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

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

#851

Post by Amezarak » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:08 PM UTC

caskstrength wrote: post #326

nostrebored wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re benefiting from other people’s sacrifice. Your end of life care is entirely dependent on other people having and raising functional children. And these are all pretty weak reasons — people with kids do all of the things you’ve mentioned.

> Your end of life care is entirely dependent on other people having and raising functional children. Presumably OP is in US and is not planning to have any kind of state pension or socialized healthcare when they are old?

The US has both of these things for older people.

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

#852

Post by toasterlovin » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:10 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #518

toasterlovin wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read some history! The last 500 years are humanity’s Golden Age of Golden Ages. 100 years ago half the people you love would‘ve died in childhood.

So what? If people think that their children's future will be worse than their own, it doesn't really matter what people experienced 500 years ago. A common sentiment among parents is giving their children more opportunities and a better life than they had. If some people don't feel like they can do that (regardless of whether it's true or not), I imagine that's a powerful demotivator around having kids.

Yeah, so if you are familiar with human history and the exponential curve of increasing human wellbeing that we're riding and you still feel strongly that the future will be worse, then the conclusion should be that you're probably in an irrationally negative emotional headspace for some reason, not that you're right!

(I say that without judgement, having been in that exact headspace myself not too long ago.)

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

#853

Post by sagarm » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:11 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #759

TomK32 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SUV are get bigger with the blind zones in front of and around cars are getting longer and frontovers are becoming a problem as well https://www.kidsandcars.org/news/post/senator-wants-federal-...

That’s a real issue even if the increase in risk from front overs due to large SUV’s is significantly less than the safety benefits of backup cameras alone. A common bias when many things change is to only consider the changes which support your views rather than all changes combined. I could counter by bringing up nearly 100% of new SUVs in 2024 include automatic breaking systems, but what matters here is relative s…

Pedestrian fatality rates are at a 40-year high. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deat...

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

#854

Post by VirusNewbie » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC

cntrmmbrpsswrd wrote: post #617

silisili wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they can. People are just too selfish and think of kids as costing lattes and ruining their free time. Believe it or not, kids don't have to be expensive as reports have you believe. They can go to public school, wear hand me downs or walmart clothes, and eat what would have been leftovers. Most coworkers with kids I've spoken with complain about costs of daycare, babysitting, and Montessori schools. We pay for n…

The idea that not having kids is a selfish act is ridiculous and needs to end.

I don't think i'd use the word selfish, but I do think it's interesting that many people who aren't wanting kids don't do it for the reasons I'd assume.

If you would have told me people choose not to have kids because they already feel they are contributing to bettering the world through some other mission, it would make sense. If you're a doctor or scientist or even a nurse or something where you feel your career is a calling, I can understand feeling stretched thin enough to not want to have kids.

But that's not what many of my anti-kid friends say. They basically say it would interfere with their netlfix watching, video game playing, luxury travel lifestyle.

It's not that kids would take away from other meaningful ways of connecting to humanity, its' that they'd get in the way of their consumption.

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

#855

Post by mrguyorama » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #231

caturopath wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes this is my read too. It’s largely a cultural problem, not a resource one. The baseline expectations have gotten so high that not have a giant house and the latest electronics means you somehow can’t afford kids.

If it wasn't a resource problem, giving birth in a US hospital would not cost $30k in shockingly common cases.

I don't want to have kids because I lived through the "just suffer through poverty" experience and it's a great way to raise kids that have to support the psychiatry industry the rest of their lives. Poverty literally breaks a kid's brain, and you CANNOT hide money problems from your children.

That life is one "hey we didn't do good this quarter so you're being let go" away from happening for most of us. So yeah, a lot of us don't want kids.

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

#856

Post by amrangaye » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:25 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…

> 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.

I'm curious how you interprete "secular"? Cause it seems you're setting it up to mean anti-religion which is certainly not what the usual definition is.

> Here’s the thing: if you’re not a militant atheist and you start spending a lot of time around sincerely religious people who you like, you’ll end up believing sincerely yourself.

I won't question your own experience, but you're being way too broad here. I know many people who are not "militant atheists" but still don't believe in organized religion. I also have a lot of friends whose families are extremely religious - meaning they're around them all the time - none of them has been pushed or convinced to join. They just don't observe prayer etc compared to their friends.

> Since you’re secular, I’ll explain it like this: 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. And that’s what I used to believe. But now I know those were just the breadcrumbs I needed to find my way.

This sounds more like a self-justification than something actually supported by science. Please note I'm not trying to "religion shame you". Just curious. :)

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

#857

Post by throwaway_2573 » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:25 PM UTC

I know this thread is mostly about a lack of cousins, rather than being distant from your cousins, but I feel like I have to ask:

How many people have cousins, or other relatives, that they want to interact with?

My extended family is a complete disaster. On my mother's side there's two brothers who are borderline abusive to their wives and children. On father's side I had a total of 10 cousins, the oldest of whom would be in their 40s, the youngest in their late 20s. Only 6 of them are still alive. One of them is in prison. These are all people that I want nothing to do with.

My siblings are not bad per say, but not people I consider myself close to. We're all too different in age from each other, and never had much more in common that living in the same house. Now we are scattered across North America. If I had had children, they likely would have never met any of their cousins more than a dozen times before adulthood.

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

#858

Post by amrangaye » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #487

toasterlovin wrote: post #468

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? 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…

Oof, my experience is the exact opposite. I was raised Catholic, and my family attended mass every week. I realized I didn't believe in god in my early teens. For many years after that I really wished I could believe, tried to believe. My parents had me enrolled in CCD (for those of you not Catholic, that's basically the Catholic version of what's colloquially known as "Sunday School") through 8th grade. I participat…

Welp - messed up the line breaks - hope that made sense.

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

#859

Post by abeppu » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #791

iamleppert wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Presumably that extinction would take place several generations from now? One great way to avoid or slow extinction would be to procreate. > this messed up world As bad as things might be, aren't they way way way way better than they were in previous generations? Before Russia invaded Ukraine we were on a really great streak of very little warfare on Earth…

> Presumably that extinction would take place several generations from now? One great way to avoid or slow extinction would be to procreate.

... is that necessarily true? If our current population is well above the long-term carrying capacity, in terms of maximizing 'time there are humans on the planet', could the best course involve letting the population decrease for an extended period, and then aiming for a steady population only after we're near that carrying capacity.

A yeast cell in a wine bottle can reproduce while sugar is plentiful, but the increased population leads to more rapid sugar consumption and eventually fermentation stops.

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

#860

Post by anavette » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 6:27 PM UTC

prawn wrote: post #484

atoav wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is doing well financially I don't think you found the reason. The gist of it is: There are worlds and circumstances into which people want to bring kids. We mostly failed to create that world and those circumstances. If tou want to know what a solution looks like look at western democracies with high birth rates. E.g. France, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark. The rest is probably due to individualism. Kid…

Here's my related guess: many people want to wait until they feel in an appropriate position personally and financially before they have children. That might mean earning a certain amount or feeling like they have a foothold in home ownership or waiting for a future renovation. Only, the world in 2010+ constantly exposes you to bigger options on top of the issue of housing affordability: more adventures, more expensi…

It's very interesting how this thread treats the decision to have children as a purely rational, logistical one. I would argue it is not entirely rational/logical.