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URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI The window for great-grandmothers is closing
alex_smart wrote 8 hours 29 min ago:
Great-grandparents? The window for grandparents might be closing! If
you have your kids at 35, and your kids have their kids 35, you are 75
by the time the grandchild turns 5. The amount of quality time you
might have to spend with your grandchild could be approximately zero
(depends of course on your health).
supertofu wrote 1 day ago:
The framing of this essay bothers me, because it suggests that losing
great-grandmothers is a bad thing.
But why can't we focus on the enormous positive effect of girls having
the option to fully mature into women before bearing their children?
Maybe instead of focusing what we lose with the absence of
great-grandmothers, we should focus on what we gain with the decline of
girl-mothers.
pyuser583 wrote 1 day ago:
Thereâs a huge and well thought out consensus teenage parenthood is
bad.
Itâs talked about a lot. Not as much as it used to be, but thatâs
because itâs become common sense. People donât talk about common
sense consensus positions.
But good things can have bad side effects, and people can be so happy
about the good thing, they donât see the bad thing.
Talk about the advantages of delayed child bearing all you want, but
it wonât be a particularly original conversation.
supertofu wrote 1 day ago:
I don't really care if the conversation is original, if it means we
live in a world where girls are granted the opportunity to grow in
knowledge and experience before sacrificing their bodies and lives
to childbearing and childrearing.
pyuser583 wrote 1 day ago:
And posting articles like this doesnât take away from that in
any way.
hateful wrote 1 day ago:
I've always had this weird thought - that doesn't really pass the
ethics test, but here it is anyway.
I was raised by my grandmother - let's just say my parents were not
ready. And I know a lot of parents that want their kids to have kids
but the kids aren't ready. What if it would become the norm for
Grandparents to raise the children? That way the second generation can
focus on their careers, etc and the first generation could raise the
third. That wouldn't mean the second generation wouldn't have a role
and be a part of the process. Of course, there would have to be consent
on each level - and if it was part of the culture maybe there would be.
Also, technology may have a role in this also - if no one has to
actually carry the children, the second generation could be more
willing.
The whole point is that this happens all the time, but it's always seen
as a break from the norm, not the norm. What if we just embraced it?
The next generation would happen earlier, the first generation would
have their grand kids and the second generation would have time to
"wait" for whatever reason.
Again, I know this doesn't really work out, but it's a thought I've
always had.
CWJeff wrote 1 day ago:
I've always had an even worse idea, ethically speaking, that I think
would combine well with yours : the first generation would raise the
third, as you said, but that third generation would be born out of
the frozen gametes of the now deceased zero generation.
That way, embryos would only be created after the death of both
biological parents, which would give you whole lives to look at to
decide if you wanted these persons to reproduce.
That would open the way to some interesting possibilities in
directing human evolution while opening a whole new world of horrific
abuse and creative eugenics.
mplewis wrote 1 day ago:
Visit any WIC clinic. Grandmas are always the ones picking up the
societal slack.
dochtman wrote 1 day ago:
Here in NL it is quite common for grandparents to help parents out
with day care on their workdays. School pickup is rife with
grandparentsâ¦
nirav72 wrote 1 day ago:
yeah this is also fairly common in many East and South-Asian
countries. In countries like China, many people leave their
children behind in the village with the grandparents, while they go
work in the cities.
latexr wrote 1 day ago:
> The whole point is that this happens all the time
What happens all the time is an adult raising their our children and
then later on raising their grandchildren. But what youâre
suggesting is having old people with zero experience raising anyone
taking care of their grandchildren. I donât quite see that as a
clearcut case of success.
jader201 wrote 1 day ago:
I think youâre missing the point (but possible I am).
My understanding is that OP is proposing that since the
grandparents would be raising the kids, this would incentivize
people to have kids much younger, e.g. in their early 20s, or even
teens.
So the âgrandparentsâ would be in their early/mid 40s, or even
late 30s.
Definitely not âold peopleâ.
And zero experience parenting, yes (just like any new parent
today), but definitely more life experience, and likely more
mature.
Not saying Iâd advocate for this â I think there are still some
flaws with this â but an interesting hypothetical thatâs fun to
discuss.
91bananas wrote 1 day ago:
Wait the people that raised the kids that then had kids have no
experience raising kids?
latexr wrote 1 day ago:
No, you misunderstood completely. Under the OPâs proposal, you
have people raising their grandkids, not their kids.
jzb wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
So if I understand: Starting today, a pair of 20-somethings has
kids, hands them off to their parents to raise - OK, their
parents had experience now they are doing double-duty, but they
know what they're doing raising kids.
Now... 20 years later, those children have kids and hand them
off to their biological parents who ... have no experience
raising children. Also, which grandparents? Mom's or dad's?
latexr wrote 19 hours 14 min ago:
Ask the OP, I wasnât the one who suggested the idea.
elcomet wrote 1 day ago:
What does it change from parents with zero experience taking care
of their children ?
lbourdages wrote 1 day ago:
Parents can ask their own parents for guidance. In the proposed
scenario, the grandparents would have no one to ask because the
previous generation is most likely dead already.
britzkopf wrote 1 day ago:
Zero? Doesn't seem a very good faith assessment of the concept
proposed.
ghosty141 wrote 1 day ago:
This is eh very common in many parts of the world. I myself have
probably spent more time with my grandparents than my parents at
certain times of my life. Often this happens if grandparents and
parents live closeby and children cant go to daycare for whatever
reason.
SystemOut wrote 1 day ago:
From my limited vantage point (in-laws) this is normal in the
Filipino culture. My wife and I moved away from her parents so we
didn't do this but her sister's kids were probably a 70/30 split in
being at the grandparents' house. Her cousin's kids were the same.
In fact, many of them would send the kids to the Philippines for
months at a time where the grandparents lived to be raised by them.
It felt really odd to me at first but that's more because it wasn't
how I was raised plus I didn't have any grandparents that were still
alive when I grew up.
jrochkind1 wrote 1 day ago:
I would like to read the SF story fleshing this out!
ToucanLoucan wrote 1 day ago:
> And I know a lot of parents that want their kids to have kids but
the kids aren't ready. ... The next generation would happen earlier,
the first generation would have their grand kids and the second
generation would have time to "wait" for whatever reason.
