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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?

#801

Post by electrosphere »

geff82 wrote: post #486
kelnos wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could absolutely afford to have children, but have chosen not to. The main reason is that I just don't feel "called" to be a parent. When I think about (and see, from others I know who have kids) the amount of work, and complete shift in lifestyle, it takes to raise a child, I get completely turned off by the idea. If I had a kid, I'm sure I'd love them, and derive joy from them, but I don't believe the trade off i…

"The amount of work".... oh dear. As if caring for other people is only work. From what will you get distracted by having other people around you (kids)? From Instragram? Cycling? Reading books? What intensely important things do you have to do that deserve no distraction? Having kids is not work. It is not only joy either. It is just the natural way of being a human. The - natural - way - of - being - a - human!!! N…

Well put and agreed 100%. Source: parent of 18 year old.

Do not over-think it. Just be careful to pick a partner who shares the same values and then get on with it.

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

#802

Post by gkilmain »

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…

> And it's also a bit inconvenient that nobody else at work has such pressing obligations, it makes me feel bad...

I hope your peers ambivalence (educated guess here) towards your other responsibilities make your priorities obvious. Having been in a similar situation, I "lost" the corporate battle (was laid off) but as soon as I had kids I knew my priorities needed to change. I literally worked 8:30 - 5. That was it. I wasn't going to lose missing even the most mundane of times with my kids for some after hours "retro" or some early morning "pointing" session. Thats me tho, thats my deal.

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

#803

Post by grfhtsdfvv »

hmcq6 wrote: post #250
lolinder wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not. I'm citing the numbers in the table entitled "Quarterly Homeownership Rates for the U.S. and Regions: 1964 to Present"* (emphasis added). That table is talking about homeownership rates, not householdership rates, and the definition they give is this: > Homeownership Rates. The proportion of households that are owners is termed the homeownership rate. It is computed by dividing the number of households t…

That table doesn't break things down by age. Just own it dude. You pulled the "49% of people aged 30-34" thing from this chart https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx or some variation of it and you misunderstood it.

[flagged]

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

#804

Post by giantg2 »

anthonypasq wrote: post #704
giantg2 wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

> 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.

Really? Id like to see those numbers.

Look up the distribution of happiness in the US and other developed nations. Happiness is often lowest during childbearing years. Happiness in the US has been declining for about a decade.

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

#805

Post by baq »

2024throwaway wrote: post #711
nemo44x wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Raising kids is hard work. It's really not that hard. You just have to change expectations and lifestyle. I never thought of it as "work" per-se but rather an obligation and responsibility to people brought into the world. It's amazing really. It's probably not for everyone and if someone sees it the same way as doing actual work then maybe it isn't for them.

Currently changing diapers and feeding every 3 hours through the night. It’s work.

+1 on work.

It isn't hard as in you don't have to be very qualified to do it.

It is hard in that it's physically (sometimes) and mentally (always) exhausting.

And yet you're expected to pay for it yourself and spent your free time for it. Parents should be paid to be parents.

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

#806

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

caturopath wrote: post #200
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 think this is very confused. People these days are really rich compared to people in the past who had more kids, poorer people in countries like the US have more kids on average than richer ones, and poorer countries on average have more kids than richer ones. (People don't seem to have fewer kids because they're poor; they seem to have fewer kids because they're rich!) Despite major housing issues, people live in…

Yeah, look at countries like Finland. Finland has, famously, some of the best government support for new mothers on the planet, comparatively high gender equality, consistently ranks at the top of world education rankings, has a strong, functioning social welfare system, and while housing is not exactly cheap, Finns on average spend 20% of their income on housing, which is not high.

And Finland's fertility rate has completely collapsed, to 1.32 children per woman in 2022.

As societies urbanize and become more educated, children become (economically speaking) a huge burden, not an asset, and that fundamental shift affects birthrates worldwide.

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

#807

Post by achenet »

caeril wrote: post #750
vlovich123 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 $1…

I live in a mid-sized European city right now, which I'm sure explains a lot of the bias in my response but there do exist relatively affordable cities with a good quality of life, and I'd rather live in a place where I can walk to the supermarket and the pharmacy and the town center rather than have to drive everywhere.

High population density also (generally) means more social activities, which can be important for some people (like myself). Living in a rural area kinda scares me because I'm afraid I'd be quite lonely.

On top of that, for those of us who don't have the privilege to remote work, living in a city is often necessary to have a job.

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

#808

Post by tivert »

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…

> 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.

Come on, that's just idiotic sarcasm that doesn't even understand the GP's point, let alone actually skewer it. It's as stupid as trying to mock childfree people by sarcastically advocating a total ban on having children, like in ZPG (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069530/).

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

#809

Post by rpcope1 »

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…

> I know people in their 40s that are partying, going to clubs and concerts, doing bar crawls, cruises, visiting abroad, jet setting, and climbing the corporate ladder while living incredibly active lives. They don't want to give up their lifestyle to suddenly have to raise children.

That kind of thing, at least to me, seemed to get old pretty quickly. Probably more importantly though, is that we all get old at some point. When fewer and fewer people have children of their own, what happens when the bulk of people get past retirement age? I think it's a huge problem from both an economic standpoint (if there's no productive workers to keep things going, is the state really going to be able to support you in better than awful conditions as you age?) and from an individual and cultural standpoint.

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

#810

Post by swozey »

gknapp wrote: post #765
swozey wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're baffled people don't want kids? You couldn't pay me 3-10x to be 31 with 3 kids, lmao. And I'm almost 10 years older. I'm aging like fine wine with cool cars and vacations and obscene lofts downtown and you're going to be a turnip in 12 years with no savings because of college and child care fees. I'm baffled people want kids, especially THREE. You have NO reason to have 3 kids. And yeah, us child-free people a…

People value family differently. For some, their dream life is to have sick cars and a sweet loft, for others, it's to raise other humans to be good. You should probably understand that there are some that read your perspective on life as equally puzzling. I agree that childcare and college is mad expensive. It's why people complain about these things as much as they do! What I've always thought, as a parent: those w…

Oh I love parents and I don't have any problems with kids. Still consider them sometimes.

I was just bothered by the "I'm baffled by.." part of this specific post.

And you're 100% on the "don't know what we're missing," part. I haven't been married either, so no wedding, no births, no kids, it's an entire other lifestyle I basically won't have any interaction with if it doesn't happen, and it's a weird/scary thing because who knows which is better? Or what we're happier with in the end if we couldn't try both?

I'm straight but I kind of tell myself nowadays that all my gay friends are living that lifestyle and they're very happy from what I can tell so .. maybe it's not bad. But there are gay couples with kids, I don't know any. I haven't had the nerve to ask my good friend if he wanted/wants kids. Never know if thats a tough subject or not.

My only major parent pet peeve... is the word kiddos. And doggos. You can bring your screaming kids over to my pool to destroy my backyard and let all the bugs in cause they dont close doors while you get high and drunk but don't call them kiddos to me. I cannot deal with the mom forum abbreviations like DH (dear husband) and all that.. stuff. When it bleeds over to reddit etc, thankfully rarely, it hurts me to read.

I don't even care that parent coworkers leave to deal with parent stuff, at all. It actually makes ME feel less bad about leaving to do my personal stuff. I'm REALLY bad about being too anxious to leave. A lot better later in my career but early on I would never leave.

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