41–50 of 325 posts
> "For more than 95% of our evolutionary history we lived as hunter-gatherers. Therefore, contemporary hunter-gatherer societies can offer clues as to whether there are certain child-rearing systems to which infants, and their mothers, may be psychologically adapted," You can cherry pick anything that fits a narrative. This narrative advocates for more funding for state sponsored daycare, which does not resemble anyt…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does it have to be all women?
The whole pedophilia scare makes people suspicious by default of adult men in contact with non related small children. There's a great movie I recommend on that problem, The Hunt (2012): https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2106476/
We can only move forward, not backward. The hunter-gatherer existence is often endowed with some notion of pristine, peaceful existence in harmony with nature, which is likely far from the actual truth. That said, I for one find many aspects (but not all!) of the present situation unsatisfactory, where the needs of macroeconomy and national priorities supersedes many of our most basic needs as humans. This article co…
With all the massive life improvements we have with technology we could be investing so much more into our kids. Jobs could be flexible with short work weeks, and we could use that time to invest in kids. Parent, volunteer, mentor. Remote work done on a school site giving even more time to help kids learn.
When I was younger kids played with others in the neighborhood, and there was always a homemaker parent in every household. Now every adult has at least a part-time job. Kids still play in the neighborhood, yet weekly instead of daily. More often they are in daycare, school, or staying home.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With all the massive life improvements we have with technology we could be investing so much more into our kids. Jobs could be flexible with short work weeks, and we could use that time to invest in kids. Parent, volunteer, mentor. Remote work done on a school site giving even more time to help kids learn.
Having worked remote most of my kids' lives, I'd say there are other challenges. Parents need time away from their kids too, and if every parent in society is working then how are kids supposed to get the adult attention and allow the parents some child-free time? When I was younger kids played with others in the neighborhood, and there was always a homemaker parent in every household. Now every adult has at least a…
> childcare needs to give parents an actual break. In my experience caring for your small children is really demanding work. On the one hand you need to be focused on the situation in order to protect the children and on the other hand there is not much going on for entertaining yourself. Creative or focused deep work where you get a positive feeling of accomplishment also counts as a break from childcare for me. So…
If it helps get the word out I’m all for it, though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alloparenting
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,44&qsp=1&q...
> childcare needs to give parents an actual break. In my experience caring for your small children is really demanding work. On the one hand you need to be focused on the situation in order to protect the children and on the other hand there is not much going on for entertaining yourself. Creative or focused deep work where you get a positive feeling of accomplishment also counts as a break from childcare for me. So…
We also have a similar experience, where adding families (with kids) is greatly beneficial for everyone, but the folks who have kids that we are truly good friends with live far away. Nearby we have playdates and dinners with other families but I wouldn't want to cohabit with them, not even for an overnight stay. So we also only get the holidays or special occasions with other families and then we can finally get a break.
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In our Montessori school, parents do pick up other kids occasionally, and the kids would just stay with the family for the afternoon. Ideally, kids take turns so sometimes parents get an afternoon off. Another thing that sometimes works (lots of preconditions) - living in walking distance of grandparents or siblings, and let the kids visit family frequently.
> Another thing that sometimes works (lots of preconditions) - living in walking distance of grandparents or siblings, and let the kids visit family frequently. If you are not sufficiently rich such that you can afford personal services such as live in nannies and flights to visit family and whatnot, I find that living walking distance to close family is one of the biggest quality of life upgrades one could make (obv…
And yet those with the power to change this situation choose not to. We have to work in office buildings located in expensive commercial districts with small homes/accomodation and no real community, or spend hours commuting each week if we want to live in the suburbs.
After a few decades we earn enough money to escape and retire to a small town with greater space and more community, but our now adult children are forced to trek back to the big city to earn a living.
The grandchildren get to see granny and grandpa a few times a year, if they're lucky. One of the few developments improving this situation, remote work, is sadly considered a privilege.
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Corporations, just like governments, engage in pervasive propaganda, from impressionable school years all the way to adulthood. Edward Burnays said propaganda got a bad name after WW1, so they renamed it to "PR". It's how corporations got women to smoke, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom How they control the crowd, featuring Edward Burnays and his uncle Freud (whose theories became famous ironical…
> As both sexes flooded the labor pool, wages got depressed, and marriage declined. Corporations did not force both sexes to flood the labor pool. Women wanted (and fought) to gain the ability to be paid. To reduce their struggle and achievement as a “corporate conspiracy” is an insult. Might businesses influence people’s decisions with marketing? Sure. But that is not why people yearn to be financially independent.…
People are often not given a choice, individually or even collectively. For example when Crimea overwhelmingly (94%) voted in 1991 to be independent of Ukraine, no one honored it. Then 6 months later they voted 54% for Ukraine to be independent of USSR, and that was taken as them wanting to be part of Ukraine. Then in 2014, the only choices given were be part of Ukraine, or be part of Russia. They never again got to vote for independence in a referendum, as Montenegro or Kosovo did. Kurds and Catalonians voted for independence in 2017, but none of that was honored. Uyghurs, Rohingya, Palestinians and many others are stateless. In short, people are usually just kicked around by whatever system the governments set up. And similarly with corporations, though it's more voluntary, it's still a system. As a young woman, to declare that you aspire to be a mother and homemaker, is something of an oddity and peer pressure is strong at formative young years. I wouldn't say most young people are really making "their own choices" statistically speaking, and in any case, the choices society has collectively made has led people psychologically to be more miserable across the board, and we are using medication as a way to treat the symptoms.
I could be wrong. Perhaps today's women are actually happier than their grandmothers ever were. But it doesn't seem to be borne out in the data. And I think it has to do with the labor market.
https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intel...
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-...
I should say that the USSR has enfranchised women much earlier than USA, and given them equal rights to jobs much earlier. It's hard to me to gauge whether people there were happier by the 1990s (fall of USSR) than people in USA are today (we may be reaching a breaking point here as well).