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American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

derekthompson.org

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Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#91

I can't help but wonder about the relationship between fathers (and, in fact, all parents) spending more time with their children, and people choosing to have fewer children, and later. I think it's unquestionably true that fathers spending more time with their children is, on the whole, much better for those children. But it's also true that it's a huge problem for society that people are having fewer children. And…

Ugh... In the 90s, people were screaming and panicking about the future of over-population. Dystopian scenes of dense and dirty tiny living-quarters stacked on top of each other.

Now everyone's screaming about a declining population.

We should embrace and prepare for degrowth for a better chance at a wonderful future, not shout at the sky hoping people will make more babies for the economy.

And guess what, if we prepare for degrowth, where a generation or two or three of the entire planet never goes hungry, never goes to war, and has the freedom of movement, creativity, innovation, interaction... Those people will want to have many many babies, and we can once again start worrying about overpopulation.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things. Why that is is a matter of debate.

Millennials seem to have their shit together more than any generation since the silent generation, at least in the UK.

I'm GenX, but had kids a little late, so most of my kid's friends either 1. have Millennial parents or 2. are raised by their Boomer grandparents (parents not much in the picture). The differences in how these two sets of caretakers behave is astounding. Take a typical visit from the friend to my house to play with my kid:

The friends who are with their grandparents show up. Grandpa parks his car in my driveway, and walks the kid to my door. We greet, kid runs off to play, and we shoot the shit for a while, asking how things have been going, maybe Grandpa wants to check out the latest on my woodworking project, whatever. Then Grandpa says goodbye, I'll be back later, and heads out.

The friends who are with their Millennial parents show up. Dad parks his car waaaaay out by the curb, never even going on my property. Kid gets out of the car and walks himself to my door. Dad speeds away in his car, never even acknowledging us. Dad comes back to pick the kid up, same thing. Parks way far away, texts his kid, and the kid excuses himself and runs all the way out to the car. I don't even know the names of any of my kid's friends' Millennial parents!

This pattern repeats across N = about 6.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#93
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without proper statistics we can't know. But I do wonder why is it that if you spend any time on parenting websites you find lots of mothers complaining about deadbeat husbands, and so few fathers complaining about deadbeat wives. Purely anecdotal, but it is very lopsided, and it has made me wonder why is it. I am a dad, FWIW.

Being a deadbeat is defined as not paying . It's not about caregiving. These roles may not be equally distributed by gender, but then why is there not as much complaining by men about women not being equal partners financially? It's has to do with bias. You can also find that much of the research about household duties is biased against the type of work that men have traditionally done (eg excluding yard work, mainte…

> Being a deadbeat is defined as not paying. It's not about caregiving

Merriam-Webster disagrees [0][1][2].

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deadbeat

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loafer

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idler

Re. your other points, I don't entirely disagree with them, but they are at best tangential to the article we are discussing.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#94
post #89
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the site but when I was a SAHD, I found many of those parenting sites were not welcoming to dads, even dads doing the exact same work as the moms. Moms there wanted a place to vent about their husbands and men who were pulling their fair share or were handling most of the parent duties simply weren't allowed.

one of the better places I found found was Daddit on reddit, though I haven't been in a while.

I found that /r/daddit was full of pictures of dads with infants.

On the other hand, /r/parenting was full of moms desperate because their partners didn't to their part.

It really paints a picture, if you think about it.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things. Why that is is a matter of debate.

> Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things. Truly, this hasn't been my experience. I'm GenX (edit: not GenZ), my parents were Silent Gen (WWII vets) and my kids are Millennials. My 25yo kids understand behavior and psychology better than my parents ever did. The reason my kids grew up imprisoned is there was nowhere for them to go. The risk to their well-being was never from stranger…

25yo is solid GenZ

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#96
post #23

I feel there is a trend of not fully appreciating what fathers who spend less time with kids actually do. I think that's unfair, frankly. Many of them do things that contribute to the family in other ways. What was my Dad busy doing? Focusing on his career in order to provide for his family. Doing hobbies that increased his skill set. Fixing the house to ensure we all had a nice safe place to live. Tending to the gar…

I agree with all you said.

When I read from article:

> The fact that richer and better-educated parents are freely choosing to pour more of their valuable time into childcare makes raising children sound practically like a “luxury good,” akin to buying a Rolex watch or a fragile Fabergé egg.

It kind of reflected an unawareness to me. Unless one crosses the threshold of wealth where they can afford full-time 24/7 nanny, the richer parents spending more time in childcare seems obvious and non-counterintuitive. It is more likely jobs that pay well also provide flexible working hours and locations so these parents can really afford to spend more time in childcare. And this would much more prevalent category then families who could afford hired help for child care.

On the other hand poorer parent with much stringent job conditions would be mentally and physically exhausted to provide much childcare.

> I think some modern opinions of parenting come from a very individualistic, transactional and reciprocal mindset. ..

I think family unit like almost every other thing in modern economy has fallen victim to financialization of society.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#97
post #85
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the site but when I was a SAHD, I found many of those parenting sites were not welcoming to dads, even dads doing the exact same work as the moms. Moms there wanted a place to vent about their husbands and men who were pulling their fair share or were handling most of the parent duties simply weren't allowed.

This, it's well known that women want to vent and men want to fix the issue. This difference in communication and perspective has been supported in various research.

That is your bias talking.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#98
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And guess why trad household structures are (still) popular in some circles

Those household structures aren't popular , they're just common when women have no other options. I have nothing against those structures, they work great for some families. But the reality is that they often force the wife into becoming an unpaid caregiver for her in-laws (who constantly criticize how she runs the household).

So confidently stated! My wife had ludicrous options and chose it — what draws you to this conclusion?

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#99
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And guess why trad household structures are (still) popular in some circles

Those household structures aren't popular , they're just common when women have no other options. I have nothing against those structures, they work great for some families. But the reality is that they often force the wife into becoming an unpaid caregiver for her in-laws (who constantly criticize how she runs the household).

I don't really understand this mindset that being at home and raising your kids is only something you do when forced to. For my family, if we had more options -- ie, more money -- then both of us would be stay-at-home parents. It's much more of a joy than going to work.

Re: American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

#100
> I don’t know who told MacRumors what (and their sourcing is just “MacRumors has learned”), but I know for a fact that it is not true that the teams working on the Vision platform have “been redistributed to other teams within Apple.”

Good to know! I thought it was a bit weird for the team to have been disbanded so abruptly. Perhaps if this aspect of the story is not correct, other aspects will turn out to have been untrue as well.

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