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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?

#441

Post by ikekkdcjkfke »

sangnoir wrote: post #361
atoav wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is doing well financially I don't think you found the reason. The gist of it is: There are worlds and circumstances into which people want to bring kids. We mostly failed to create that world and those circumstances. If tou want to know what a solution looks like look at western democracies with high birth rates. E.g. France, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark. The rest is probably due to individualism. Kid…

> Kids cost time and energy and capitalism tells us we should live our best lives. Thought experiment for all the unrestrained free-market folk: how can the free hand of the market can solve for low birthrates? Bonus points if the solution doesn't involve government-issued visas.

Well technically those who seek to gain from people having children would want to generate som marketing/propaganda that encourages having kids. Families want big safe cars and would pay a premium for that, singles would be more enclined to drive in old used cars, so theres the car industry. Families usually wants big houses so there that, diaper industry etc.

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

#442

Post by mise_en_place »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #99
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'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).

My net worth is north of 5 or 6 million now, on a good day. My salary is mid 5 figures with TC. You just happened to hit a proverbial jackpot, in another sense. You don't think I haven't had my share of exes? You don't think I've ever tried to settle down? You had blind luck in your romantic endeavors. But please don't wear that as some sort of weird badge of honor, it cheapens the whole thing, in my honest opinion.

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

#443

Post by ImHereToVote »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #329
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.

Housing isn't the sole factor in declining birthrates. Every industrialized nation is going through the same phenomenon and not all of them are having housing crises. It's a combination of various associated costs to raising children (housing, early childcare, food, schooling, extracurriculars, hobbies, etc.) that have risen faster than most people's wages. The nuclear family model also significantly diminished the r…

The only economic metric that has a strong correlation to declining birthrates is hours women work for a salary.

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

#444

Post by kubb »

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…

It’s awesome if you can afford it. I wouldn’t mind having 3 kids if each one of them could have their own space in the house, if I could help them develop life skills, and give them all the love and time they need. With large families it feels like many of the children are neglected. In a modern world either you don’t have the money or you don’t have the time.

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

#445

Post by graemep »

sangnoir wrote: post #377
keiferski wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a liability only if consumerism is your only value. Which for a lot of people, is absolutely the case. And it’s only logical if you only care about your own individual desires. It almost isn’t worth arguing about, though, because the reality is that society is ultimately made up of people that have kids. All the rationalizations in the world won’t change the basic facts of biology.

Is daycare "consumerism"? Other factors include stagnant wages, collage debts, amd even high medical costs - a vaginal birth with no pain medications and no complications can cost 5-figures (and may include a line-item for a parent holding the baby!). Inflation has made baby products really expensive (did I mention stagnant wages?), and this is before daycare, which can be cost as much as rent in some locales, unless…

The same thing is happening in all western countries, and some other developed countries too.. Even those with free university level education, free health services, etc. Here in the UK we have the free healthcare (and maternity provision is still good), we do have university fees in most the UK, but the costs are far lower than in the US (fees are an order of magnitude lower than at some US universities, and there are cheap loans to cover fees and living costs). We have government subsidies for childcare.

We still have falling birth rates.

I actually think daycare is part of the problem - what is the point of having kids if you do not spend lots of time with them? The biggest advance would be more family friendly working hours.

i have earned a lot less to spend time with my kids, and i am so happy I did. The best thing that happened to me was to lose my job the day my oldest was born. Otherwise I would have been very well paid (I worked for an investment bank) but have hardly known my kids.

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

#446

Post by The_Colonel »

jimbob45 wrote: post #360
sneed_chucker wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Raising kids is hard work. I would bet this plays a large part - people today respect the difficulty in a way past parents previously did not. Birth rates are certainly declining but I would bet the rates of accidental infant/toddler death are down as well. That said, I personally know parents that are just taunting SIDS with the way they ignore infant sleeping best practices even though they’ve read the books to kno…

Societal expectation on the care for children grew immensely over the past few generations. When I was a child, parents largely just covered the physical needs and the kids were otherwise left alone to do their own thing. I remember being bored a lot, sitting in a room or roaming the streets.

Nowadays there's a widespread expectation that parents should organize activities, drive their kids' education, just be way more involved in their lives.

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

#447

Post by drawfloat »

khazhoux wrote: post #384
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 ea…

You're not responsible for a bowl of noodles for the rest of your life.

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

#448

Post by rthrfrd »

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…

> Ironically, this is evolution in action. The folks that "remember" how to have a family and raise kids have an uncontested claim to the future. The "it's too hard to have kids" crew is selecting against themselves, evolutionary speaking. That won't last.

You're only thinking about the "nature" part of "nature & nurture" though. Playing genetic pot-luck with your partner isn't the only way to have a legacy.

For example, think about all the spare time and energy that a non-child-rearing adult has to shape the cultural & technological future, and the impact that might have on the critical "nurture" element of your own child's life.

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

#449

Post by Mountain_Skies »

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…

Yesterday's divorce thread quickly disappeared off the front page but it's the taboo topic you must understand if you want to understand why family formation in the western aligned world has declined so rapidly. As long as we have certain truths that cannot be questioned and blackhole any attempts to discuss them, confusion will prevail.

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

#450

Post by 627467 »

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.

Please think about it before judging other people's judgement. People have opinions, its fine.

[edit] benefits of having kids: you stop taking yourself so seriously like being oversensitive about other people's opinions

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