Is the meant to be 'How Americans' ?
Who Americans spend their time with, by age
351–360 of 432 posts
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#352The 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…
The older I get the more I enjoy spending time by myself. I'm not sure its universally a bad thing.
It's not a bad thing. For those people expressing dismay that us older people prefer to keep to ourselves, get over it. You're not that great.
Bring us grandkids, for exactly one day, or stay the hell away.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#353The 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 don’t think there’s an easy fix for this, and that makes me sad. I mean, the fix is really straightforward. You prevent the burbs from siphoning tax dollars off the host city they surround so that the high cost of sprawl is placed on them, rather than poorer city-center districts. Then, you emulate the community and land-use strategies of areas in which the eldest are least displaced. One of the key features of gl…
I'm ambivalent to your policy prescription; it might or might not work well in practice, but it does sound like it would work.
But I would hardly call that easy, when you need to undo generations of legislation, business convention, and nearly the entire structure of the financial markets, in order to accomplish all that.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#354The 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…
The older I get the more I enjoy spending time by myself. I'm not sure its universally a bad thing.
A community where it's easy to meet other people still makes it easy to spend time alone.
There's an asymmetry here, which is important to account for when designing environments.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#355Is it just me or are the line colors in the chart way to similar to distinguish?
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#356The 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 know people who lived like that and I did early in my life too and the politics are intense. Women get a short shrift and if you are in any way unusual you better move out. Someone I know moved countries so that his parents would not just take a bus or train and land up at their doorstep. Families can be toxic, large families more often so. The amount of abuse brushed under the carpet in order to keep the image of a large, happy family in front of outsiders can be staggering. Think of all the stories that come out of FLDS compounds.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My partner is Asian and she is actually the one who suggested it. It’s very normal in her culture.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm amazed I had to read so far to see this. The older I get, the more I realized I don't like people that much.
I was scrolling down, skimming the comments and figuring out how old each poster was. It was sort of like parents talking about children, except here the children could read, had been parents and were wiser. No one proposing to ask the elders what they might want or need. People pushing political and social agendas tangential to the core issue (surprise, surprise). Sweeping generalizations with no supporting informat…
Well put. I actually spent a decent bit of my teen/young-adult years in nursing homes partially because I really enjoy talking to older people. I noticed though that while some were very chatty many were just as happy by themselves. Not that they wouldn't talk if I engaged but they were so comfortable in their own skin that external stimuli had a much lower influence on inner peace. This was in Europe though. I imagine if someone is generally uncomfortable in their later years or has a lot of ailments or diseases that might be different.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Reducing or removing cars isn’t ‘abandoning all our technological progress’. There have been several good links on HN about cities that have reduced car usage and the effects. Here are two on Pontevedra.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#360Earlier 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…
Two working parents, two kids. Well compensated, both. My god do we envy friends who have family nearby. We both prefer to work, but it's still incredibly hard. As a culture we have to figure out a better way that allows everyone independence & freedom to either work or stay-at-home parent, while providing a support network.
>As a culture we have to figure out a better way that allows everyone independence & freedom to either work or stay-at-home parent, while providing a support network.
Do we, though?
It seems the past generation had a very nice thing going about 30-40 years ago. Fast forward and our societies are literally crumbling around us, what once took one man going to an average job to provide is now taking two full-time people on skilled labour to do the same. Happiness is down. Stress is up. Planet is rotting.
So do we really need to keep beating down a path that has, quite obviously, served us very fucking poorly?