Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

861–870 of 1001 posts

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

#861

Post by sharno »

lolinder wrote: post #738
TeMPOraL wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All us over-30s with kids probaly random-walked into jobs that are family-friendly and are staying there . In my current team, almost half the people - and importantly, the previous and current manager - have kids, usually more than one. Can't speak for the corporation we merged into, but before the merger, the whole mid-sized company cleraly leaned for average age closer to 35-40, and a good chunk of employees at ev…

This sounds accurate to me—I found my way into a company that offers 10 weeks paid leave for both mom and dad, unlimited PTO, flexible scheduling, work from home, among other things. A director just left for round two of her parental leave, I know at least two other people who are currently on it, and a lot of the developers are parents (quick mental straw poll suggests ~50%), many of whom explicitly have time off du…

I'd love to find a workplace like that

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

#862

Post by webworker »

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.

Plenty of us would, if we could.

My own personal situation on why I don't have kids - to have kids, I'd have to find someone to have kids with. Dating is completed screwed, and that's not for lack of trying on my end. It's an absolute shshow out there. It's like no one could be bothered to get themselves out of bed to follow through on plans to meet up. I'm not sure if it's suburbanization, or if it's everyone is feeling overworked, or... what...

Nearly all of my male friends are noticing the same things. Locale, age, career... no change of circumstances seem to change the really poor outcomes. It's like the options on today's menu are: be solo and happy with it, or go do the passport bro thing.

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

#863

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#864

Post by dang »

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.

Please don't start flamewars on HN. This was a doozy.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341055.

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

#865

Post by giantg2 »

anthonypasq wrote: post #838
giantg2 wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/life-satisfaction... people one average rate their list satisfaction from 5-7. thats a far cry from "most people are miserable."

It's worse if you're parents.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/news/a33900/...

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

#866

Post by mensetmanusman »

lumost wrote: post #725
opportune wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably grew up in a very wealthy and highly educated part of a major city. Not the case for 35 year olds in broad swathes of the country

Presuming that wealth and education are increasing in the general population - wouldn't this pose a problem for the future?

Demographic collapse will bring poverty allowing for the continuation of humanity.

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

#867

Post by vlovich123 »

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…

So instead we should be looking at the massive failing small towns all across the area for examples? Humans population grows and it has to go somewhere. Humans are social animals so we congregate. Congregated humans also create opportunities for each other. Yes problems come with that but framing it as “this is the problem of urbanites” when more than half of the world’s population lives in cities is an othering framing that doesn’t actually help anything. There’s plenty of problems from small town communities spread all over the place too.

“It’s those damn young people”. “It’s those damn urbanites”. “It’s those damn techies”. Replace that kind of thinking with religious or racial terms and consider how you’re looking at a very large and diverse group of people.

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

#868

Post by mensetmanusman »

vundercind wrote: post #186
echelon wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids aren't expensive. They're a distraction from dopamine and career advancement. My peers are all wealthy and they'd rather jet set than settle down. By all means they could raise families of two to four kids and still be incredibly comfortable. Vacation home comfortable. Instagram is the anti-child. Instagram and the endless feed of social media, internet, and things to do. Once you have children, the dopamine end…

> Kids aren't expensive. They're a distraction from dopamine and career advancement. They really are. You can pay for some of it by letting your and their quality of life suffer, instead of with money (cram 3 kids into the 2-bedroom you already own; don’t worry that the schools are bad and dangerous and that’s why the place was cheap; that kind of thing) but not all of it, and most people don’t find making those comp…

I have four kids in one room and it's a blast. After family prayers we turn off the lights and tell stories and their imaginations go wild! The joy is palpable.

Bedrooms are for sleeping, there is other space to spread out :)

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

#869

Post by vlovich123 »

achenet wrote: post #807
caeril wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How’s the situation in European cities? I’ve also wondered if many of the problems are culturally specific to American views on individualism and capitalism and distaste for socialism given how similar many European cities are to large American cities with a major difference being social and cultural norms.

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

#870

Post by Retric »

sagarm wrote: post #853
Retric wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

No. That’s number of deaths not rates of death.

“estimates that more than 7,500 pedestrians were killed by drivers last year — the highest number since 1981.”

And yes they are intentionally trying to be misleading.

Post reply on HN