Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood? • Hacker News Board

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

#771

Post by polski-g » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

iamleppert wrote: post #768

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #16

Anecdata: 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…

I couldn’t imagine bringing a child into this messed up world. I really feel we are at the beginning of a mass extinction and future generations, no matter how rich and well off physically, will be destined to a life of suffering.

> I really feel we are at the beginning of a mass extinction

Yes, because of you. Go have kids. Ethiopians continued to have children during a decade-long famine and their population still increased. Stop making excuses for your own selfishness.

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

#772

Post by frantathefranta » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

swozey wrote: post #760

frantathefranta wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have anecdata on the contrary. I'm 25 and with my wife have a household income of ~150k. We own a house in a Midwestern major city, and so does 80% of our friend group. I realize it's an outlier, as should you, because most of the country doesn't have 800k minimum starter houses.

I could not care less about what the lives of 25yos in some midwestern city are like. The vast majority of millennials had to move to major cities for work around the 2008 recession. What's your cities population? Is it even 100k? How much of your anecdata is actually related to this convo, in the sense of what percentage of your midwest people are even relevant to it? I've lived in at least 8 MAJOR (Houston, Denver,…

Just about 2 million people in the metro area. Not the biggest, but not 100k.

Since I can't reply to your later comment yet, I might just do it here. I live in the city proper. It's Columbus OH just to make it easier for you. I'm sure you'll find a way to reason that's not a major city but it is (multiple Fortune 500 companies HQ'd, major league sport team etc). I live ~10 minutes from downtown and the house was 290k.

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

#773

Post by Grimm665 » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

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…

> we’re evolved to cohere around a shared system of belief and the appropriate mental machinery will kick in as part of becoming embedded in a religious community

So brainwashing-lite? Man I'm glad whatever "appropriate mental machinery" that was in my head kicked in and got me the fuck away from communities like this.

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

#774

Post by swozey » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

frantathefranta wrote: post #772

swozey wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not care less about what the lives of 25yos in some midwestern city are like. The vast majority of millennials had to move to major cities for work around the 2008 recession. What's your cities population? Is it even 100k? How much of your anecdata is actually related to this convo, in the sense of what percentage of your midwest people are even relevant to it? I've lived in at least 8 MAJOR (Houston, Denver,…

Just about 2 million people in the metro area. Not the biggest, but not 100k. Since I can't reply to your later comment yet, I might just do it here. I live in the city proper. It's Columbus OH just to make it easier for you. I'm sure you'll find a way to reason that's not a major city but it is (multiple Fortune 500 companies HQ'd, major league sport team etc). I live ~10 minutes from downtown and the house was 290k…

"Metro" is what suburbanites use to make it sound like they live somewhere more interesting, know anything about that city and its lifestyle, to people who don't know where, and not some suburb outside of it. So, no that doesn't matter. It's not your city.

People who live in BFE an hour or two north of Dallas, that isn't Dallas, love to say they live in Dallas, then you go further, "dallas metro." Nah. Then they find out you actually live downtown because you're asking for neighborhoods IN the city and call you a downtown pretty boy who probably has to fight off muggers daily. Christ, Fort WORTH is in the "Dallas metro" and it's literally it's own city that NOBODY in Dallas ever visits and has NOTHING in common with Dallas. "The Dallas metro has 10 billion people!" Yeah who never interact with one another and live an hour away.

So they love it till it's actually, you know, big scary city stuff. And that's a huge reason why WE don't claim them back. Hearing someone from Plano (rich af suburb) say they live in Dallas to someone from Texas themselves is so cringe. Because I absolutely know they actually hate Dallas, the city. It's different if the person has no idea where and you're just giving a general area.

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

#775

Post by trevor-e » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

KoftaBob wrote: post #615

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #16

Anecdata: 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…

I get the feeling these anecdotes are (unsurprisingly) biased towards young SF tech crowds. My own experiences of being in my early 30s, born and raised on Long Island and now living in Boston, my circle of friends, relatives, and coworkers from both areas are having kids all over the place. When my wife first became pregnant last year, it was actually a bit difficult finding openings with OBGYN offices in the genera…

That's interesting. Virtually none of my friends in the Boston area (all 30+) have kids lol.

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

#776

Post by alohabeta768 » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

debok wrote: post #395

keiferski wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a liability only if consumerism is your only value. Which for a lot of people, is absolutely the case. And it’s only logical if you only care about your own individual desires. It almost isn’t worth arguing about, though, because the reality is that society is ultimately made up of people that have kids. All the rationalizations in the world won’t change the basic facts of biology.

I completely agree with you. My wife and I made many lifestyle "sacrifices" in order to have kids. I put "sacrifices" in quotes, because driving in a cheaper car than your professional peers is only a sacrifice if you you are consumerist.

Is it consumerist to prefer going on a long trip yourself rather than having a kid?

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

#777

Post by vundercind » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #524

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…

Pretty much. I used to live in a mid-sized mid-West city in the US and still keep in touch. Most everyone I know bought a house, even with the modest wages they had. Why? Because there are plenty of homes in the $100-$200k range, even now.

Hell, you can buy beautiful, updated small mansions in the heart of many small midwestern towns for under $200k.

The trouble is:

1) no local jobs to speak of (unless you want to clerk at the farm & feed or assistant-manage the McDonald’s out by the highway)

2) nearest hospital that can do more than stabilize you before shipping you somewhere better, is over an hour away.

3) the schools are really, really bad

4) no local services or amenities. Hope the nearest state park (if any) is really good. But if it’s a midwestern one it’s probably not.

Remote work, being young and healthy and willing to take a little extra risk, having no kids and planning to have none, and being kinda a home-body (or being really into readily available rural midwestern outdoor activities like hunting and fishing), can make it a viable way to go, but that’s a lot of qualifiers.

In our medium-ish sized midwestern city there are smaller slightly-run-down houses in the low $200Ks, but universally in bottom-half school districts for the city. Solid choice if no kids, though. But also local tech jobs pay at most 50% of big-city equivalents.

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

#778

Post by polski-g » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 4:09 PM UTC

silverquiet wrote: post #714

anthonypasq wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Life is pretty miserable for most people. this is objectively untrue with respect to almost every single piece of data we have on this subject. Just because youre a misanthrope doesnt mean everyone else is.

I wonder - do you think the drop in fertility represents a rise in overall life satisfaction or a fall? I hadn't thought about it much myself, but it seems like it could go either way.

The drop in fertility represents a rise in endocrine-disrupting chemicals like microplastics. Lower testosterone makes one less horny and more neurotic -- so we get cities of insane people worrying about completely nonsensical made-up risks. This is the face of every conceivable metric that we live in the best time to live -- ever. Never before in human history have we been richer, more peaceful, more equal than we do today.

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

#779

Post by racl101 » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 4:10 PM UTC

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #16

Anecdata: 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's almost as if when life is too expensive people don't feel optimistic or financially secure enough about the future enough to want to have kids.

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

#780

Post by standardUser » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 4:10 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #140

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.

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…

You just stated that over 40% of people under 40 don't own a home. I don't think that proves the point you want it to. And that's before we even get into how much of that home they even "own".