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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?

#231

Post by keiferski »

caturopath wrote: post #200
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…

Yes this is my read too. It’s largely a cultural problem, not a resource one. The baseline expectations have gotten so high that not have a giant house and the latest electronics means you somehow can’t afford kids.

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

#232

Post by anon84873628 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #73
toasterlovin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biological organisms not procreating despite living in material and caloric abundance is cosmically weird.

Evolution has equipped us with a pretty generous frontal cortex so we have a sort of escape hatch to reflect and decide on whether to act on our biological imperatives. Reduction of human beings to 'biological organisms' as if we're humping rabbits is no less weird.

Even better, invent tools so we can still hump like rabbits but not be burdened with the results. Good stuff. Evolution gonna take a while to figure out a response.

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

#233

Post by em-bee »

nicbou wrote: post #220
em-bee wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you don't meet the right lady by 40 then you haven't been looking hard enough. meaning, you were not really interested or focused on getting married. i am the only male among all my cousins that i know of to be married with children. and i am your proverbial geek who has a hard time meeting women. which my cousins or brothers are not. they had more opportunities to meet women than me (as far as i can tell), but fo…

Maybe they're just not into it? Some people enjoy living alone without a committed relationship. A lot of users in this thread assume that everyone's goal is to marry and have children. A lot of people are not interested in that, partly because they have other interests, and partly because the social pressure is not as strong as before.

Maybe they're just not into it?

that's exactly what i mean. they just were not into it. it's definitely not that they just were not lucky to meet the right lady to settle down with.

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

#234

Post by riku_iki »

lolinder wrote: post #227
riku_iki wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

> I expect them to be roughly the same as they always have been at about 66%+/-3%.

No, graphs like wealth inequality, income to housing cost ratio, national debt will tell you that numbers will be very different.

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

#235

Post by nostrebored »

ekianjo wrote: post #130
mmasu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with 3 kids at 31 you would most likely be the outlier in many countries. all the rest you said resonates - so many people do not want to have kids at all anymore, and it’s not difficult to understand why (socioeconomic uncertainty, environmental issues, a lot of places are not “child friendly”, and there’s more). having kids today seems to be an even more difficult undertaking than in the past; and in my opinion the…

it's only more difficult if you are paranoid.

No, it is tangibly more difficult. There’s a complete lack of other children in many cities. We live directly next to my oldest kid’s school, and we have no other kids within a mile. The nearest park has no regular group of kids who show up.

I live in one of the largest metro areas in the U.S.

Community is gone.

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

#236

Post by spencerflem »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #100
beaned wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't a more difficult undertaking. It was never easy, we've just been raised softly and do not value children the same way previous generations did. An outlier in many places, but not most. Only in the Western first world is this now normal.

> 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…

For sure - with both parents working and no societal support really where do you find the time

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

#237

Post by lolinder »

hmcq6 wrote: post #224
lolinder wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, I'm not. I'm citing the numbers in the table entitled "Quarterly Homeownership Rates for the U.S. and Regions: 1964 to Present"* (emphasis added). That table is talking about homeownership rates, not householdership rates, and the definition they give is this:

> Homeownership Rates. The proportion of households that are owners is termed the homeownership rate. It is computed by dividing the number of households that are owners by the total number of occupied households (table 5 and 6)

Here's the table: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx

And for the benefit of others, here are the definitions: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf

* EDIT: I was also citing "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: Fourth Quarter 2022 and 2023", which is likewise about homeownership

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

#238

Post by djha-skin »

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.

Yes, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

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

#239

Post by nostrebored »

esafak wrote: post #203
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.…

The human population is expected to peak at ten billion, and that's in the latter half of his century. We have no reason to fear declining birth rates in an existential sense.

At what scale? There are definitely countries that will cease to exist on this path.

Immigration is zero sum and soon everyone will be competing for the same pool of people.

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

#240

Post by locusofself »

Aeolun wrote: post #126
silverquiet wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It baffles me. Frankly, I never really got why people wanted children in the first place, so this turnabout is amusing. Perhaps you can ask some of these people that you are close with as to their reasoning.

I dunno, I grew up in a family of 5 kids, and it just never really occurred to me to not have them. I think my greatest regret in life is going to be having only one :/ However, I have no issues with people that don’t want them. To each their own.

interesting .. I'm the oldest of 5 myself and have just one daughter, but I can't really imagine having or wanting more.
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