I mean, putting aside the other good comments this has received, why
are the kids not ready? Because if I look around at myself and my
peers, I see a lot of people who absolutely want kids but feel they
can't have them, for a number of reasons, but not unimportant
reasons:
- A lot of people are delaying because they don't feel financially
stable enough, because of the increasing costs of lifes essentials,
not the least of which is housing, and/or student loan debt which was
foisted on them by the selfish decisions of the aforementioned
grandparents.
- Tons of people are avoiding kids because they don't want to bring
them into a world as unstable as ours, that instability expressed as
some combination of: our ever worsening biosphere and the long-term
threats of climate change, the aforementioned
everything-getting-more-expensive-all-the-time while wages continue
stagnating, the political instability with micro-wars playing out all
over the place, the economic precarity as our system continues
enabling bad actors, the social instability caused by deepening
political divides and extremisms literally everywhere over what would
otherwise be such benign things, and for flavor, a few things that
absolutely deserve extremist responses...
Like, one of the first things that goes away when an animal
population is stressed on a macro-scale is reproduction. It seems to
me if we want to promote reproduction again, we need to make our
world less... awful? Like by and large, my life is great, but I'm
child-free and that decision was informed partly by the fact that I
have to meter my intake of global news lest I become so depressed I
can't function, and aside of that, I started making six figures 2
years ago which is legitimately a thing I never thought would happen,
and yet in those subsequent 2 years I have never felt poorer because
every last thing costs more now than it ever has, even asking my
mother.
I think it's impossible to divorce a discussion like this from the
fact that there are absolutely pages upon pages of good, rational,
logical reasons one can write to not have children and commensurate
with that fact, we see birth rates plummeting all over the place.
jffhn wrote 1 day ago:
>I see a lot of people who absolutely want kids but feel they can't
have them, for a number of reasons
I remember thinking about that in the street, and then be overtaken
by a rom family, the father pushing the kids in a shopping cart and
the mother walking alongside.
antifa wrote 1 day ago:
> micro-wars
That's an interesting choice of worlds, I'd just call them wars,
maybe proxy wars. Some of them look like candidates for what future
historians might call the early conflicts of WW3. There's also lot
of noise about declaring war on China too, which honestly sounds
like a bad idea, and the grievances I've seen range from fake to
you're-doing-the-same-thing and what's left is not really worth
fighting a war over.
From what I've seen, the loudest proponents demanding everyone have
more kids are also the worst offenders in making the world a worse
place to be a new kid or a new parent.
ToucanLoucan wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
Yeah I couldn't really settle on the term. The Ukraine-Russia
conflict is kind of half-proxy war, since one of the entities is
Russia itself but then the other side is basically NATO plus or
minus, but (to my knowledge) no NATO nations have been in direct
conflict with Russia yet, they're just supplying the Ukraine. And
then you have the Israel Palestine shit which isn't really a
proxy war at all so much as a regular war that happens to be
small in scale (compared to the world, not compared to it's
combatants of course).
But yeah, this feels distinctly like the period of history right
before maps get covered in flags and arrows and it's not a good
vibe.
makeitdouble wrote 1 day ago:
IMHO the part about the kids not being ready is crucial.
If they're just not well off financially I'd see your idea happen
(but then, we already see grand parents giving a hand financially in
these kind of circumstances)
But if they're not ready mentally, there would be mountains of issues
with their relationship with their child. For instance, do they even
fully understand it's their child under their responsibility ? Can
they continue raising their child when the grand parents can't
anymore ? How well will they take it if suddenly they have to give up
important things to completely focus on the kid(s) ? On the other
hand will they be able to step in if the grand parents aren't fit for
that ?
etc.
I think it would work better if parents give it a fair try, but end
up being inept and have the grandparents step in. Giving up from the
start would be a worse path IMHO.
bitcoin_anon wrote 1 day ago:
My life was a mess until we unexpectedly had our first child. I
donât think I ever would have considered myself mentally ready.
The child came first, then I started growing into a suitable
person.
makeitdouble wrote 1 day ago:
TBF, I don't think any of us really understood what it would take
or were well prepared to become parents, even when getting into
it on our terms.
I don't know if I'm a suitable person, but having a kid sure
pushed me out of my boundaries pretty far, in every possible
direction.
unsupp0rted wrote 1 day ago:
This is the norm in countries like South Korea, and much of Eastern
Europe
jzb wrote 1 day ago:
Even leaving aside the ethics (which...yikes) I think this kind of
falls down, logically.
Parents want to become grandparents after having the experience of
being parents. If you cut the "being parents" out of that cycle, why
would you even want grand kids? And having been parents prepares
grandparents to step in if needed. If you skip the parenting step,
why would they be any better at it just because they're 20 years
older?
Also, frankly, infants are hard. They're great when you can give them
back. But the loss of sleep and everything is something that does not
go well with being in your 40s and beyond. It's hard at any age, but
doubly so later in life.
All that said, it'd be great if society placed more emphasis on
extended family involvement and if we start to really embrace remote
work that might be more possible. (e.g., stop making people move
thousands of miles away from their families just for jobs...) But
accelerating child-having just for the sake of great-grandparents...
bad idea, even leaving aside the ethics.
imacomputer wrote 1 day ago:
> Also, frankly, infants are hard.
Honestly, they are as difficult as you want them to be. Some
parents stress way to much about them hurting themselves in the
process.
If you take everything in moderation, they are not that bad at all.
There will be a few bad days ofc, but at large my kids are the best
thing that happened to me, and I have two at the same age.
jobs_throwaway wrote 1 day ago:
what are your ethical qualms?
unsupp0rted wrote 1 day ago:
Child-rearing approaches that weren't used where/when I grew up
are unethical
johnkpaul wrote 1 day ago:
Anthropologically, I think that this isn't super far from what has
already happened for humans. Grandmothers specifically had a lot of
repsonsibilities and importance and I believe that's why they
generally live longer than grandfathers.
Instead of being about career development, it's been about
specializing in hunter/gatherer stuff while still able bodied.
URI [1]: https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/grandmothers-a...
user_7832 wrote 23 hours 31 min ago:
> I believe that's why they generally live longer than
grandfathers.
