This is the death of our species if it is allowed to continue. Ban birth control.
Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
961–970 of 1001 posts
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#962Earlier quoted context omitted.
Affordability has rarely been a concern for having kids. I grew up poor and people never "thought" about affording kids, just had them and figured things out along the way. It seems it's a self-filtering mechanism in the upper classes, that put all kinds stops before having kids (e.g not ready/mature enough yet, not financially stable, etc) and usually end up having one at most.
Ask your parents, did they enjoy raising you without any money? My mom certainly did not enjoy working 2 jobs to bring me up in this world, and while she loves me, I'm pretty sure she would not do it again if she could do it all over. So while yes, affordability has rarely been a concern, perhaps people are more educated now and realize what having kids would mean for their life, and how much worse it would make thei…
Yes, of course. They'd do it all over again without hesitation. Also, we were technically homeless for a time and a church took us in and let us live in their attic.
I'm deeply grateful to have been given the chance to be alive and for all those experiences as a child.
> And instead of living life for the purpose of being some child making vessels
someone needs therapy...
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#963Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ask your parents, did they enjoy raising you without any money? My mom certainly did not enjoy working 2 jobs to bring me up in this world, and while she loves me, I'm pretty sure she would not do it again if she could do it all over. So while yes, affordability has rarely been a concern, perhaps people are more educated now and realize what having kids would mean for their life, and how much worse it would make thei…
> My mom certainly did not enjoy working 2 jobs to bring me up in this world Rich world problems, though. In poorer countries and our poorer past, you'd have been working alongside her as she wouldn't be able to do it all on her own. Poor people have little choice but to bring children into this world. They would not survive without them. Opting to not have children is a luxury. > perhaps people are more educated now…
> Or less educated. We seem to have come to believe that children are porcelain dolls that will break if they have to lift the lightest of fingers before they turn 18, even though there is no basis to that. It's just a cultural display.
Very much so.
Sadly, hand-in-hand with some strange Peter Pan syndrome of many adults remaining eternal children or what's worse, outright demonizing having children, arguably one of the most beautiful things you could ever achieve in life.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#964Earlier 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…
Besides the wider social trend for kids, did the pedestrian deaths decrease because cars get safer or people are just too scared to walk and take the car for everything? The increase of cars on the roads support this though: There might be a lot less pedestrians now than there were in 1975.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#965Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ask your parents, did they enjoy raising you without any money? My mom certainly did not enjoy working 2 jobs to bring me up in this world, and while she loves me, I'm pretty sure she would not do it again if she could do it all over. So while yes, affordability has rarely been a concern, perhaps people are more educated now and realize what having kids would mean for their life, and how much worse it would make thei…
Yes, of course. They'd do it all over again without hesitation. Also, we were technically homeless for a time and a church took us in and let us live in their attic. I'm deeply grateful to have been given the chance to be alive and for all those experiences as a child. > And instead of living life for the purpose of being some child making vessels someone needs therapy...
So you think people should suffer homeless if it comes to it, as long as they make kids? What a horrible view of the world you have.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#966Anecdata: 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 makes me feel bad (though not too bad at this point) that I have to log off at quittin' time, sharp, to go relieve my wife of some childcare and make a family dinner.
Don't feel bad! I don't have kids and I always appreciate the example set by my coworkers and manager who mostly all have kids. They're very good about having an "end" to their day which makes me feel like it's ok to also call it an end to my day.
I used to work on a team where we were all young & partner-less, including my manager, and everyone just worked "constantly"-ish (like breaks for sleep or errands so it wasn't super intense), but it just felt like a 24/7 slow marathon instead of M-F 9-5-type work. It was absolutely awful. They were all so intelligent too so I felt like I had to do that just to try to keep up and never wanted to be the first one to log off early. We were at a giant company and not scrapping to survive or anything, that was just the micro-culture within the ~10 of us.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#967Earlier 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.
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
Yep, people don't realize how much of a bubble they might be in. I grew up in a relatively wealthy/very high education suburb so all of my friends from high school are just barely settling down (getting married, no kids yet) after finishing PhDs/MDs etc. When I lived in the bay area, it was super common to be single or partnered but no kids (in my friend group, in our mid-late 20s). It really never occurred to me that there were other 'timelines'.
I moved out to Salt Lake City in the pandemic and now at 30 I'm very rare to be both single and have no kids. It's very common for people to have started having kids at age ~22 or so, even amongst the non-LDS crowd. I suspect San Francisco and Utah are polar opposite ends of the "having kids or not"-spectrum, so it does make sense in hindsight but it's still surprising to me
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#968Anecdata: 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…
I've worked with plenty of people who have no visible significant other, even. It's fucking weird. Thirty+ (40+) year old guys living alone in huge houses, never married. I'm guessing they are just hitting up sex workers. These are smart, well adjusted people who would have made good fathers.
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Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#969Earlier 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…
> Once you have children, the dopamine ends and the self-directed path takes a backseat. Nobody I know wants to give that up.
Except for all those parents that neglect, or worse, abuse their kids.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#970Anecdata: 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…
> My parents pushed me to get educated. Now I’m in my early 30s and honestly I’m not in a rush to have kids. Do I want kids? Definitely. But right now I’m trying to build family wealth so I can give my kids a great childhood. I’m on track to meet my goals in the next 5 years or so.
There's a chance you won't make it, though. And at some point, it does become too late.