Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the line I've been able (most just showed up in the New World from somewhere or other...) to trace back to 7 generations, it was a little less, but they were in the colonies before the US was a thing, so more than 35, less than 40 years per generation? My wife can go back 7 as well, and her family has also tended towards high parental investment in offspring; next time I'm in the cellar I'll have to check but I'd…
I do get frustrated when I hear people saying negative or unfounded things about couples with relatively small age gaps 7-15 years. It’s the norm, not the exception. And I say that as someone who has only dated people my own age.
The window for great-grandmothers is closing
481–490 of 494 posts
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to nitpick this, but there is a subtle flaw in this thinking. The main argument of the article is that our experiences in the world (e.g. having a good teacher, getting bullied, parenting, etc) don't account for much difference in our personalities and genetically determined proclivities in the long term. Although the article says only half of personality / psych traits are genetically determined, which is stil…
The other half is mostly unshared environment (peers, etc.) Of course the parents affect both indirectly. But parenting style matters very little compared to genetics and who your kids are around.
I'm surprised that you are so ready to abandon your common sense in the face of a psychology book (Judith Rich Harris's book specifically, which asserts that how a parent treats a child has almost no influence on how the child turns out). Psychology papers and psychology books misuse and misapply statistics all the time. Surely someone as well educated as you knows this? (Maybe your wife is a psychologist, so you are overly accepting of psychology results?) The basic mistake being made here is to ignore the possibility that a parent has treated different children differently: one kid is shy: a good parent will nudge him into making friends, but avoid forcing him into unstructured situations with many children because that will tend to overwhelm him. I.e., a good parent is part of the so-called "unshared environment": the shy kid's non-shy sister is not treated the way I just described. (There is for example no need to nudge her into making friends.)
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hundreds of millions of people die from war, and avoiding war is a lot easier than what the (well-meaning) climate change evangelists/zealots want us to do. You don't need to destroy the entire modern economy and western civilization to avoid war. Also, why is it that the people constantly screaming about sea levels rising are the same millionaires and billionaires who own $$$$$ properties in places like Miami or Mar…
Your blithe dismissal of migration seems likely to me to put severely to the test. According to the US Republican Party, the USA is already suffering from an invasion that is out of control, when climate change has barely gotten started. What the US can and will do if and when it faces 100M people trying to get north is an open question. The US military will not be able to use ground force to keep out that sort of ma…
>According to the US Republican Party
You're losing credibility quickly
>the USA is already suffering from an invasion that is out of control, when climate change has barely gotten started.
Okay, A. What's happening at the southern border isn't any more of an "invasion" than the J6 riots. If only 1/500 people in your "invasion" even has a firearm, let alone training with it, it ain't much of an invasion.
B. What's happening at the southern border has absolutely NOTHING to do with climate change, it's strictly economic.
>What the US can and will do if and when it faces 100M people trying to get north is an open question. The US military will not be able to use ground force to keep out that sort of mass migration. Will it drop bombs on migrating populations? Is that what you call "backbone"?
What if there were some kind of relatively safe, yet impassable barrier? The kind that doesn't exercise force against anyone, ever. One that's so safe that the only people who get injured by it are those stupid enough to delibarately decide to try to scale it, while being incompetent enough to be incapable of doing so safely. Perhaps one that was tall enough that it couldn't be scaled by 20 or 40 foot ladders? Besides, this is a ridiculous question. Even under the president with the highest amount of illegal immigration in US history, Joe Biden (10,000,000 and counting!), we barely hit a tenth of that figure across 3.5 years.
Sadly, there's just no way we're gonna be able to afford such a barrier. That would have to cost what, $10bn? $50bn? Except that's still less than we've spent securing the border of a country on the other side of the planet that almost no Americans have any real, significant, substantial interests in (besides Hunter Biden, of course, who made millions of dollars per year as a Ukrainian energy executive thanks to his deep expertise and demonstrated thought leadership in the hydrocarbon exploration and extraction business... /s)
>Finally, it seems as if you think that having lots of money somehow exempts you from the same cognitive biases as everybody else, as if the behavior of the rich is an indicator of "the smart move". It never has been, and it never will be.