Iirc that's at least partly due to estrogen & other female
hormones. They have I think anti-infection or anti-cancer
properties. (Though if your comment was from an evolutionary
perspective that would make sense.)
helpfulmandrill wrote 1 day ago:
I wish I lived in a society where I could have a kid at 25 rather than
35 without messing up my life. I feel like we ignore how nice it must
be to have another 10 years with your parents in your life.
arkey wrote 1 day ago:
Why can't you have a kid at 25 without messing up your life? Some
people do.
helpfulmandrill wrote 1 day ago:
That deadline has passed, but I was living in a one bedroom flat
making no money at all at 25, as were most of my friends.
arkey wrote 1 day ago:
Apologies, I probably misunderstood your comment and I'm sorry if
you missed out on something you hoped for.
I agree, today's society in many places can make it very hard for
young people to start a family.
drKarl wrote 1 day ago:
I see a lot of comments here focused on their individual experiences
and opinions, which is fine. But on those comments I see a lot of
people saying they won't have kids. Which individually is their choice,
but collectively, combined with people who do have kids have them older
which can lead to fertility issues when they want to have them,
combined with the increase in the number of people who is LGBTQ+ which
again it's their choice and nothing wrong with that individually, but
as a species we can see how these factors combined, and other factors,
are the cause of drop in number of children born in all countries. I
recently read that in Japan there are more adult diapers sold than baby
diapers because of drop in births and increase of aging population.
This seems to be driving us to extinction as a species, just food for
thought.
daveoc64 wrote 1 day ago:
>the increase in the number of people who is LGBTQ+ which again it's
their choice
Choice?
defrost wrote 1 day ago:
> are the cause of drop in number of children born in all countries.
Yes.
> This seems to be driving us to extinction as a species
No.
There are more people alive now than there ever has been. Ever.
This will continue until at least 2100 when numbers may finally peak
and then fall.
When human populations numbers fall there is no sane reason to think
that they will plummet to zero.
It is far more likely numbers will decrease to the mid 10 billions
and more or less stabilise.
drKarl wrote 1 day ago:
> This will continue until at least 2100 when numbers may finally
peak and then fall.
That's due to the higher fertility rate of countries like Niger,
Angola etc which far outpace the declining rates of most of the
rest of the world like China, Russia, Europe, Japan, South Corea,
USA, etc.
arkey wrote 1 day ago:
After reading the comments I understand this MUST mean people in
Niger, Angola, etc. are more financially ready to have kids than
people in Europe, Japan, USA, South Corea, etc.
MaysonL wrote 1 day ago:
My great-grandfather, whom I met a few times in the â50s, was born
during the Civil War.
michaelhoney wrote 1 day ago:
The author says that shorter life expectancies in the past means that
there weren't many great-grandparents back in the day.
I don't think that's the case: the shorter average life expectancy is
due to infant and youth mortality. As long as you didn't die from what
would nowadays be a preventable disease, people still got old: that's
where the term "three score years and ten" comes from.
So I think there were probably many 70yo great grandparents.
AtlasBarfed wrote 1 day ago:
My kid didn't get to meet his grandmother (my mom). She had me at 30, I
had him at 46, one year too late.
One of the problems with capitalism is that the highest achieving
people (somewhat likely the actual "fittest" people in terms of genetic
selection) don't have kids until they are much later, if at all. I
don't want this to get too elitist, but this country (actually the
entire first world aside from France) needs to figure out how to
incentivize productive people to have kids.
I always thought what we should do with the people in retirement for
longer and longer periods of time is encourage them to provide some
child care, even if it isn't their own. Especially in some countries
(Japan, holy shit South Korea) that really are imbalanced.
Although, tangentially, I think South Korea will solve its demographic
bomb by toppling North Korea's government and immigrating a massive
number of shellshocked North Koreans.
hm-nah wrote 1 day ago:
Apple will soon include A.I. in iPhones that will in essence provide an
eternal simulation of each of us. Progeny will be able to interact with
us in our own voices and likely in 3D. When openAI and its humanoid
robots align, your AI clone will be uploaded to the unit. Unfortunately
âyouâ wonât be able to enjoy or reciprocate âtheirâ
enjoyment. Similar to if you recorded a video to your family today and
they watched it after you passed away.
90d wrote 1 day ago:
Ah just what I needed, more anxiety.
LeonB wrote 1 day ago:
My siblings and I did unusually well at school (relative to cousins and
peers) - and itâs possible this was due to having an âolderâ
father.
Thereâs a 2017 study that older parents produce kids with a higher
Geek Index â [1] Seems âtruthyâ to me.
URI [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/tp2017125
gr8_commission wrote 1 day ago:
When I was about 16 years old it became my life dream to get married
young and to have kids young. My inspiring thought was that I could be
a young grandparent and that my kids would be able to know their
parents for a long time as well as their grandparents and great
grandparents.
I did get married at 19 and had my first son at 20. 3 years later I had
my daughter. 5 months into my daughters life, the kids mother left us
and I was stranded alone as a single father of 2 at age 23.
That was 4 years ago and it was the most difficult time of my life. I
moved back in with my parents and my then recently "empty cage" mother
had to become a "mum" again while I slowly got back on my feet.
I've been remarried for about a year now and everything is going very
well. My daughter is about to turn 4 and my son turns 7 this year. I
love thinking about how when I'm 30 my son will be 10 and when I'm 40
he'll be 20 etc.
Before the divorce, I was very adamant on promoting young
marriage/childbearing to others. In a perfect world I still think it's
a good idea... but I am a lot more open minded and less critical. Life
is so unique and never goes according to plan. I wouldn't recommend my
exact life to anyone as it has its own unique and undesirable
difficulties. When my own children grow up, I will strongly recommend
against rushing anything with anyone until they're absolutely sure and
have a good plan in place.
My kids know and love their grandparents. They know their great
grandparents.
I am prepared physically and mentally for 2 more kids (yes I know, but
I think I know better than I did at 19), but I cannot imagine doing the
whole baby thing in my mid 30s or early 40s... I think my current age
is a good time to just get it all out of the way. I like to think of it
as delayed gratification and that having adult children at a relatively
young age is a huge blessing. Let's see how it goes.
gr8r wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks for sharing. On a tangent...
