] https://www.raconteur.net/healthcare/fertility-education-sch...

[2] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000260770

[3] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/70501/WHO_R...

[4] https://modernfertility.com/modern-state-of-fertility-2019/

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#216

Post by Raphmedia » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

taway060619 wrote: post #90

I’ve been feeling a pretty intense sort of depression and loneliness for the last month or so. The feelings of “you’re a white male and you work in tech and you are wealthy you are a SATAN” is just becoming too much :(. I volunteer a tremendous amount in education, where I’m the only male I generally even see in my field, and I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how…

Don't beat yourself up over it. I myself am transgender and I am still regularly banned from LGBTQ+ online communities simply because I am not an activist and caution against extremism.

For many people, it is a cultural war. You are either "with us" or "against us".

Online media and online narratives are written in such a way that anyone outside your own group is perceived as evil. The filtering bubble effect of closed communities ("safe spaces") often aggravates the situation. I have seen people with balanced positions turn to the far right and others to the far left in knee jerk reactions to negative experiences.

What you hear is the loud minority of a minority. Racism and sexism against white males do exist. The people who hold those values are just as bigoted as any other racist or sexist individuals.

Most well rounded and balanced humans won't tell you that any demographic is "evil". In fact, most people just want to spend their days without thinking about others.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#217

Post by clarry » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #190

WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

I felt loneliness acutely this week. I live alone, spend most evenings alone, and on top, work's coding and research has been slow for 2 weeks. Collaborators are at conferences and on vacation, so I had much less work and much less face-to-face contact than usual. Given that I code on my own, distribute analyses via email, and occasionally meet if people are around, I barely talked to people some days this week. Goin…

I recommend social hobbies. Mine are BJJ and Magic the Gathering. BJJ is great because it can be highly technical but you will meet people way outside of nerd circles. My kids do it and love it as well. It is a hard thing, too, so it keeps the ego in check. You have no choice but to be extremely, intimately close with other humans. The friends I am making are great. There are plenty of other hobbies, but start there.…

Don't we all know what BJJ is.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#218

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

taway060619 wrote: post #154

throwaway666666 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

White nationalists are the exact same thing on the other side. They’re awful, awful people who are trying to make others feel inferior. No part of me gives and quarter to those people. My hatred of being called a devil due to the color of my skin does NOT align me with those who want to do the same thing to others. Not at all. And I’d rather be depressed forever than give any of those people any sort of solace. No.

You don't need to give them quarter to understand the similarity between their cause and every other cause that is built around complaining about how some other demographic is everything that's wrong with the world

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#219

Post by malvosenior » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

jniedrauer wrote: post #205

malvosenior wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from eradicating the human race, any changes to climate will have to be driven by humans. Someone’s child will help solve the problem. It could be your’s.

There is no shortage of humans who want to have children. Not all 7 billion of us can have a family.

Indeed not everyone will reproduce but the future will be exclusively filled by people who’s parents did.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#220

Post by egypturnash » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

Move to another city. Leave your small-town life. Chase your dream. Live alone. Pay more per capita to landlords. Pay more per capita for basic services, for staple foods. Pay businesses to do the household chores that you can't handle alone when you're also working a full-time job, and don't have a family to spread them out among.

Buy more stuff to fill that emotional hole. Consume.

Live in an apartment. Never see your neighbors. Wonder why you can't make friends.

Fly home once or twice a year to watch your parents slowly die of loneliness in the small town you left. And to watch them slowly become strangers to you; what do you have in common? Their only friends now are the talking heads on Fox News and you're a big-city liberal.

Eventually, fly home to bury one of them. Probably the other one in anywhere from a few months to a year.

It's the American dream.