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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?

#901

Post by Dig1t »

selimthegrim wrote: post #832
Dig1t wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy a house in Shreveport, Louisiana for 10k or less. There are many towns and cities in the US with extremely low housing costs. Most of West Virginia is a good example as well. The reason Shreveport always comes to mind when I think of cheap housing is because I always remember that John Carmack and John Romero owned a little lakehouse there and that's where they lived while making Doom.

I live in Louisiana. When Bobby Jindal was running for governor the first time against Kathleen Blanco in 2004, she put out an ad that featured the nappiest, hair sticking up picture of Jindal you could possibly imagine and coupled it with the tagline “Wake up Louisiana, before it’s too late” (implied subtext: and you elect a black man) I do hear she regretted this on her deathbed stricken with cancer. But more to th…

That has nothing to do with the argument about cost of living. OP asked for examples of affordable housing in the US, implying that affordable housing does not exist anywhere. The point is that there are tons of places to live. Of course the social problems in Louisiana are different than in coastal cities (coastal cities have plenty of social problems too).

To your point, if more progressive people were willing to live outside of coastal cities, they could affect social change in places like Louisiana.

What it sounds like you are saying is that racism makes towns/cities outside of the coastal areas unlivable. That is simply not true.

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

#902

Post by paulryanrogers »

toasterlovin wrote: post #846
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s awesome. I have good news and bad news — my family is extremely Christian, we were missionaries to Turkey for ten years, I’ve converted people, etc. It is a very close community, and I do think the community aspect will just keep getting better for you. At the same time, different people will feel differently about what truth is. I’m agnostic now, because I feel like I would be lying to my family if I said I s…

Thanks for your perspective. It's all a grand experiment. Maybe you'll see a thread on here in 30 years about how it all turned out.

If you visit /r/exchistian you can have a sneak peek right now

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

#903

Post by [deleted] »

webworker wrote: post #862
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'…

[deleted]

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

#904

Post by happiness_idx »

echelon wrote: post #167
lumost wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing this math frequently of late. I'm 35, have one child and of my high school class ... maybe 25% have children? there is certainly a bias from polling social media. But the anecdata would say that we're closing on the point where millenials have chosen to simply not have children.

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…

You got downvoted because you speak the truth.

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

#905

Post by rayiner »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #338
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…

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…

> 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

Interesting observation. At 3 kids I’m probably around median for the over 30 set at my work. My wife’s old firm had several people with 5+ kids. (Catholic+Jewish firm.) This is in DC where the median number of children for a college educated woman is around 1.

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

#906

Post by randomdata »

jvanderbot wrote: post #601
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Added anecdata: A lot of my direct colleagues are getting married and having kids at the moment, often a bit later in life (in their and their partners 30's) than the preceding generation, but still. Me and my siblings, none of us seem to have any inclination; combination of just not wanting them, having neurodiverse conditions that seem more debilitating than my parents' generation, and finances like only becoming h…

There is never a good time to have kids, and so any time is a good time to have kids. Maybe I'm a lucky one, but we took the plunge right at the end of biological possibility since we're old, and I only wish I had done this 20 years ago. It's such a wonderful experience and believe me I never would have guessed that. There's nothing I was doing back then that mattered at all. And now I'll be lucky to see my kids grad…

In hindsight, the high school years would have been the perfect time to have children. No responsibilities, doing nothing of value, biology in its optimal state, and the greatest support network you're going to have. But at the same time I feel for those who did because I know they felt the terrible social scorn.

You spend all those years being told that having children is the worst mistake of your life, until you're in your 30s, and then all of sudden the same people are "What's your problem? Why haven't you had children already?" It's bizarre.

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

#907

Post by nicksrose7224 »

brushfoot wrote: post #564
echelon wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> My adoptive father shared an apartment with a roommate when I was in elementary school. Here I am, just fine My wife's mother beat and choked her from childhood. She was regularly told she was worthless and unwanted. Her father abandoned them, and her stepfather would whip her with clothes hangers for imagined infractions. Many people are in similar situations. The abuse may not always be physical or as extreme as…

Are you saying it would have been a good thing for your wife's parents not to reproduce? Where would that leave her and you? (noted that childhood you described sounds awful, i agree)

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

#908

Post by paulryanrogers »

djha-skin wrote: post #61

My father had 10 siblings and my mother had seven. I had seven siblings myself with over 30 cousins on both sides of my family. I have four children and my and most of my siblings each have six children or so. My mother has about 24 grandkids at the last count Maybe. Further, I live on the same street as two of my sisters and I have another sister that lives down the street, with my brother living 3 mi away. Only two…

So basically you want your older kids to raise the younger ones, and have little choice in the matter?

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

#909

Post by happiness_idx »

lgkk wrote: post #273
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…

Might be due to some of us growing up really poor. I’m from a third world and I remember lack of water and electricity, five plus people crammed into a home the size of my current apartments living room. We used to use kerosene lamps and heat water and I grew up in the 90s. Even today my parents don’t own a home yet and they have rented their whole lives. They still work. It’s really up to me to resolve all our issue…

I promise circumstances are not going to get better. Many individuals who eventually become parents wouldn't have taken the leap if they had waited indefinitely for what they deemed as "perfect circumstances." It's perfectly acceptable if you choose not to have children; after all, it's your decision. However, and Frankly speaking, it becomes tiresome to hear the implication that parents who took that leap have a more privileged situation than the tech community on platforms like Hacker News.

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

#910

Post by ojhughes »

vundercind wrote: post #290
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They really are. I'm 50 this year. I've been an avid reader all my life, and back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I'd read the newspapers my grandfather would bring home. I would've still been in highschool (at the latest), so call this 1990 +/- 1 year. Even then I remember the classic newspaper article, claiming how much it'd cost to raise a child to age 18. I think back then they were calling that number $250,…

I have three kids. I reckon the first cost more than $200,000 by age 5. No major medical problems (kids are also a reverse lottery ticket, in that regard—sometimes they just take all your money indefinitely because they’ve got a serious chronic illness). And we were far from extravagant in our spending. The bulk of it was in the three categories I listed. [edit] I agree with you, actually, that there are a lot of dum…

We bought a used changing dresser for £10, my back is very thankful.
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