> I was very adamant on promoting young marriage/childbearing to
others. In a perfect world I still think it's a good idea... ... Life
is so unique and never goes according to plan ... rushing anything
with anyone until they're absolutely sure and have a good plan in
place
Among other reasons, social media can suddenly change a person in
very unexpected ways at an unexpected pace.
Ppl are more connected to the infinite-scroll than ever before, more
than to other ppl around them. It is no longer even our friends we
watch and envy - its all "influencer" content.
smoyer wrote 1 day ago:
I attended my great-great-grandmother's 100th birthday party when I was
8 or 9.
tropdrop wrote 1 day ago:
Came here to say something similar: I didn't realize how rare this
was until this thread, but as I kid I knew not only four of my
great-grandparents, but even a great-great-grandmother. She died at
96 years old, but I was old enough to hang out with her a few times,
and remember her.
My great-grandfather is still alive and turned 100 last year. Since
I'm already much older than any of my progenitors when they had their
children, even if I live to his age it is unlikely I'll get to spend
time with my own great-great-grandchildren.
softgrow wrote 1 day ago:
Both of my great-grandmothers died by the time by 12 months old. A
message to my children - hurry up, make my living parents
great-grandparents!
rayiner wrote 1 day ago:
In Christmas 2021, as COVID was winding down, we rented a house on the
Oregon coast to see my wifeâs family. My wifeâs grandmother
surreptitiously messaged me on Facebook to pick her up from her house
so she could see our youngest, her newest great grand. Much to the
consternation of my COVID-wary father in law. In her view, the point of
living the 87 was to count up the great grandchildren (10 total). She
died the next year (not of COVID).
If my kids have kids the same time I did, as do those kids, then within
the expected Asian male lifespan I should see at least one and
hopefully two great grands.
PaulHoule wrote 1 day ago:
For that matter, a small change in number of siblings makes a much
larger change in the number of cousins. That is, if every family has
N children, you have N-1 siblings and 2N(N-1) cousins. (Corrected
thanks to comment)
harel wrote 1 day ago:
We just said goodbye to my kid's great grandmother. They knew her very
well and treated her like a their regular grandma. When my eldest son
was just under 1 year old he met his great-great grandmother (who died
shortly after meeting him at 105). I think me and my wife's parents
will live to see their great grand children. It's not too far fetched
to imagine.
Scubabear68 wrote 1 day ago:
I have an example that helps underscore the lesson here.
I was adopted by older parents, in their mid-40s when I was adopted
around 2 years old. They were the "youngsters" in their families, so it
meant I was exceedingly young compared to my cousins and other
relatives.
Fast forward a few decades and my adoptive parents are deceased, and we
have lost touch with the few relatives I have. My wife is in a similar
situation.
We adopted two older children, 7 and 3 at the time, when I was in my
mid 40's. It has been great for us and for the kids, a challenge and an
adventure, but the biggest miss is lack of family. We have no grand
parents to fall back on, let alone great grand parents. It is
incredibly difficult to raise kids without an extended family to help
out. We manage, but boy do I envy those who have bigger families to
lean into. Not to mention the network of cousins, etc that the kids can
relate to.
hnthrowaway0328 wrote 1 day ago:
One kid is good enough so I don't regret getting one at 38. Letting
grand parents help with child caring also carries a lot of downsides,
especially if they live in.
obruchez wrote 1 day ago:
"a lot of downsides"
Can you give a few examples? I only see upsides.
hnthrowaway0328 wrote 1 day ago:
For a start, they have their own ideas of raising kids. This is
already an everyday headache.
racl101 wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, that is a pity.
danielodievich wrote 1 day ago:
My great-grandfather was widowed and remarried in late 1940ies to a
woman who was his university-age daughter's friend (that daughter was
my grandmother). Yeah, he was considerably older (late 40ies/early
50ies?) than her (like 23?). That lady is my great-grandmother (sure,
she's not blood related to me but they had children and they are all my
various uncles/aunts and cousins). When I brought in my children to see
the family, they got to meet their both of their great-grandmothers,
great-grandfather, and on top of that their great-great-grandmother.
Now THAT's rare.
deadbabe wrote 1 day ago:
We need more good examples of what âold parentsâ look like in
modern society. Having a first child in your 40s is often painted as a
pessimistic, undesirable situation to be in, where you will âlack
energyâ and patience to take care of a small child.
But why? If weâre serious about extending lifespans the average age
of parents should be going up. People should be using their younger
years to establish themselves in society and build a sustainable
lifestyle. By the time you are 40, the costs and demands of a small
child should be effortless, easily solved with the riches youâve
accumulated. By the time you hit 60s, your child is graduating college
and getting on with life. If youâre lucky maybe you live to 90 and
even see them reach well into middle age. This doesnât sound like a
bad timeline.
iteratethis wrote 1 day ago:
Extending lifespan misses the point and is reasoned from the
individual, and not the child. Lifespan extension adds to your
maximum age but maximum age isn't the most pressing issue to begin
with.
When you're born and you have parents that are 20 versus 40, that is
a dramatically different situation. Likewise if you have grandparents
that are 50-60 versus 70 or already dead. Sure, more lifespan means
you'll have more years together but you're completely dismissing the
quality of those years.
I feel the same way about relationships. Some people willingly only
seriously settle in their mid 30s or even later. That means you did
not share the other person's most energetic, adventurous, and
exciting life phase. You're 40 and have zero shared history together,
no stories, nothing. But hey, you're finally "comfortable".
Fuck comfortable. The clock is ticking, hurry the hell up. You're
wasting the defining and most valuable years of your life.
hackable_sand wrote 1 day ago:
My motto is "live slow, die whenever."
dividefuel wrote 1 day ago:
This sounds horrifying to me. If everyone has their first child at
40, then grandparents are always 80+ years old, leaving little (if
any) overlap in time and rarely good overlap as those usually aren't
high quality of life years. I think many people find the grandparent
relationship very important, and diminishing it so strongly seems
pretty harmful.
Unfrozen0688 wrote 1 day ago:
Its sad and a crisis. However I have money saved and a comfy job. Yet I
am exhausted. Domapnied burned out mess adhd riddled anxiety kissless
virgin
skulk wrote 1 day ago:
I don't know if this is the right time for you to hear this, but
don't establish your identity around things that you haven't done. Or
fine, do it, but once you have done them, you'll immediately realize
how dumb it was to let not having done them define you.
