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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?

#551

Post by angra_mainyu »

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.

Affordability has rarely been a concern for having kids.

I grew up poor and people never "thought" about affording kids, just had them and figured things out along the way.

It seems it's a self-filtering mechanism in the upper classes, that put all kinds stops before having kids (e.g not ready/mature enough yet, not financially stable, etc) and usually end up having one at most.

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

#552

Post by otikik »

Dalewyn wrote: post #531
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 afford children but swore to never have them nor marry, for the following reasons: * Life is a hellhole. My children must witness my (and my hypothetical spouse's) deaths; witnessing death is a fucking hellish experience , I motherfucking do not desire to force that experience on anyone let alone my children. * The world will continue. The Earth has spun and travelled around the Sun for time immemorial and will…

Hi, your first comment ("Life is a hellhole") makes me think that you don't seem to be in a great place mentally right now. It's definitely your choice, and your decisions, but I would advice to review those views with someone else other than the internet. Whatever works for you - a friend, a therapist, a family member or a priest.

Consider this: despite life being "a hellhole full of tragedies", hopefully you don't resent your parents for giving birth to you?

My view is that life is both: full of tragedies and hardship, yes. But also full of wonders and joy. It's a full package, you seem to be only seeing one half of it. And to be clear: children are the same. A package, with joy and love and laugther but also hard work and tiredness and effort.

Hopefully this comment does not sound condescending to you, I am really trying to help. Have a very nice day.

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

#554

Post by Staple_Diet »

voidfunc wrote: post #408
remarkEon wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I encounter this attitude I like to remind that person that they should have no voice, whatsoever, in what happens in government and politics anymore. I don't want people who are self-selecting themselves out of the future having any say in what happens for my children. It's fine that you don't want kids, enjoy the golf course I guess. But in general I will discount your opinions to zero on anything else of…

If we really want to go down this route we should do away with parenting. Children our are future therefore the government will be responsible for producing and raising children to meet our necessary societal workforce quotas. Parenting is a messy business that introduces too many quality control issues. Our glorious future means we must have only perfectly standard issue babies that conform to exact government measu…

Ah yes, the Romanian orphanage concept. I did wonder when Eastern bloc policies would see a resurgence.

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

#555

Post by v-erne »

pkolaczk wrote: post #276
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.

Not owning a house is not a reason people don’t have kids. After WW II the birth rates in Poland were crazy high despite obviously huge problems with housing - often 2 families had to live in one small 2-room apartment (not a house). Now most people own or can afford to rent yet the birthrate plummeted. The primary reason for low birth rate is availability of cheap and effective contraception (and cultural changes th…

Isn't this a bit like claiming that main reason of drowning is water?

The real questions here is why people given opportunity to not have children jumps at it.

My personal opinion is that children are not that great - too much responsibility, too little support from society, too many of them behaves like little psychopaths most of the time (this can be probably cured with strict discipline but stress free upbringing seems to be in vogue). And the things that children "give" in return are rather questionable (especially for people with low emotional needs like me)

Most people probably like the "idea" of children but the practical side of having them is mostly boring ungrateful work that takes greater part of you life away and there is inherent risk that it can never end (I do not understand how anyone would not take into considetation the consequnce of having special needs child)

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

#556

Post by Tade0 »

kelnos wrote: post #504
Tade0 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That absolutely is not natural selection at all. Natural selection is the result of a random process. People deciding to have or not have kids is a conscious decision based on their life experiences. Put another way, someone choosing to have kids isn't necessarily changing the balance between the child-bearing and child-free population in the world. If we could freeze the conditions that cause people to not want kids…

> People deciding to have or not have kids is a conscious decision based on their life experiences.

You're just looking at those who don't have children at all vs those who do, but that's not the whole story.

People don't decide these things in a vacuum - all over the western world statistics show that people have on average one child less than desired - mostly due to external pressures like availability of real estate and/or stable employment.

The environment simply doesn't support having more children, so those who do have them don't allow themselves to have more - much like animals which don't breed in captivity.

