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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?

#221

Post by em-bee »

vidarh wrote: post #172
startupsfail wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is wrong that our society rewards drinking beers with tech bros and “skydiving” hobbies and what not fucking weird stuff. And doesn’t reward that much investments of money and parental time into having healthy and educated kids. Educated and well rounded kids, teenagers and adults don’t come free for society. It requires a lot of work, money, time and love. Ridiculous amounts. To a degree this resource can be stol…

> To a degree this resource can be stolen from other countries, via immigration. But this only works to a degree and at a larger scale it is still a zero sum game. It's going to increasingly become a challenge. China's population is contracting. India has hit replacement and will start to see decline barring immigration over the next 20-30 years. Only sub-Saharan Africa is left with above replacement birth rates. We'…

It's going to increasingly become a challenge. China's population is contracting.

i think the economic differences and the population density still make immigration a viable strategy for some time to come, despite contracting population everywhere.

the future will be that the population in every larger city will consists of least a quarter chinese and indian (and eventually african as well).

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

#222

Post by Dig1t »

lumost wrote: post #158
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 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.

Me too! Among my cohort of friends that I grew up with, all of us in our early 30's, around 10 people, I'm the only one who is having kids. None of them are even trying to get married. The vast majority of people my age that I meet are not planning to have kids. I can't stop noticing it, and even my wife has started remarking about it now. It honestly does seem like an entire generation has chosen not to have kids..

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

#223

Post by muro »

timeagain wrote: post #44
whatshisface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never understood how this is a "bomb," western cultures are so good at distancing the elderly, nobody will notice if conditions in care facilities become worse. How exactly will all of the unsupported old people overthrow society? By selling their IRAs? Will China's over-working-age-population get a second wind just long enough to take down the Party? I think realpolitik has so permeated our way of thinking th…

if the majority of the public is much older they will likely vote for measures that favor them. Millennials look like they will be pretty left-leaning. The US could divert 10% of its military budget and ensure seniors live in relative comfort. I’m not saying these things will come to pass, only that it isn’t obvious to me that there is a coming crash. The economy will morph to reflect the forces that exist within it.

There is a huge debt that the military budget might be diverted into instead. It's likely this military budget that ensures the debt can be never repaid.

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

#224

Post by hmcq6 »

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…

You're misconstruing what census.gov says.

If you look into the "definitions" section it defines "Housing Unit. A housing unit is a house, an apartment, a group of rooms, or a single room occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters."

and "Householder. The householder refers to the person (or one of the persons) in whose name the housing unit is owned or rented [...]"

49% of people aged 30-34 aren't homeowners, 49% of us are homeowners or renters.

> The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now.

You haven't disproven this statement in any way, you've just linked to some statistics that show we can still afford rent.

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

#225

Post by em-bee »

Aeolun wrote: post #133
boredtofears wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it not strike you as strange though that so many different nations / cultures are all seeing the same downward trend at the same time? There is something about it that feels like a biological imperative.

We have better things to do than hump like rabbits? We don’t need kids to work the farm, or to provide net positive muscle power input to the economy. We have machines for that.

We don’t need kids to work the farm

even if we did, kids are expected to go to school now. they changed from being a work asset to a cost center.

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

#226

Post by nostrebored »

voidfunc wrote: post #199
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).

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 h…

You’re benefiting from other people’s sacrifice. Your end of life care is entirely dependent on other people having and raising functional children.

And these are all pretty weak reasons — people with kids do all of the things you’ve mentioned.

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

#227

Post by lolinder »

riku_iki wrote: post #217
lolinder wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you didn't get further into my comment than the percent sign.

your comment doesn't contradict to what I said from math point of view. 35yo still could catch low rate mortgages, and lower prices homes 10 years ago. Today's 20yo (new generation) is in very larger scrunity. Also, you didn't support your numbers about age distribution with any kind of references.

Ah, I have a hard time remembering that the millennials have taken the boomers' place as the oppressive older generation.

Gen Z doesn't have a monopoly on spending their 20s in a scary financial situation. Let's see what the numbers look like in 10 years—if prior trends (the data I linked to above) are anything to go by, I expect them to be roughly the same as they always have been at about 66%+/-3%.

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

#228

Post by irrational »

justrealist wrote: post #7
irrational wrote: post #3

I have 11 siblings and 75 first cousins. But, we lived thousands of miles away from any of those cousins, so I never got to know them very well and now have no contact with them. In the other hand, my daughter has a single cousin around her same age who lived about three hours away growing up, so they saw each other a few times a year, Now, as adults, even though they live in different countries, they still maintain…

How did your daughter only end up with 1 cousin from your 11 siblings? That's a catastrophically low TFR.

Well, that cousin is from my wife’s side. She does have dozens of first cousins from my side, but we live far away from them, so she has only met some of them once or twice for short periods of time. Nothing long enough to form a connection. Plus, she is older than all of them by about 5 years, so there is that too.

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

#229

Post by beaned »

defrost wrote: post #193
beaned wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

4 was rounding from 3.7, so I think that seems like a bit of a petty correction.

Humans will not go extinct (I hope), but HN is full of some of the smartest people and these are their trends, and I hope that of the people who do reproduce, the techno nerds are among them. The future will need them.

I worry that the Great Filter is not about technology at all, but that in every planet with a species that has evolved into a higher intelligence, that at the cusp of being able to seed their galaxy, they willingly do not pursue it, because the level of analytical thinking required to achieve it also leads them to disinterest and abstinence.

In regards to your last sentence, that is true. But I would ask, who would be around to appreciate that fact?

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

#230

Post by hn72774 »

scythe wrote: post #120
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…

>It baffles me. My hypothesis, which I rarely hear anyone else mention, is that we no longer look to our children for entertainment. Life used to be really boring. Kids are excited by things adults find painfully dull. Having a weird little person around who is overjoyed playing with a stick is a pretty great thing in a world where there isn't much else to do. Today people often seem to regard interacting with childr…

> we no longer look to our children for entertainment

Anyone bringing kids into the world for entertainment value is doing them a disservice. These are humans, not pets.

Parenting is hard.

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