Unfrozen0688 wrote 1 day ago:
Its more I work 8h and I am exhausted and sit on youtube for 5h
until bedtime and repeat thats my life
ninju wrote 1 day ago:
There's a saying (Chinese proverb maybe) regarding a having a healthy
family tree
* May you live to see seven generations *
Which I took as mean grandparents to grandkids (with one "great" on
either side)
Good luck all
zachmu wrote 1 day ago:
Still think about this essay on the topic I saw on twitter a few years
back: [1] > If you intend to have children, but you donât intend to
have them just yet, you are not banking extra years as a person who is
still too young to have children. You are subtracting years from the
time you will share the world with your children.
URI [1]: https://hmmdaily.com/2018/10/18/your-real-biological-clock-is-...
GuardianCaveman wrote 1 day ago:
I had kids older so Iâm biased but imagining my kids grow up and
move away how often am I going to see them and talk to them? Or
rather how often are they going to want to see or talk to me.
Hopefully a lot but so I have kids when Iâm 18 for a type of life
that may or may not exist.
If I could do it again we would have had kids maybe 8 years earlier
but that still doesnât make a huge difference. Thereâs such a
strong sentiment in this thread that people who wait are selfish or
fools or the only benefits are financial but I feel like thereâs a
disdain from people who had kids early .
My wife was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, we were able to
travel the world and do things she wouldnât be able to do had we
had kids right away and tried to do when we were 40. Is that worth
having 15 years less with our kids? I guess time will tell but I know
either way we enjoy them every day as a home maker and work from home
dad they get to enjoy us as young kids and we take them on all kinds
of adventures since I work in the late afternoon evening.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote 1 day ago:
> imagining my kids grow up and move away how often am I going to
see them and talk to them? [1] > It turns out that when I graduated
from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent
time. Iâm now enjoying the last 5% of that time. Weâre in the
tail end.
URI [1]: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html
dividefuel wrote 1 day ago:
This is a great way of putting it, and I think about this a lot.
My wife's ancestors had kids at younger ages, and my ancestors had
kids at later ages. Her grandparents are all still alive, mine have
all been gone for more than ten years.
My spouse and I are on track to have kids in our mid/late 30s. My
wife's parents are both in their mid 50s, and realistically they'll
probably have 20 years of overlap with our children.
My parents, though, are in their mid 70s. I have to hope they have at
least another 10 years of good health so that they can forge a bond
with our children. Even with good health, though, the way a 75-year
old interacts with a young kid is going to be very different from the
way a 55-year old does.
I made the same choice as my parents and will likely face the same
future, where I may have little or no overlap with my grandchildren.
Since my generation has delayed childbearing for so long, I think
this is something we'll see largely as a mistake in about 20-30
years.
throwway120385 wrote 1 day ago:
If you think you want kids in your mid/late 30's, you might want to
have your genetic material frozen as soon as possible. Insurance
often covers it.
zachmu wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, I'm in a similar boat. We had our first kid in our early 30s,
basically the same age my parents had me. My parents probably
aren't going to be around much longer. We chose to live close to
them so they see our kids a lot, but we are very aware of how
little time they probably have left with them, and it's sad.
balfirevic wrote 1 day ago:
> you are not banking extra years as a person who is still too young
to have children. You are subtracting years from the time you will
share the world with your children
It's obviously both?
presentation wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, if you value your life before children at 0 itâs true but
if you donât then itâs valuable time many choose to enjoy, in
the only period of their lives without huge responsibilities
theyâll get while theyâre young.
I agree sentimentally that people tend to overly avoid commitment
and donât really think about these things, but for me I donât
think it was an unfair trade.
poszlem wrote 1 day ago:
Reading this reminded me of the feeling I had when I first understood
what it means for spacetime to be four-dimensional and how an object
that appears stationary is actually moving at the speed of light, but
in the direction of time.
So, in reality, nothingâs ever just sitting still, everythingâs
always moving at speed c. You can't just "stop". We just have to
choose how weâre moving that speed aroundâthrough the x, y, z, or
t direction.
decafninja wrote 1 day ago:
Alternately, you could be giving both them and yourself a better
quality of life by waiting until youâre more ready.
Obviously you donât have forever to do this.
zachmu wrote 1 day ago:
I think this is the story people tell themselves, but as far as I
can tell it's mostly just a story. Kids are resilient and don't
need the material wealth college educated people tend to assume
they will to have a good childhood. And as for parents, there's
really a lot to be said for raising kids while you're young and
energetic, it's just easier.
The problem is that it's nearly impossible to convey to a childless
person how meaningful parenthood will be to their life. It's
something you have to experience firsthand to understand. That's
why social norms and defaults are so important here.
BeFlatXIII wrote 20 hours 54 min ago:
> don't need the material wealth college educated people tend to
assume they will to have a good childhood
But you do need material wealth to launch them smoothly (a.k.a.
minimize their college debt, so they aren't as financially
disincentivized to make you grandchildren). A different metric
from happy childhood or not.
dotnet00 wrote 1 day ago:
This sentiment that it's nearly impossible to convey the meaning
it provides is always irritating to hear. It's an extremely
condescending idea to have, when the meaning it gives people is
pretty obvious to see in siblings and friends/coworkers who do
have children. But that's just more reason to want to wait until
you feel ready to take on the job.
I've seen how my sibling changed upon starting a family, I've
seen how my PhD advisor proudly talks about every little thing
his kids do.
The value it gives them is obvious, but that's just more reason
not to irresponsibly pop put a baby when I barely make enough to
support myself, when I don't know if I'll stay in the country I'm
in, when I've had very little time being mature enough to know if
my partner is someone with whom I can expect to provide a good
environment for at least 18 years.
zachmu wrote 22 hours 5 min ago:
And yet it's perfectly true. Sorry you feel condescended to.
People who say this are relating their own experience of being
parents and how they couldn't anticipate how much it would
change them.
dotnet00 wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
It can be true that parents can feel that way, yet it is also
true that not all parents feel that way, especially among
younger parents, else abusive or neglectful parents would not
be a thing.
Having a child may be meaningful to a parent, but it is not
at all true that applies to all childless people. Continuing
to insist on that anyway is just showing sheer disregard for
the well-being of a child born to parents who turn out to not
actually be all that concerned about parenthood.