Countries like France largely staved off population decline because they decided to create an environment where people can have children as they naturally would.

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

#557

Post by Yizahi »

toasterlovin wrote: post #468
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I initially read this comment to mean “we wanted larger family, the secular world doesn’t do that, we became religious and we’re happy”. Am I understanding that correctly? If so, this strikes me as a very novel argument in favor of religion, and is more convincing to me than most others. I do wonder what I’d say if/when people question the fervor of my belief though, if I truly converted just for a community with lar…

> I initially read this comment to mean “we wanted larger family, the secular world doesn’t do that, we became religious and we’re happy”. Am I understanding that correctly? Kinda. We were open to believing in God. But the start of our journey was just realizing the secular world had nothing to offer us. Then we met a religious homeschooling family w/ 5 kids and they gave us a glimpse of what was possible. So we star…

Are atheists only "militant" in your point of view? As an atheist I can say that the only way for me to believe in gods is to simply fake it. This believing "at will" is rather interesting concept, but I honestly can't comprehend it.

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

#558

Post by beltsazar »

voidfunc wrote: post #199
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).

I just don't have any interest in kids. They're expensive and they require a ton of sacrifice. I'd rather travel, golf, do hobbies and generally enjoy my life. The only people that seem to want me to have babies are my parents so they can have grand kids... too which I've told them "Thank you for having me, but that's not a valid reason for me to sacrifice my life". I don't really care about the preservation of the h…

> I don't really care about the preservation of the human species. I'm going to be dead in the next 40 years or so, why should I care?

If most Homo sapiens had the same attitude, the species would have gone extinct since forever lol.

You can have any personal goal you'd like, but from the evolution perspective, the purpose of any living organism is to survive and to reproduce, hence preserving its own species. That's why.

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

#559

Post by princeb »

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…

singapore gives generous subsidies to working adults with children who hire live-in helpers/nannies. the government spent a lot of money on subsidizing tertiary education and the last thing they need are adults dropping out of the workforce after earning a diploma or a degree.

many families hire a live-in helper, who is typically a low-income migrant worker from a neighbouring country. due to space constraints only the most privileged can hire two or more. as it is with asian tradition, parents primarily involve themselves in the area of discipline and education, and everything else is left to the nannies. the low-income families who cannot afford a helper or the living space for a helper suffer from a lack of enforcing discipline or providing for a growing child and low-income children often grow up maladjusted to the modern working society.

singapore unfortunately, still suffers from a low replacement rate, so the foreign domestic worker (FDW, as it is known) policy while enough to move the dial away from the danger zone that is south korea, is still not enough to ensure singapore is growing comfortably. however, at this point i don't believe allowing

(the FDW policy is generous and broad-based enough to extend to working adults with elderly, which means that subsidies for domestic help pretty much extend to working adults through a significant part of their working life. families often qualify for significant subsidies taking care of multiple generations through several decades.)

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

#560

Post by saiya-jin »

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.

Ah yes the good ol' trope of putting house ownership as basic human right, ideally just for me and right after the buy I expect the price to jump to 3x. If you don't have one, you are such a loser, a failure, how can you look at yourself in the mirror?

Completely idiotic approach of cargo-culting previous generations without a pinch of logic. There are highly developed countries (as in overall higher than US, say here in Switzerland) where this mindset is absent long term. Thus most population lives in rent for whole life, nobody is bothered by it, and generally Swiss are among the happiest nations in the world, consistently.

That isn't saying child births here are booming, in contrary, but that has absolutely nothing to do with home ownership and being priced out from owning homes. People simply grok how difficult raising even 2 children well is (as in by far the most difficult project you will ever do, spread over 20-25 years of consistent draining efforts with no guarantee of success even with best effort, while you also need to put some good effort into marriage too), society not really helping that much these days, and decide against it.

Don't blame them, as Bill Burr says there are simply too many people. Rather lets lift whole mankind from poverty and the topic of population explosion will vanish on its own.

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