671–680 of 1001 posts
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Those prices are weird. Why would somebody ever pay that much rather than just hire a private nanny?
A private nanny isn't realistic for 4 kids. You need 2.
I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…
It's just hard now. Before I had kids I had a network of friends and had a great social life. Now it's just me and my wife. If I want more friends I'll have to have more kids I guess? I have 4 now. One (my first) is severely autistic. Financially the cost? I pay about 6,000 a month in daycare. 2k a month in healthcare expenses. Then community wise. Every time I've gone to take them to the movies, or to a restaurant o…
You have the agency to make it happen.
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> Many of our child-free friends are going to go through a lot of loneliness when they're old I've seen this "kids are insurance against loneliness" logic repeated often, but I don't believe this bares out in reality. I personally know plenty of child-free older couples who remain quite happy and social. I also know plenty of parents whose kids don't speak to them anymore or whose children have lives on the other sid…
My mothers' friends have to fund vacations for their adult children and grand children in order to spend time with them. They wont let her stay at their home. My mother was giddy when my father died; so I have strong boundaries in our relationship. My brother moved to colorado after the service and never returned. I'm not convinced having children is the answer alone. (I say as a childless 35yo)
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Don't be ridiculous, talking about "partisan fear". They have taken away documented, American citizens without due process. When armed men can take you out of your home or your car and whisk you away without a judicial warrant and without due process, it is very reasonable to be afraid.
It’s really not. Define taken away. They’ve absolutely detained some citizens, then let them go. And again, not defending what they are doing, they are awful,but you are probably more likely to be hit by lightning than you are to have any of your family planning go wrong because of them if you are a full citizen. (If you are undocumented here right now, yeah, totally.) Hysterical people think they are being rational…
You already did it:
> They’ve absolutely detained some citizens, then let them go.
That is taken away.
Someone in my network - a US citizen - was detained, taken to a city 3 hours away, and held for 10 days before being released. Was quite a while before her family knew where she was.
If you're an American who is visibly Hispanic, it's not at all hysterical. If you're in one of those cities, you do have to worry whether you'll return home when you leave your house.
The primary cause of low birth rates is that society does not value children. Sure we talk a big game, everything is 'for the children' obviously. However, we publicly divest from schools, we invest in technologies that devalue humans and human labor. Growing up we make people believe they need to be millionaires just to not be swallowed up by the 9-to-5 meat grinder (this is true actually). It's no wonder young peop…
Next steps should be raising the quality of life globally, to make this trend universal.
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"Selfish" is exactly the word my dad uses. But then again we're third worlders and the idea of not having grandchildren is literally horrifying.
> the idea of not having grandchildren is literally horrifying. Why?
I can understand at an intellectual level that other people are raised differently and probably have a different emotional reaction, and, at an intellectual level, I understand that viewpoint is valid. But I genuinely cannot put myself in that mindset. The idea that you could live a fulfilling life without grandkids is predicated on being something I don't know how to be.
Why do we obsess over growing everything all the time?
How do you know if an organism is thriving in its environment? You count the offspring over generations.
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It's just hard now. Before I had kids I had a network of friends and had a great social life. Now it's just me and my wife. If I want more friends I'll have to have more kids I guess? I have 4 now. One (my first) is severely autistic. Financially the cost? I pay about 6,000 a month in daycare. 2k a month in healthcare expenses. Then community wise. Every time I've gone to take them to the movies, or to a restaurant o…
I was young and cool once. I traveled, I did wild things that make good stories, and I did wild things that I will never tell a soul. I think that I had all the adventures that I could handle without having a criminal record. But once I had my first child, all of those things seemed so petty and inconsequential. I don’t miss the night life, the hobbies, or the drinking buddies. My life revolves around the little peop…
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Free childcare makes it so much easier. Can’t imagine leaving 80% of my salary at the daycare, but some in the UK do that.
In the US we already give low income people subsidized or free daycare. The real issue is how the system didn’t support the middle. If you are broke you get tons of support - healthcare (Medicaid), food (SNAP), housing (section 8), and a myriad of subsidized options for everything, from discounted utilities to childcare. But be middle class and get very little, except paying taxes to support the poor to get everythin…