Dalewyn wrote 1 day ago:
>The problem is that it's nearly impossible to convey to a
childless person how meaningful parenthood will be to their life.
Why does that even need to be conveyed? Whether you have kids or
not is none of my business, and vice versa. If anything, the more
I hear some variant of "maek keedz und haev famili" like some
broken record the more I find the notion preposterous.
Just leave everyone to their devices. Those who want or are
interested in kids will have them and those who don't won't,
regardless what anyone feels obliged to tell them.
As for me personally? I consider the notion of romantic love a
mental illness. I find the concept of marriage to be fundamental
violations of an individual's human rights. I find the proposal
of continuing my bloodline, and more broadly the human race,
without value. I am happy to be single and without issue until my
dying breath and I certainly couldn't care less what others do in
their bedroom, so kindly take your high horse and please leave
for greener pastures.
deergomoo wrote 1 day ago:
> The problem is that it's nearly impossible to convey to a
childless person how meaningful parenthood will be to their life
I 100% believe you, but at the same time there are a lot of us
out there that don't feel like we're missing anything of that
sort from our lives.
On the contrary, if I was to have children, I would have to put a
whole lot of faith in my biological wiring for parental love and
fulfilment overcoming the stresses, worries, and relationship
strains any parent will tell you is the norm.
xotesos wrote 17 hours 15 min ago:
IMO the whole idea is basically bullshit when applied to
everyone as a blanket statement.
I know I would not be a good parent. I know I would resent the
kid. It is bizarre to me too when someone who is married says
this. Marriage isn't happening either for me so I 100% would be
paying child support to a woman I absolutely resent too.
On the contrary, I think people who have children can not
imagine the freedom that you have with never having children
after 40. Children cost a fortune in currency and opportunity
cost. I don't have to help with home work, pay for someone's
college, pretend to have fun at some boring kids baseball game.
Most of all though I have to live my dreams myself because
there is no kid to live them through instead.
There is simply no way I would have lived the life I have if I
had children. The valuation between the two situations isn't
even close in my mind. I suspect there is a huge amount of
coping and denial on the part of parents because once the kid
is on its way, what else are you going to do?
arkey wrote 1 day ago:
My own experience is that most people focus on the stresses,
worries and overall negative(?) aspects. Maybe I've had it easy
and I'm incredibly fortunate, which I often feel like, but
after becoming a father I would tell you that all the stresses,
worries and overall negative aspects are nothing, NOTHING,
compared to the positives.
As I said in other comments, I'd never push anyone on such a
personal topic, but I'll never forget how, right after my first
was born, I simply wished parenthood on everyone.
lukan wrote 1 day ago:
"The problem is that it's nearly impossible to convey to a
childless person how meaningful parenthood will be to their
life."
It is also hard to convey, how hard it can be, making the
transition from only taking care of yourself, to also being 100%
responsible for someone else. Combine that with little sleep and
relationships that were not working very good before and it is no
wonder so many children end up in foster homes, or with traumatic
experiences of neverending fights of their parents.
So no, the conditions don't need to be perfect, they never will
be. But you have to have some stable base. And consensus with the
partner on how to raise a child. Otherwise parenting won't be
meaningful, but hell on earth for everyone involved.
arkey wrote 1 day ago:
I think consensus with the partner on how to raise a child
would be a given. I don't understand how people get to late
stages of a relationship before starting to talk about having
kids.
And yes, parenthood is hard, it's tough, you can focus on that,
but you could also focus on how meaningful it is.
I would never push parenthood on anyone, I understand it's a
personal choice. Honestly though, I just feel sad about people
missing out, so very often due to misconceptions.
lukan wrote 1 day ago:
"I think consensus with the partner on how to raise a child
would be a given."
Looking around, it really isn't with many of the parents I
know. There are just so many things one can disagree about.
Food choices alone are very hard for some. Sugar or not, how
much, and vegan diet or not, .. (We try to be as pragmatic as
possible, as healthy as possible, but not dogmatic). Then, is
it ok to play with toy weapons, what movies to watch at what
age, how much screen time at all, ...
With my partner we were quite clear how to do it in theory
before. But in reality there are many things we disagree -
and then it is an art, to find a consensus about it, while
the kids are watching. Otherwise it is an invitation for them
for learning how to manipulate.
So good for you, if it was quite easy for you. For many it
isn't for various reasons. So some probably just should have
the courage to go with it, before they are too old. For
others it might be better to wait.
arkey wrote 1 day ago:
No, I agree with you, maybe I was wrong in assuming parent
meant it in a more generalistic way.
But then again, the points you bring up, I'd argue it's
quite difficult to figure all that out before having a kid.
Everything I said I meant as having in common some general
guidelines and a direction, not every specific detail.
Having a shared, defined direction will also help you in
settling all the "smaller" disagreements, but I guess my
reaction comes from seeing many couples that don't have
that general direction figured out yet, i.e. getting
married and suddenly husband finds out wife is not that
keen about having kids.
lukan wrote 1 day ago:
"getting married and suddenly husband finds out wife is
not that keen about having kids"
Yes, stuff like this. It seems many people avoid topics
that could be uncomfortable, so rather smile and go along
and hope for the best ... until reality hits them hard.
And then some decide to do stupid scheming how to still
have babies. And this is then a really bad foundation.
throwway120385 wrote 1 day ago:
In other words there's no "best" or "perfect" time to have a
child. There is only when you feel personally ready. So maybe
the conversation can turn from "everyone should have babies
when they're in their 20's! It's awesome!" to "why do so many
people today feel like they have to wait until they're 30 to
have a baby?"
I think that would be a more constructive conversation than the
one people in my cohort of people with kids wants to have.
lukan wrote 1 day ago:
"In other words there's no "best" or "perfect" time to have a
child. There is only when you feel personally ready"
Yup. And it takes 2 to feel ready and to be sure, to do it
together. At least for some time, even though a divorce is
not the end of the world, if done right (very rare), but it
can be for the children, if it means war between the parents
and using the children as a weapon to hurt the other side.
That is way too common.
So yes, having kids can be awesome and meaningful. But it is
a very serious commitment, maybe the most serious there is,
where my advice would be, don't do it, if you don't feel
ready.
