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The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

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301–310 of 325 posts

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heritability of intelligence and other factors is highly variable. You want people who will care diligently for their children to have them. Not people who will be largely indifferent to them, whether they're smart or dumb. The Musk 'I'll have ten and scatter them to the wind with bags of money, the odds will take care of the rest' strategy is not really one that works out well in real life.

I'm the oldest of 11 kids, and I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on this. I agree with your second statement, which is why conscientious people should have kids.

Well, hello! I am also the oldest of 11 kids; I rarely encounter another like me.

One of the many reasons I have carefully avoided making any children over the years is that I already had my fill of child-rearing by the time I left home, through looking after my younger siblings. I wonder what your experience with this was.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#302
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that off-loading overwhelmed parents even a bit is already a massive step in positive direction for literally everybody including companies and taxman, and kindergartens can help a lot. You can be much happier and better parent when rested rather than being semi-constantly on the verge of breakdown. Who hasn't walked this valley with at least 2 kids can't really comprehend the topic appropriately. Apart m…

That would also be true if every family had a parent that mostly had free time. Then you just need to know more than one family in the world et voilà! It would cost way less money to everyone, while allowing more diversity and more actual ressource to be used for the child instead of stupid bureaucracy... But it looks like you are deep into communist propaganda, as if a third-party institution run by a government wou…

No need for baseless insults, that's primitive behavior. I actually grew up under communism and hate it with passion since I saw first hand how it destroyed lives of my parents and grandparents. Something spoiled western kids with unbelievably easy life like apparently you will never comprehend.

Rest of your post doesn't make much sense, you clearly have no clue about topic discussed.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#303
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah maybe that’s why women live longer in order to help with the exhausting process of raising their grandchildren [1]. We love to take care of babies, regardless of (or maybe because of) how clingy and dependent they are. From an Evolutionary point of view, This relationship between needy babies and abnegated caregivers might have given rise to a complementary schimogenesis according to Gregory Bateson, in which ba…

>I cannot understand how come there are so many parents bearing children worldwide. one might call it a survival bias

Hi to you too, Darwin.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the best thing you can do for the world Is to not have any children so the population gets back down to sustainable levels

Western societies are already down to around replacement levels with some going below it. It's pretty clear cut as societies evolve that population growth evens out. It's 3rd world countries driving the population growth. Over-population of humans being a danger to the earth has been proven false time and time again.

Overpopulation needs to be qualified with the context of the living standards. Ten billion vegetarians is probably feasible, but ten billion Americans (we don't currently have as many at such a standard) is a different story.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the best thing you can do for the world Is to not have any children so the population gets back down to sustainable levels

The population is at sustainable level, you only need more nuclear power plants

Can nuclear power plants make livestock less energy intensive to raise?

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#306
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Families with "women in the workplace" are not brainwashed, they are wielding hard earned rights and freedoms against violently indifferent economic structures. Under capitalism, we are not free unless we draw a wage, and women have learned there are no wages for housework.

To the detriment of the child.

You'll hear no argument from me that the loss of alloparenting is devastating to our national trajectory, but I can't take seriously any suggestion that we return to the Cult of Domesticity; those are the conditions that brought these about! If you want Stepford Wives, you'll need to bioengineer them.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence supporting this?

Sorry, I missed the “first years” portion of your comment. I had originally read it as simply paying people to be stay at home parents for the whole time they have children at home. Paid parental leave up until at least breastfeeding is done is a no brainer.

Just spitballing, here, but maybe some sort of voucher system to distribute leave among all your "alloparents?" But that's hard to systematize. Probably the simplest thing is simply to increase wages and PTO across the board, and let workers/consumers act on their own priorities.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western culture no longer seems to appreciate the commitment that is required to raise children. Personally I think people are too self-centered and are too eager to seek hedonism. Whether or not it will be OK long term is to be seen. I have no doubt that if you were to ask the people without kids on their death bed if they wished they had had them, they would say yes.

People in their deathbed also regret working so much but nobody's chomping at the bit to quit their job and become a bum.

> People in their deathbed also regret working so much but nobody's chomping at the bit to quit their job and become a bum

The Financially Independent Retired Early (FIRE) movement is very popular and it centers around focusing on the essentials so that you can quit working early. And that's just an example of one of the ways in which people escape the rat race.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#309
post #244
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Families with "women in the workplace" are not brainwashed, they are wielding hard earned rights and freedoms against violently indifferent economic structures. Under capitalism, we are not free unless we draw a wage, and women have learned there are no wages for housework.

Yes those free loading kids need to be paying their mothers for all the labor they provide.

Edit: before you read this, I want you to understand that I am not giving a flippant answer. I spent a half hour of my own working day to draft this response.

Childhood education is a mechanism that reproduces the existing social order, by transmitting the dominant culture—shared outlook, beliefs, knowledge, and skills which influence one’s educational and occupational opportunities—and legitimizing the inequalities that result from it.

Parents are training their children on employers behalf—to the child's detriment—when they, for example, encourage their children to adopt the dominant language, accent, dress code, manners, hobbies, and tastes. (This is especially true of extrametropolitan families.) Likewise, when parents limit their children’s exposure to their own culture and language (even only as an opportunity cost), they are complicit in reproducing the dominant cultural superstructure which principally benefits the dominant economic institutions and only incidentally benefits the workers these children go into—if at all.

Parents who cook, clean, and care for their children are providing essential services that enable their children to grow up healthy, educated, and productive. These services have a monetary value. Parents are owed wages from the employers who hire their children in the future and profit from their skills and abilities. Since we can't predict the future to track individual employers down, we might implement a form of insurance which would wring compensation from the private sector en mass.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the best thing you can do for the world Is to not have any children so the population gets back down to sustainable levels

The population is at sustainable level, you only need more nuclear power plants

Maybe, but our lifestyles are not sustainable.
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