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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?

#301

Post by brailsafe »

Runways wrote: post #263
voidfunc wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has a blindness for the vast land area of America that isn't The Bay Area, NYC, Seattle, Boston, and a handful of other insanely expensive locations. Home ownership has probably plummeted in those markets (I don't have the data) but it leads to certain types of comments being passed around as fact. The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless…

Texan here. Your ad hominem attack is BS. Our house prices, North of Dallas and deep in the suburbs - far from the bay areas and Seattles, have doubled. That includes my home. People in our profession usually have to live by big cities, like Dallas. But the homes are ridiculously priced and it's insane. My juniors have no hope of owning a home that is big enough to raise a family without years of saving. And they're…

I'm more surprised you have juniors

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

#302

Post by sjy »

NoPicklez wrote: post #253
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…

Whilst I don't disagree with you. That doesn't mean those with mortgages aren't struggling to pay. Also if true, that is insane that the average american lives in a home that they own by the time they're 35. That is so far and wide not the case here in Australia. Here in Australia, we don't have fixed rate mortgages for the life of the mortgage we have variable and fixed upto around 1-5 years. Our interest rates have…

> that is insane that the average american lives in a home that they own by the time they're 35. That is so far and wide not the case here in Australia.

The stats seem pretty similar here – 50% of 30-34 year olds owned their own home in 2021: https://www.housingdata.gov.au/visualisation/home-ownership/...

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

#303

Post by up_o »

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.

this is a funny question. Avoiding tangents, for all intents and purposes, I'm secular. Though I've only had two children with no intention of having more, I was raised Southern Baptist, the oldest of six. I love our big family. My mother was one of seven, and all her siblings have many children as well. I look back fondly on our holiday gatherings and miss them dearly. my aunts were guardian angels through so many difficult times. But as much as I want those big family gatherings and the overall dynamic, I couldn't imagine going back to Southern Baptism as a means to see them perpetuated. It would be nice if there were a natalist "movement" (for lack of better word) that was more or less secular (without being self-aggrandizing and delusional ala effective altruism).

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

#304

Post by opportune »

robocat wrote: post #279
jmopp wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. In poorer parts of the world, you might have an extra mouth to feed for the first 15-20 years, but once your child finishes school and finds work they're contributing to your well-being and to helping feed the younger children. You also need not worry too much about your retirement, because you know your family will support you, and you'll play a role raising your grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Kids as a retirement investment - makes sense in countries that lack safe investments (safe from over-taxation, theft, inflation). Built in interest/growth rate due to breeding next generation. Unfortunately I have shorted the children market by not breeding when younger. What's the appropriate way to invest in 2.5 children? I presume they are a very illiquid investment. The other problem with cousins is that brother…

Just buy enough shares in public companies, or apartment units, to get the capital-share-of-income of 2.5 of someone else’s children. Let the parents figure out how to get something out of the wage-share-of-income

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

#305

Post by remarkEon »

retrac98 wrote: post #296
remarkEon wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I encounter this attitude I like to remind that person that they should have no voice, whatsoever, in what happens in government and politics anymore. I don't want people who are self-selecting themselves out of the future having any say in what happens for my children. It's fine that you don't want kids, enjoy the golf course I guess. But in general I will discount your opinions to zero on anything else of…

This makes no sense. Why shouldn’t someone who’s going to live in a society for several more decades have a say in how it operates?

It makes perfect sense. Their preference set is limited to their own desires, for as long as they are terrestrially bound. They have no skin in the game for ensuring that things are functional after they die. Why should I listen to someone who only cares about their own gratification?

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

#306

Post by brailsafe »

keiferski wrote: post #231
caturopath wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're responsible for yourself in either the U.S or Canada, and have built some kind of a life as an adult in a place that isn't right next to where your parents still live, assuming they're still together, then children are an expensive liability rather than necessary and relatively cheap labor used for supplying the rich ones with chocolate. Likewise, access to free in or inexpensive birth control and sex education allows a person to make less risky decisions for longer, rather than popping out 5 kids and figuring it out.

If you can figure out a way to afford the liability and it's important to you, great, otherwise it's sort of illogical.

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

#307

Post by serial_dev »

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 feel obligated to share my counter example of anecdata.

Current team of 12, 9 are young parents, other 3 in committed relationships (international team based in North America + EU).

Previous team was around 50% parents, but people went on parental leave all the time, so the number kept increasing (company based in Germany, and basically the German half of the team had all the babies, the immigrant half almost none which is interesting).

And my brother and I got our first kids the same year, so the cousin bit is also covered.

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

#308

Post by anon291 »

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 know many couples in Portland Oregon having multiple kids (four or more) on incomes ranging from 60k-over 200k. Moms stay at home too.

You know what they have in common? They're all religious.

The lack of children is a cultural thing based on how much you value kids over things. That's basically it. Those who value children have them. Those who don't don't. I don't understand why this is controversial. Look at Israel.

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

#309

Post by remarkEon »

nyokodo wrote: post #288
remarkEon wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I encounter this attitude I like to remind that person that they should have no voice, whatsoever, in what happens in government and politics anymore. I don't want people who are self-selecting themselves out of the future having any say in what happens for my children. It's fine that you don't want kids, enjoy the golf course I guess. But in general I will discount your opinions to zero on anything else of…

> I will discount your opinions to zero on anything else of consequence I’d settle for a much higher tax rate for the voluntarily childless to very inadequately offset the lack of contributing to the next generation. Probably the best way to implement this is that the child tax credit should be much bigger.

Yeah the child tax credit should be doubled or tripled, that's one option.

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

#310

Post by opportune »

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.

You probably grew up in a very wealthy and highly educated part of a major city. Not the case for 35 year olds in broad swathes of the country
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