(I felt ready, but it was and still is very very tough at
times)
cogman10 wrote 1 day ago:
> how meaningful parenthood will be to their life.
Parenthood is very obviously not meaningful to every parent's
life. There are plenty of people that just don't make good
parents (and who may never make good parents). Saying "you
should have kids because of how meaningful it will be!" is a bad
thing to say to a narcissist or someone that's overly self
involved. Kids need time, attention, and love. Not everyone can
or wants to give that. Yes it's sad, yes it's wrong, but it's
also a fact.
I have family members in this boat, the kids greatly suffer as a
result.
Social norms and defaults have a tendency to shame people into
bad positions. Sure, some may benefit, but others will flounder
and take their kids/family down with them.
crote wrote 1 day ago:
It's not just a matter of giving your kid a new laptop every year
vs. every couple of years, or not being able to pay for college
out-of-pocket.
There are plenty of people out there who can't afford to live in
anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, who can't afford to
clothe their children, or who can't even afford to feed them.
Telling them to have kids because they are "resilient" and
parenthood is "meaningful" isn't very helpful - it's far better
to wait a few years until they're financially stable. A parent's
love can't fully compensate for childhood poverty trauma.
zachmu wrote 1 day ago:
To accept this view is to accept the idea that most of our
ancestors had "childhood poverty trauma". I just don't see how
it's a useful frame.
And really, it's not the actual poor who are delaying having
kids into their mid-30s: it's the college educated who make
way, way more money than them!
dotnet00 wrote 1 day ago:
>To accept this view is to accept the idea that most of our
ancestors had "childhood poverty trauma". I just don't see
how it's a useful frame.
For most of the human population, this has genuinely been the
case. Most of South/East Asian and African adults are barely
1-2 generations of separation from living in poverty. Most of
them are very familiar with the struggle of giving kids a
good life in much worse poverty than that experienced in much
of the West, and would very much rather their grandkids not
go through the same thing.
ddfs123 wrote 1 day ago:
Where I live ( East Asia ) most early-child bearing parents
are have wealthy grand-parent who could afford to fund the
whole child raising cost. The less wealthy stay working until
later in life.
The even more wealthy one marry and have kids right out of
college. Delegate child-caring to grand-parent, and only then
start working for their career.
OkayPhysicist wrote 1 day ago:
You're missing the fact that class mobility has changed
wildly over time. Delaying having kids is class mobility
play, trying to give your a leg up socioeconomically based on
your own heightened socioeconomic status. This was a VERY
effective move during the 20th century, because the economy
was in the biggest growth spurt in history.
In contrast, you go back 150 years, and class mobility was
for the cut-throated, extremely ambitious entrepreneurs. The
idea of "get a better paying job working for someone else and
fundamentally change my social standing" was laughable. Go
back any much further than that, and socioeconomic class was
basically immutable.
bradlys wrote 1 day ago:
The college educated also live in very expensive cities. What
they make in gains of income gets subtracted by landlords.
DoughnutHole wrote 1 day ago:
> To accept this view is to accept the idea that most of our
ancestors had "childhood poverty trauma".
I 100% accept this idea. Most of my ancestors lived the
miserable, short lives of impoverished alcoholics. They and
their children absolutely experienced trauma from their
miserable hunger and disease-ridden lives.
If I canât see myself giving my child a good life Iâm
more than happy to wait until Iâm able to. Bringing a child
into the world isnât an intrinsic moral good.
decafninja wrote 1 day ago:
Of course you can raise kids just fine without being wealthy.
But⦠you can give them an even better quality of life if you
have wealth.
Yes Iâm aware that spoiled rich brats are a thing.
silverquiet wrote 1 day ago:
And yet...
> The recent proliferation of studies examining cross-national
variation in the association between parenthood and happiness
reveal accumulating evidence of lower levels of happiness among
parents than nonparents in most advanced industrialized
societies. [1] I'm sure it is meaningful, but not everyone is
willing or able to take on the stress of raising children.
Seemingly less and less are as fertility declines across
developed (and even developing) world. And you can say they don't
need much, but without rigorous education, their future looks
pretty grim to me. Won't you encourage your kids to attend the
best college they can?
URI [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5222535/
zachmu wrote 1 day ago:
IMHO opinion you have to take happiness surveys like this with
a grain of salt. For one thing, there is no such thing as a
happiness ruler, this is all based on survey responses and
subjective ideas of what it means to be happy. The effect sizes
are small and inconsistent. The same surveys frequently show
industrial countries significantly less happy than developing
countries, and yet few people would choose to live like a
Guatemalan instead of a Canadian.
And despite what they may say to surveys like this, it's pretty
difficult to find parents who are willing to admit they wish
they hadn't had kids. Most consider their family the most
important aspect of their lives.
More importantly, "happiness" is a poor metric to optimize
one's life around, and hardly anyone does. Most people search
for purpose and meaning, which children supply in spades.
Spivak wrote 1 day ago:
I guess the litmus test is would you make the same argument
if the results of the study had been the opposite? If they
had said industrial life and being a parent increased
happiness would you be just as skeptical?
I doubt you would say woah woah there people are sleeping on
Guatemala, does being childfree get the same treatment?
silverquiet wrote 1 day ago:
I used to take these with a grain of salt indeed, but this is
a meta study that finds effects that seem consistent.
I think that happiness probably includes meaning for a lot of
people and furthermore itâs a hard sell telling them that
they shouldnât want to be happy.
Iâd also turn around the statement about parents who wish
they hadnât had kids (though I did at one point
accidentally date a woman who was married with children who
clearly didnât want any of that) to say that I also suspect
that those who avoided having children on purpose also rarely
regret that decision; some people are just different
ultimately I suppose.
stevage wrote 1 day ago:
Standard comment about how one shouldn't use raw life expectancy in
this kind of argument. Here you should use the life expectancy of
people with at least one child. It's irrelevant to the argument how
many people die before having children or at what age they die.
In my case, my grandfather did become a great grandfather, even though
he, my parents and my sister all had children pretty late. He just
lived a very long time.
kelnos wrote 1 day ago:
My last-living great-grandparent died when I was about a month old. I
hope he got to meet me, though of course I wouldn't remember. The odd
thing is that my parents (to my recollection) never spoke of him.
