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Who Americans spend their time with, by age

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Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#341

Post by megablast »

stingraycharles wrote: post #219
conradev wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandma sold her house and we used some of the money to convert our garage into an apartment for her so that she could live with our family. Certainly not everyone can do this but living with your parents/grandparents as they get older does seem like a reasonable “fix” to me.

We’re going to be buying a house with my family, mother and her husband in 2021. What struck me as interesting is the responses of my friends to these plans; how much trouble this would cause me, that taking care of your parents is a huge effort, that they would never do this, etc. I consider this attitude a good example of why things are the way they are. But I take pride in going against the norm here.

I wonder how your partner really feels about that.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#342

Post by nine_k »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #11

I don't even want kids. I don't know why the 'time spent with one's children' line hurts so much, but it does. It sharply rises, before plummeting at age 40. That's got to be a jarring transition. No wonder so many folks have trouble with the 'empty nest' and mid-life crisis.

Obviously enough, attitudes like this weed themselves out of the gene pool.

I'd like to paraphrase an old HN comment which said that maybe eventually a culture will develop in which industrial and post-industrial transitions would not drop fertility, that is, the propensity to have more children than needed for mere reproduction. With every post-industrial country having fertility rate below reproduction level, such a culture would eventually take over the world.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#343

Post by BurningFrog »

natchy wrote: post #280
BurningFrog wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Blue Tribe is an alternative religion is many ways.

The Red Tribe still has Christianity, so they don't need another one.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#344

Post by Izkata »

mhh__ wrote: post #37
silveroriole wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me feel better in a way. By age 60 it won’t matter much whether I had kids or not. Time spent with them per day equals, like, one TV episode. So I’m happy to see that my partner and my self will continue to be more important by that metric.

I would be willing to bet that most parents first and last thoughts in a day is about their children, the idea of it working out to roughly a TV episode a day is absolutely bizarre.

GP said "time spent with them", not "time spent thinking about them".

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#345

Post by ip26 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #18
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #11

I don't even want kids. I don't know why the 'time spent with one's children' line hurts so much, but it does. It sharply rises, before plummeting at age 40. That's got to be a jarring transition. No wonder so many folks have trouble with the 'empty nest' and mid-life crisis.

The Western nuclear family is a very unnatural social arrangement. Anthropologists have found that in most hunter-gatherers, the average infant is held at one point or another by 30+ people in a typical day. The nuclear family has the twin downsides of putting tons of stress on parents of young kids, who shoulder the entire childcare burden, and deprives a lot of grandparents, aunts, cousins, and others of meaningful…

It does make the workforce more mobile, and has probably aided the cause of social progressivism.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#346

Post by barry-cotter »

emptysongglass wrote: post #304
an_opabinia wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone woke up in the morning and cooked for each other I am not passing judgement here. The women woke up in the morning and cooked for everyone else. > It was so nice to have that much support around all the time. People have written about this in books that are now almost four decades old. Everywhere women entered the workforce in a highly compensated way, this arrangement came to an end, the number of childre…

You do realize that capitalism co-opts everything and that women entering the workforce led to two people now earning what a single person used to? What's more, I'm not really sure the women cooking in those villages hate it as much as you put on them. That's not to say we don't all deserve self-determination but the story we were sold, of ultimate freedom for everyone, is just a new wage-slavery for everyone. Lest y…

> You do realize that capitalism co-opts everything and that women entering the workforce led to two people now earning what a single person used to?

Two people earn a lot more than one person used to by any material metric. People don’t feel any richer because any surplus gets eaten up by positional goods. It’s not enough to have a perfectly reasonable 1950s house. You must have one twice as big, like your friends. It’s not enough to go on a camping holiday, or road trip. You have to have a trip to the Caribbean twice a year. Most of all, the ultimate positional good, the real prestige markers, an Ivy League degree for your children and a house in a good school district, i.e. one with no poor people.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#347

Post by asiachick »

ThoreauBred wrote: post #217
burlesona wrote: post #36

The 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…

Did you read the bottom half of the linked website? It clearly states more alone time does not necessarily mean they’re lonelier as individuals. Perhaps as a species this nuclear family model we have to start with should really be giving way in later life to more autonomy? After 20+ years being parented and pushed into team work, is it so terrible to consider enabling free agency and experience? What makes me sad is…

> After 20+ years being parented and pushed into team work, is it so terrible to consider enabling free agency and experience?

This is an entirely western or American POV. I have no idea if it came from media (movies/books telling us we should move out as soon as possible) or from advertising (because if you can get people to move out you sell more stuff. More housing, more cars, more every day appliances etc...)

In plenty of cultures there is ZERO stigma of not moving out of your birth home until you get married and that might not happen till your 30s or 40s. It's just normal.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#348

Post by Thorentis »

an_opabinia wrote: post #293
frakt0x90 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Everyone woke up in the morning and cooked for each other I am not passing judgement here. The women woke up in the morning and cooked for everyone else. > It was so nice to have that much support around all the time. People have written about this in books that are now almost four decades old. Everywhere women entered the workforce in a highly compensated way, this arrangement came to an end, the number of childre…

Sounds like you are passing judgement to me. The idea that women are oppressed when they cook for their families, but free and liberated when they work as a wage slave for their boss, is very very sad. You talk about choice, but never consider that men have very little choice either. Either be a wage slave, or by looked down on for "not providing". Spending time with your family and on the home front is one of the most rewarding things a human being can do. It is a great loss to society that this now looked down on as a lesser choice because there are "better" options available to women now.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#350

Post by astura »

DamnYuppie wrote: post #202
astura wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? This makes no sense. Capitalism isn't the problem, lack of boundaries is. My best friend lived upstairs from her parents for years. It was her own apartment but the arrangement was hell on earth. Multiple times a day every day her mom would come barging in (and I do mean barging) to insert herself into whatever was going on in my friend's apartment, make nasty comments, or borrow/take something. Her mom eventua…

That is almost a form of abuse to be honest. I hope your friend has learned to set boundaries and enforce them. People like her mom are very good at manipulating their children and seeing absolutely nothing wrong with it.

She moved out because she got married and everything's mostly fine now the mom doesn't see my friend's living quarters as an extension of her own.
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