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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?

#581

Post by rmholt »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #574
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.

There is just one, single reason for the decline of births in so-called developed or developing countries - women emancipation. Anything else is simply a cope from people that are unable to acknowledge the fact that everything has a price.

Even if it was true, put this way, the argument is insanely hostile to women, basically saying "Your freedom means we, as a society, are declining".

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

#582

Post by zoklet-enjoyer »

I have 2 siblings. We have over 30 cousins on one side of the family and 2 on the other side.

Only 1 of the 3 of us has kids, so my niblings don't have any cousins on my side of the family, and they only have a few on the other side. I haven't thought about how different that is compared to what I grew up with until seeing this post

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

#583

Post by pkolaczk »

lukasm wrote: post #562
pkolaczk wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And yet when you ask people how many children they want you get TFL estimate at 2.1-2.4

Ask them after they have their first child.

BTW: 2.1 is still quite good. Here in Poland (a formerly pretty much catholic country), we are at birthrate = 1.3 now and still going down.

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

#584

Post by hoseja »

angra_mainyu wrote: post #551
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.

If you were to have children in affordable manner nowadays you would soon find yourself without said children and in prison possibly.

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

#585

Post by willis936 »

echelon wrote: post #210
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…

> The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless is really exhausting. The algorithm has turned (some) people into whiners and doomers. It really sucks to watch them take defeatist attitudes on everything in life. I see lots of these young 20-somethings on Reddit thinking their lives are over. It's absurd. They have their entire lives ahead of the…

Claiming a legitimate argument is from "the algorithm" is flimsy, unprovable, unfalsifiable, and does nothing except discredit the person rather than the idea. I could claim your argument is from living a life of privilege, but then I'd be addressing the person rather than the argument.

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

#586

Post by surgical_fire »

beltsazar wrote: post #558
voidfunc wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

And maybe Earth would be a better place.

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

#587

Post by batushka3 »

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.

Whats the point of marriage then if being able you refuse kids? It's designed as a secure hub to build greater things like children bearing family. Why to subject yourself to lonely elderly life, tied to aging partner? Be like gay/bachelor people and enjoy hundreds of partners, why try to mimic family being afraid for full experience?

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

#588

Post by surgical_fire »

remarkEon wrote: post #265
voidfunc wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Should they stop paying taxes too? Why should they subside the common good that your children will benefit of?

This argument cuts both ways.

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

#589

Post by pkolaczk »

v-erne wrote: post #555
pkolaczk wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Point taken, but that opportunity was not there until about 60 years ago. I don't think people unwillingness to have kids changed, they didn't have much real choice back then. Well, their willingness to have sex was stronger than willingness to not have kids ;)

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

#590

Post by wolvesechoes »

rmholt wrote: post #581
wolvesechoes wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is just one, single reason for the decline of births in so-called developed or developing countries - women emancipation. Anything else is simply a cope from people that are unable to acknowledge the fact that everything has a price.

Even if it was true, put this way, the argument is insanely hostile to women, basically saying "Your freedom means we, as a society, are declining".

You are presuming intentions that are absent from my comment. And it doesn't state any "argument".

I am not saying there that it is wrong to give women such freedom, nor that it is right. Maybe there is an alternative cultural setting where women emancipation doesn't bear such consequences. Maybe not. Maybe it is an unavoidable result of our societal progress. Or maybe a flourishing of the society cannot, and shouldn't, be measured in births-to-deaths ratio.

These things I consider unknown. But the cause of the current state of affairs is as stated.

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