Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read it as describing the situation being weird. The people being normal is what makes the whole thing weird
I guess the older I get, the more unclear I am on what normal is supposed to be or what it ever was. What percentage of men historically even had children? My impression is that it has always been significantly less than the percentage of women who do.
Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
741–750 of 1001 posts
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#742Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of problems highlighted in the Bay Are and other [insanely expensive, dense urban areas in the US] are unique to them. Nobody is calmly walking through a Walgreens in western Minnesota shoving everything they can into bags and walking out the front door while 30 people record it. Nobody is putting glitter bombs in bags for news articles in rural Missouri. Maybe shifts in housing dynamics happen first in cities…
Bay Area is usually just 10-15 years ahead of the rest of the country, because it's a region that culturally tends to embrace the future (good and bad) and run toward it. Bay Area in 2000 was complaining about illegal immigration, bilingual education, and the lights not staying on, all of which are contemporary issues facing the rest of America from 2015 onward. Bay Area in 2010 was in relative boom times from the te…
Embracing the future as if culture has a directional arrow...:.
hint: it doesn't
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#743Earlier quoted context omitted.
It had plenty of risks before too. Doing genealogy, e.g. of one of my great-great grandfather's children, several died young and left behind children, some ran away from responsibilities (one child - my grandmothers first cousin - ended up in care and was adopted because her mother was too poor to care for her and her dad ran off to the US with his brothers, and we didn't learn she existed until a few years after she…
I'm going to go out on a limb and say something that I "feel" is plausibly true, but I don't have any data to back it up. While life has been objectively harder in the recent past (prior 80 years), life is subjectively difficult today in a way that it wasn't for the past 200 years. Folks often start out heavily in debt, then they must work competitive jobs which grow more competitive over time to tread water. The com…
Maybe for some, but most people don't get college degrees, for example. Most people worked heavily competitive jobs from an earlier age before, and often far harsher work.
E.g. my grandmothers half brother worked in New York Harbour from he was 9. Most of her uncles and aunts worked from early teens, and often moved from home at that age because their parents couldn't afford to keep providing for them and needed them to get employment. Often in backbreaking work that ruined their bodies, and in some cases killed them young.
People might well have a subjective experience that they have it tough, but if so we're failing in teaching people history.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#744Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is unnecessarily confrontational and inaccurate. According to census.gov, the current national homeownership rate is hovering at about 66%, which is about the same rate that it's been (+/- 3%) since they started tracking in 1964 [0][1]. This isn't restricted to old people either: 49% of 30 to 34 year olds and 58% of 35 to 39 year olds owned a home in Q4 2023 [2]. There are certainly regional differences in housi…
If you seriously think 40-49%, whatever ridiculous mis-read stat you're choosing to use this time, of 30-34 year olds are home owners I have a bridge to Hawaii to sell you. I'm 40, make around 300k and know a LOT of people my age and the vast, VAST majority don't own houses. I owned a house in 2016 and sold it, I don't want to own a house because I'm single and they're $800k minimum here, none of my friends want hous…
You can't disagree with statistics. You are living a very unique lifestyle, that is highly paid in HCOL areas with high standards for housing. That is not the norm whatsoever.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#745You'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.
This is unnecessarily confrontational and inaccurate. According to census.gov, the current national homeownership rate is hovering at about 66%, which is about the same rate that it's been (+/- 3%) since they started tracking in 1964 [0][1]. This isn't restricted to old people either: 49% of 30 to 34 year olds and 58% of 35 to 39 year olds owned a home in Q4 2023 [2]. There are certainly regional differences in housi…
Owning a house is a ton easier without kids.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#746Cousins are great if you stay close, but generally as you get older you drift apart and then you're left with no one again.
Anecdotally: as someone who was the youngest by 5+ years in a family of dozens of cousins, I feel like I got a little bit of both worlds. It was fantastic as a kid to be running around with the posse, but as I entered late-childhood that pretty much dissolved. Now, as an adult, I no longer see my cousins on a regular basis. We don't have much history beyond my 7th/8th year and they're not the type of people I would want to be friends with by choice. This estrangement was a big source of mental struggle for me throughout my early 20s, especially since I lost my actual sibling and didn't feel like I had anyone to relate to in my "supposed" family.
I almost think it's better to start off life with not much extended family, because it's not easy to make friends that you consider family when you're already a fully-fledged adult.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#747I've got over 30 first cousins. Not joking. My mom was 1 of 12 children and my father was 1 of 8 children. They were born in India during the 1930's to 1950's when modern medicine was saving people's lives but modern birth control wasn't widespread.
Most of them had 2 children so that's over 30. We have 2 huge WhatsApp group chats and every week it is someone's birthday or anniversary.
It's cool having so many relatives and places to stay for free when you travel but it can be a little exhausting too!
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#748Anecdata: 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…
"It baffles me." It shouldn't. Life is pretty miserable for most people. Everyone is too busy to hang out and be relaxed. Having kids makes it even more so. Why do we want our kis to grow up like that too?
Sounds like you're the miserable one?
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#749You'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.
This is absolutely correct. Let’s assume a hypothetical 30 year old who bought a house at the absolute peak of 30 year fixed interest rates, 16.64%. The median US home price was $70,400. Assume 20% down.
Let’s also assume a hypothetical 30 year old buying a house in 2023. 30 year fixed rate is 7.00%. The median US home price is $417,700. Assume 20% down.
Looking up inflation, a 1981 dollar is 3.37 2023 dollars.
The 1981 homebuyer pays 57% of the 2023 homebuyer’s down payment, and only pays 19% more each month. And that’s cherry-picking the absolute worst time to buy for that generation.
Down payment 1981 (inflation adj.): $47,440.60
Monthly payment 1981 (inflation adj.): $2,650.50
Down payment 2023: $83,540.00
Monthly payment 2023: $2,223.17
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#750Earlier 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…
There are also people who pretend like problems highlighted in the Bay Area and other metropolitan cities are unique to them. Yet every time it looks like those are just the first wave of the changes that are heading to other regions first. Like the wave of homelessness. People made fun of SF, then it spread to the broader Bay Area, then LA, then other parts of the country. Turns out the effects of income inequality…
Yes, urban hellscape problems tends to spread to other urban hellscapes, but there exist places to live other than urban hellscapes.
There's a peculiar form of blindness that strikes the Urbanite, as if there are no other places to live.
The people who live in flyover country are barely even recognizable as human, so you might as well ask me to move to Mars! How the hell am I going to be seen in public drinking my $12 microbrews or pretending to appreciate the Moma so that other people know I'm the correct class of person? God, what would my parents think? I'd rather die than live there, so that place doesn't even exist for me.