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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?

#381

Post by Tade0 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #182
xyzelement wrote: post #141

I was lucky that my wife convinced me to move close to her family (it would have never occurred to me.) Now we live just a few doors down from her brother who's got 4 kids, and we have 2. Watching the cousins intermingle is an amazing and unique experience. It's kinda sad but it's also obvious that people are majorly missing out. On having kids, on living close to family, on all of it. Ironically, this is evolution i…

That would only make sense if the issue was biological and not socioeconomic. No one's getting selected out when the issue isn't a biological predisposition to avoiding procreation.

While evolution might be a stretch here, this definitely is natural selection, just not as obvious as in other species.

The number of infants globally peaked around 2014-2017 and most of the future population growth will be due to larger generations replacing smaller ones.

The decline in population already started, but we're not seeing it thanks to how long we live.

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

#382

Post by NoPicklez »

skissane wrote: post #352
NoPicklez wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of those things I agree with, however the issue was primarily sparked during COVID like in many countries. Houses prices were relatively affordable prior to COVID and increases in inflation. Australia kept its record low interest rates in place during COVID, then we had runaway inflation to record high’s like many countries did and our reserve bank failed to increase interest rates even slightly to help with the…

People have been complaining about housing affordability in Australia for years . I remember endless discussions of it, media articles about it, and feeling its pain myself, 20 years ago. No denying it has gotten worse, but it was already rather bad. That said - we bought our house (NSW Central Coast) in late 2015 for AU$550K. At the peak of the COVID price surge, those property value websites were saying it was over…

That’s fair enough. Complaints are valid, I do feel that things have become too unaffordable.

I lived in a rental which was sold in 2019 for $580k and I remember people thinking that was high, now that house is worth $760k.

Looking at suburb medium prices skyrocking in only 3 years does put a dampener on things

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

#383

Post by somanystudied »

maxdoop wrote: post #164
ronaldoCR wrote: post #48

people are missing out. this is sad

There are studies that show quote plainly that people with kids are unholier than those without. The difference is much later on life when the happiness “winner” switches to the group with children. One theory aside from the obvious is that the brain makes sense of whatever might happen to it, over time. Like how you miss out on some big opportunity, but years later you say, “ah, that’s ok because it led me to where…

[dead]

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

#384

Post by khazhoux »

conradludgate wrote: post #353

Why are people so obsessed about it I have children? I'm married and we've decided we don't want to have kids. It really bothers me when people say "oh you're missing out, that's such a shame". Please think about what you are saying. It doesn't matter if I'm gay, infertile, poor, depressed, or just don't want them. Please keep your judgements to yourself or even just stop judging others.

> It really bothers me when people say "oh you're missing out, that's such a shame"

Do you have any friends or relatives who refuse to try ramen or pho, no matter how many times you tell them that it's the best food ever, and that you also thought it seemed weird to put steak in a broth with noodles until you finally gave it a try and then you couldn't believe how delicious it was and you wish you'd tried it years earlier... but they still think it sounds gross?

It's exactly like that. :-)

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

#385

Post by sirpunch »

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 can attest to this with N=1 datapoint here. My best friend postponed having kids till they could afford a SFH, but kept pushing it further as the supply dwindled and rates shot up (tier-1 city residents). I can imagine how the number of planned kids could be directly proportional to the number of bedrooms a couple can afford to have.

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

#386

Post by chaostheory »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #9
jojobas wrote: post #5

That's an interesting way to say "the West largely stopped breeding a while ago".

Late stage capitalism driven extinction

There’s also late stage socialism. It’s called communism. It too relies on the right kind of growth just like capitalism. Socialism also tends to fail faster than capitalism because power is centralized from the start, so corruption spreads faster and is more malevolent.

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

#387

Post by sangnoir »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #83
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.

Have you noticed that much, much poorer places often have a much higher birth rate? I think there is something else going on. And I mean poorer in terms of actual living conditions on the ground.

> Have you noticed that much, much poorer places often have a much higher birth rate?

In those places, the older kids help raise the younger ones, and can also help the parents with their labor/begging/crime/prostitution.

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

#388

Post by bowsamic »

sneed_chucker wrote: post #157
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm baffled my peers , who absolutely could afford to, still have no interest. These are people making 150-200k (and at my prior job, 200-400k).

The societal norms and structures that promoted natalism are gone in western countries for much of the population. Raising kids is hard work. Ideally you have them young and live close to your family so that you have grandparents to help with childcare. But our society tells people to wait as long as possible to have kids, and to prioritize career over other things - so once people do have kids, if they ever do so, t…

Every support system, from the "family home" where the grandparents have a bed, to the woman not working and taking care of the kids, has been systematically destroyed. Now everyone is expected to work and live alone/as a couple, and they have basically no physical support for raising a child.

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

#389

Post by AlchemistCamp »

vlovich123 wrote: post #339
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…

There are also people who pretend like problems highlighted in the Bay Area and other metropolitan cities are unique to them. Yet every time it looks like those are just the first wave of the changes that are heading to other regions first. Like the wave of homelessness. People made fun of SF, then it spread to the broader Bay Area, then LA, then other parts of the country. Turns out the effects of income inequality…

> ”Certainly home ownership is rarer even for millennials and Genz is likely going to have even lower rates”

Looking at the data, certainly not: https://x.com/noahpinion/status/1649492485968891904?s=46&t=C...

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

#390

Post by the_gipsy »

beaned wrote: post #179
smallmancontrov wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only in the Western first world is this now normal It ain't just us, my friend. Births Per Woman: 1.64 USA 1.34 Japan 1.28 China 0.84 Korea > we've just been raised softly and do not value children Now that women are part of the formal economy and everyone has options for entertainment other than unprotected sex, the mechanism by which the formal economy used to offload the entire cost of child rearing while reapin…

I will admit that I was a bit off-the-cuff in terms of the Western aspect of my comment. There are lots of factors, of course, and the trend isn't limited to only the west. Though it has certainly become a more normal trend in developed and developing countries than those with a higher level of poverty and poor. I still contend however that it has never been easy. My grandparents had four children starting at age 20.…

> And I ask, who am I to be so conceited that all of that history, that fourth of a fraction of the universe, should end with me?

Nobody will remember us in just 100 years. Nobody.

> Maybe you've been raised softly, and don't know how to set yourself aside to rear and participate in a family that is spiritually worth more than just yourself.

Is it really worth more, though? I always wondered if having kids is just so that somebody finally listens to you at an age where your peers really only listen if they're deep friends, or if you have something actually exceptional to say. And to relive childhood, and then again when you have grandchildren. You don't get these two things if you don't have children. But they're not that deep, you can e.g. teach to actually intelligent peers, research deep topics, and relive childhood curiosity in different ways. For the benefit of all of society, not just your little gang.

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