I'd love to see this data but for men vs women
Who Americans spend their time with, by age
271–280 of 432 posts
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#272The thing that seems crazy to me is how much time alone increases with age. There are many many reasons for it, but one thing I think is especially sad is how much this is a consequence of our built environment. If you live in a village with multiple generations of a family around, it’s much easier for grandparents to be involved day too day in helping with little things in the village, especially keeping an eye on t…
I experienced this first hand when I visited my wife's family in Vietnam. All 10 or so of them live in homes side by side on the outskirts of Saigon. Everyone woke up in the morning and cooked for each other. Every day was like a little party. It was so nice to have that much support around all the time. I have never experienced anything like that in the US. Of course having family literally at your doorstep has its…
I acknowledge I'm not typical. But, that sounds horrible. And torturous. Constantly smoothened by all these people. Whom I'm expected to be cordial to, regardless of how douchebag they are, because of the accident of being related.
Fuck, can't even eat breakfast in peace!
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then heaven forbid if you have different political views from them, especially in 2020. My mom treats me very weirdly, not because I actually voted for Trump, but because I don't spend my days ranting about how he's Satan incarnate like she does. My sister aligns politically with my mom and she moved to MONGOLIA to get away from her. I'm glad for people who truly like their families, but not all of us won that pa…
It is both fascinating and sad to watch. My family has split along political lines, with half despising Trump and half worshipping him. Each side hates the other sufficiently that we just avoid talking anymore, so it's like having two distinct families. I don't know the solution other than everyone agreeing not to talk politics, ever. And even better, actually deciding that politics is pretty insignificant and only s…
Politics is the opposite of insignificant, and everything is related to politics, so you're sitting on a ticking time bomb if you're as a group trying to ignore it. Ignoring the pink elephant in the room doesn't make it go away.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Places can change. There's nothing stopping suburbia from becoming more walkable and friendly to the elderly other than choices we made.
"more walkable and friendly to the elderly" are very separate things, usually in conflict. The elderly face disability like arthritis, poor body temperature control, uncertainty about lower leg position or pavement contact, bad vision, bad hearing, confusion, and numerous other troubles. No normal or reasonable amount of "more walkable" is going to work. They need family members who care. The family members need park…
From what I've seen with older relatives, if you're able to stay mobile, you'll stay mobile longer and have a better quality of life. I don't think it's impossible to have housing and shops together and still have parking within a reasonable distance -- for example a town center with parking lots a couple blocks from the main street.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Depends where, but in western Europe for the last thousand years, probably not. This is definitely not true. At minimum you placed span from 1020, which means middle age, feudalism, powerty before French revolution and after, industrial revolution which meant completely overcrowded housing. Living in multi generational household was normal, expectation to care about parents was normal. Building new house at the tim…
There is pretty good data on this from pre-industrial England. What you are asserting is what historians widely believed before they actually looked at the data, around the 1960s. They said this by looking at the more recent past of less developed places (like rural Russia, pre-1917) and assuming that the far past of England looked the same, and thus that nuclear families became common only recently. And they were wr…
You don't know much about European history and even less about Russia, isn't it?
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most likely we would not. There are whole classes of sicknesses that dissappeared last 200 years which were caused by lack of various nutricients. Both difficulty to get them and lack of knowledge played role. Add to it easy to cure sicknesses, injuries that are nothing more and would kill you back then, their higher chance to contact said injuries and it is unlikely they would be so much healthier. Also, there is re…
> Also, there is reason why agrarian societies pushed away hunter gatherers - it is just easier to stay alive and healthy. No. Agriculture exists because it supports more people per unit of land than what the traditional way of life did (on average). This is as hard of a fact about history as you're going to get. Now, you need to be savvy about what the statement is not saying. It is not providing a reason for an ind…
You did not done much reading about history and military?
Anyway, easier way to get food and not get hungry or starwe is strong reason to switch lifestyle. Human societies of all kinds have been doing exact that decision over and over.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
In NZ lockdown really changed my perspective. With very little traffic the roads became the footpath and were heavily used by kids on bikes and families walking. Birds became were more numerous and it was very quiet. I’m not sure how you get to this without literally shutting down the country, but that aspect was nice.
Arguably the country was shut down by cars decades ago. You experienced it reopening, in a sense. Hate that we call it "closing the street" when we stop letting drivers terrorize people walking on them.
Mobility, flexibility of schedule, and portable privacy+storage are far too beneficial to just give up. If there's a problem with the current way those goals are achieved, then we need to solve that, not abandon all our technological progress.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
The post-Covid remote utopia so many seem to be excited about is going to be hard for a lot of workers. Work, lunch, happy hour, bowling, league sports. Now they all have is Slack.
What's wrong with spending less time with co-workers? These are people you have to spend time with, regardless if you like them or not. I would personally much rather not spend time with people I didn't choose to spend time with.
IMO, most people aren‘t very good at building their own tribes outside of church, school and work.
Building bubbles of “Like” only is probably not an optimal societal outcome either.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
40 is early for the average empty-nest boundary. That comes later. Rather, the decline at 40 marks marked independence of young children transitioning into pre-adolescence and then adolescence. You see your children much less 1. when they enter school, 2. when they start forming their own extra-familial friendships, and 3. when they enter adolescence and believe their parents don't know anything.
>40 is early for the average empty-nest boundary. maybe for your demographic (and the demographic for hackernews readers), but many American children are born to teenage and early 20s mothers.
You're right. There are undoubtedly many teenage mothers. But we need to look at medians:
The median age for women of first age of birth in the United States is 27.6 years. The average "childbearing years" duration is 5.3 years. If we assume an age of 10 for average increase in independence, we get 27.6 + (5.3/2) + 10 == 40.25 years.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then heaven forbid if you have different political views from them, especially in 2020. My mom treats me very weirdly, not because I actually voted for Trump, but because I don't spend my days ranting about how he's Satan incarnate like she does. My sister aligns politically with my mom and she moved to MONGOLIA to get away from her. I'm glad for people who truly like their families, but not all of us won that pa…
Political tribes are taking over the role of family, even within families.
i'd say political tribes are taking over the role of the church or spiritual leaders. Work is taking over the role of the family.