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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?

#951

Post by 698969 »

toasterlovin wrote: post #119
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…

You have to be religious, right? This is the dream for us. We reverted to Catholicism after it became apparent that the secular world was incompatible with us, then eventually found our way to a high fertility parish. It’s incredible. Kids everywhere. Average family size is 5-6 kids. Really hoping our kids choose to remain in this lifestyle and we get to enjoy dozens of grandkids.

Out of curiosity, what is the ballpark of your and your spouse's income and net worth?

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

#952

Post by hi41 »

I found daycare very expensive. It was close to $1200 per month. With two kids, it was forbiddingly expensive. My wife wanted a 3rd child but I did not because of high cost having babies. Then there is college fee when they grow up. I van empathize with people who are not able to have kids due to coat.

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

#953

Post by dangisapos »

bongodongobob wrote: post #871
dang wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

I can't help how others respond. No flame war intended.

[dead]

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

#954

Post by dangisapos »

dang wrote: post #937
bongodongobob wrote: post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help how others respond. No flame war intended.

I believe you, but we have to go by effects, not intent. If you post swipes like "What bubble do you live in?" (which is already against the site guidelines, btw) on a divisive topic like this, then the odds of a flamewar are high and you're responsible for starting it—the same way you would be responsible for a wildfire if you dropped lit matches in a dry forest, whether you intended a wildfire or not. https://hn.al…

[dead]

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

#955

Post by notamaterialist »

dotnet00 wrote: post #196
xyzelement wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely haven’t met anyone who deeply wanted children and then didn’t because of “socioeconomics”. I met plenty of ppl who talk about the climate or cost of housing as the reason for other ppl but I never knew of anyone making a decision this way. You know someone?

By socioeconomics, I'm referring to all those different factors. The point is that "I don't want to have children because I'm worried about the impact of climate change" (social) or "I don't want to have children because I think it'll be too expensive" (economic) is not caused by biology and thus there is no selecting such concerns out of the gene pool. Not even mentioning that evolution doesn't even meaningfully wor…

[flagged]

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

#956

Post by toomuchtodo »

rayiner wrote: post #913
mensetmanusman wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nah, cultures that don’t have kids will just be replaced by ones that do. This process is already will underway in America, with WASPs (who have a strong anti-natal streak) being replaced by Hispanics.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/08/hispanic-...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/fewer-latino-births-deat...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/us-birthrate-hispanics...

https://ifstudies.org/blog/5-8-million-fewer-babies-americas...

Interestingly, in the US, you find that the birth rate of all races converge. Why? Educated, empowered women have less children or no children, and in general delay childbearing. Immigrant fertility is higher, but settles back down after a generation or two.

https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#empowerment-of-wom...

> The level of education in a society – of women in particular – is one of the most important predictors for the number of children families have.

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

#957

Post by ip26 »

kubb wrote: post #444
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…

It’s awesome if you can afford it. I wouldn’t mind having 3 kids if each one of them could have their own space in the house, if I could help them develop life skills, and give them all the love and time they need. With large families it feels like many of the children are neglected. In a modern world either you don’t have the money or you don’t have the time.

Time doesn't scale. If you have eight kids and a full time job out of the home, it will be incredibly difficult to deeply get to know, support, etc them as individuals. A common observation is that in families with that many kids, the older kids raise the younger kids.

It probably functions much better if everyone works together in a family business.

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

#958

Post by toasterlovin »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #938
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…

Mind if I ask how you found a church like this? I’ve been having similar thoughts. Sedevacantism seemed like a natural place to look but it isn’t well represented in my area. I grew up catholic but it was mostly people going through the motions. Yours sounds like a more hippy esque flavor which appeals to me.

We prolly would have ended up at a similar parish or Orthodox, but finding our parish was a happy accident. I don’t have enough experience to tell you how to find something similar in another city, but if I had to guess, it’d be something like: join the Catholic homeschool community in your area and pay attention to which parishes people are commuting to. Other strong indicators are probably some amount of Latin in the masses, strong traditional music program, etc.

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

#959

Post by toasterlovin »

698969 wrote: post #951
toasterlovin wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be religious, right? This is the dream for us. We reverted to Catholicism after it became apparent that the secular world was incompatible with us, then eventually found our way to a high fertility parish. It’s incredible. Kids everywhere. Average family size is 5-6 kids. Really hoping our kids choose to remain in this lifestyle and we get to enjoy dozens of grandkids.

Out of curiosity, what is the ballpark of your and your spouse's income and net worth?

I’m game but tell me your hypothesis first.

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

#960

Post by guythedudebro »

wikidani wrote: post #665
TomK32 wrote: post #620

My daughter is an only child but has eight cousins (that I know of, most are in her age range) but barely spends time with them. She's not missing out on anything because she has a large circle of friends her age, be it from the public playground when they only started walking, kindergarden or now the first three years in school. It takes some effort as a parent and tbh dumping-the-child-at-her-friends-and-vice-versa…

I don't think cars are the biggest issue here though, most people I know seem to be worried about the lack of third spaces that are clean and wouldn't expose their children to crime or drug use for example.

The cars took the third space
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