No, what I'm asserting is that the people screeching about the oceans rising and the sky falling are the same ones buying up all the properties being sold by the people who are afraid of oceans rising. It's a racket.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#484If you ever sit down and really think about it, it is absolutely wild how profoundly the invention of the birth control pill has changed the course of human history, our cultures, and human society. It's gotta be up there with, like, writing and fire, in terms of shaping the destiny of our species.
Can’t imagine that much less unwanted children is anything but net positive though..
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who had his first kid at 23, you grow up real quick once you become a parent. Moreover I doubt it’s even possible for a person to fully mature if they don’t have kids. Or to really understand their own parents for that matter.
I was 24 and still in college. This thread is full of people saying "I was a mess" or "I wasn't mature enough". When we found out we were pregnant, I was working at a gas station, my off hours spent riding around in a truck with my friends yelling things at people walking by on the street for reactions. There's maturity and stability. Now I'm "ahead" of many of those friends because I knew I needed to hurry up and ge…
What really cracks me up is that people have this expectation that they’ll ever be “ready” to have kids. Not going to happen. The whole thing reminds me of the first few minutes of “Idiocracy”.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your blithe dismissal of migration seems likely to me to put severely to the test. According to the US Republican Party, the USA is already suffering from an invasion that is out of control, when climate change has barely gotten started. What the US can and will do if and when it faces 100M people trying to get north is an open question. The US military will not be able to use ground force to keep out that sort of ma…
>According to the US Republican Party You're losing credibility quickly >the USA is already suffering from an invasion that is out of control, when climate change has barely gotten started. Okay, A. What's happening at the southern border isn't any more of an "invasion" than the J6 riots. If only 1/500 people in your "invasion" even has a firearm, let alone training with it, it ain't much of an invasion. B. What's ha…
Well, at least I can thank you for being clear about your understanding of the world.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#487If you haven't read the article, it's about how people having kids later means you won't meet your great grandparents. My mom had me when she was 23, and her mom had her at 22. I'm in my forties and still have two living grandparents, and am very grateful for them. I remember a lot of days where my grandmother watched me and my sister, and she was able to do that because she was only in her late 40's herself and plen…
The flip side, and I recognize this is not a privilege everyone shares, is that being an older parent may mean better financial stability and opportunities. On today's world of housing costs putting ownership out of reach of many, inflation, layoffs, that can mean a lot in terms of stability for a family.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#488My last-living great-grandparent died when I was about a month old. I hope he got to meet me, though of course I wouldn't remember. The odd thing is that my parents (to my recollection) never spoke of him. My mother's parents died before I was born, and my father's parents died when I was around 10 years old. With the exception of my great-grandfather, my other great-grandparents died in the 1940s and '50s. They bare…
Most people don't know _the names_ of all 8 grandparents, but those people are the root culture of the family you grew up in.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#489One kid is good enough so I don't regret getting one at 38. Letting grand parents help with child caring also carries a lot of downsides, especially if they live in.
I read a statistic years ago that said that taking care of grandkids had a u-shaped mortality response. If you took care of them 2 days a weeks, it was optimal for mortality. More than that and you died younger. Less than that and you died younger.
Yes, correlation is not causation, but that correlation is interesting.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve had a similar thought about marriage, late marriage means you forgo the likelihood for big wedding anniversaries.
Reading all these comments I just keep thinking it's all a matter of priorities. If you really want to do something, the sooner you do it the better. Responsibly, of course. What "responsibly" means in any case might also be influenced by your priorities. For instance, a lot of people say "We're not financially ready to have kids" but they really mean "We can't keep up the fancy holiday trips if we add a kid". If you…
Doubling the child tax credit a second time could go a long way. Also making single detached family homes cheaper around good paying jobs will help a lot too.
What do you think are the chief obstacles that make it difficult to build a family?