My mother's parents died before I was born, and my father's parents
died when I was around 10 years old. With the exception of my
great-grandfather, my other great-grandparents died in the 1940s and
'50s. They barely got to know their own grandchildren before they
passed.
My parents were unusual for their generation in that they waited until
their mid 30s to start having kids (despite having been married for 9
years already). On my dad's side, he was the final child of my
grandmother's third marriage; she was 42 when my dad was born (again,
unusual for the time).
No real point to this post, I guess. I just think it's interesting
that people's experiences can differ so much. I only knew half of my
grandparents, and even then only as a child; the idea of people being
able to meet their great-grandparents wasn't even something I ever
considered when I was younger. I don't recall for sure, but I don't
think many if any of my grade-school friends had great-grandparents
around either. I've always had a very small extended family, and
hearing stories from friends as a kid about family gatherings always
made me feel like I was missing out.
munificent wrote 1 day ago:
If you ever sit down and really think about it, it is absolutely wild
how profoundly the invention of the birth control pill has changed the
course of human history, our cultures, and human society.
It's gotta be up there with, like, writing and fire, in terms of
shaping the destiny of our species.
wil421 wrote 1 day ago:
Farming machines changed it more so than birth control. Also farming
practices like using fertilizer.
munificent wrote 23 hours 54 min ago:
The Green Revolution is top five, definitely.
But farming is an incredibly long series of incremental
improvements since prehistoric times: agriculture, selective
breeding, crop rotation, etc.
The pill was like a technological and societal step function.
Xenoamorphous wrote 1 day ago:
Why that and not other contraceptives?
munificent wrote 23 hours 56 min ago:
1. Scale of adoption.
2. Consistent effectiveness.
3. Able to be unilaterally adopted by women without consent of men
(aside from systemic legal prohibition).
The pill, to a greater degree than any other contraceptive, enables
the people who are most responsible for the consequences of
pregnancy to have the most control over pregnancy.
bluGill wrote 1 day ago:
Because it is used. Others are easy to forget or use wrong. Many
are enough worse from a pleasure standpoint that I rather obstain
then use them. (of course I'm married so I have an easy outlet
without worrying about stds)
brailsafe wrote 1 day ago:
The pill is also easy to misuse, I think it just has a higher
tolerance for misuse in terms of continued effectiveness, but it
does change if you're inconsistent
al_borland wrote 1 day ago:
I sometimes wonder what society would look like today without it. It
would be vastly different.
alex_young wrote 1 day ago:
My grandfather was born in 1904, his son (my father) was born in 1941,
I was born in 1979, my son in 2020. Great-grandparents have been out
of the picture for awhile on my side of the family.
hilux wrote 1 day ago:
US Rep. Lauren Boebert is a grandma at 37, and her mother (if alive - I
don't know) will turn 56 this year.
chasd00 wrote 1 day ago:
one of my childhood friends is a grand father at 47. He'll probably
make it to great-great grandfather to someone if those trends
continue.
trey-jones wrote 1 day ago:
It's a very parochial article I think. Sure, there are some numbers
for the trends and such, but I suspect that people will continue to
have kids both when they are younger and when they are older to some
extent. Which is more likely for you is probably heavily influenced by
your socioeconomic status. This is just going to vary significantly
from person to person. Examples from my own family:
A great grandmother to my children died last year. Her oldest great
grandchild at the time was 13. She missed meeting the youngest by a
couple of months.
This same oldest great grandchild also has a living great grandmother
still, and one that died in 2003 and one that died in 2005. So even
within the same family, and even for the same person, the experience of
having a great grandmother can be quite different.
adverbly wrote 1 day ago:
Later, fewer kids. Another more prominent trend is the death of the
cousin:
URI [1]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cousins-decline-canada-1.710333...
a3w wrote 1 day ago:
Some people still get pregnant with 14, and the next generation makes
the same "mistake", as that led to not an ideal family situation and
wise parenting. (German here, so no foul play / illegal intercourse
happening in most of such cases.)
pimlottc wrote 1 day ago:
For pete sake, don't break up the flow and over-complicate your very
first sentence with irrelevant asides like this:
> A friend and I were talking about our families today when I realized
that my grandmother (this grandmother) became a grandma (not my
grandma) at 45.
I got confused and distracted trying to solve the riddle of why his
"grandmother" was not his "grandma" [0] when it had nothing to do with
the point he was trying to make. And the "this grandmother"
parenthetical could have just been a subtle inline link.
> A friend and I were talking about our families today when I realized
that _my_grandmother_ became a grandma at 45.
Much clearer!
0: I think he meant that his grandmother's first grandchild, who born
when she was 45, was someone other than the author, so technically she
wasn't /his/ grandma at that moment because he didn't actually exist
yet.
sundalia wrote 1 day ago:
Not everything has to be clear and to the point. The sentence's
murkiness adds emotion to the text. I'm not a native speaker (just
like the writer isn't) and maybe that's why we're not so bothered.
But this comment is exactly what I expected from HN.
tqi wrote 1 day ago:
For a substack called "memoirs & rambles", I think writing in a style
that conveys a bit of the writer's own personality is fine, even if
it comes at the expense of clarity. Not everything has to be an
Argument Paper.
alexey-salmin wrote 1 day ago:
How is this unclear from what he wrote?
stevage wrote 1 day ago:
I would have been more distracted wondering where the link went.
I kind of enjoyed the riddle.
I'd just move the parenthetical to a separate sentence, or leave it
out.
em-bee wrote 1 day ago:
i would have said it like this:
my grandmother became a grandma to my cousin at 45
JackeJR wrote 1 day ago:
Append to that "x years before I was born"
enobrev wrote 1 day ago:
I no longer read anything in parentheses for this exact reason. It
seems people tend to write their "live-edits" and "related thoughts"
in parentheses rather than spending a moment to figure out what they
want to say and writing it clearly. I've found skipping anything
within parentheses tends to improve my understanding while reading.
thiht wrote 1 day ago:
This is my take on writing as well, I consider everything in
parentheses as optional. If I want to write something in
parentheses, I try to reconsider: either drop it, or write it
without parentheses.
ironmanszombie wrote 1 day ago:
Really? You don't read anything in parentheses? I think that would
be harder to do (I'm joking, don't take it seriously) than actually
reading the parenthetical information.
codetrotter wrote 1 day ago:
> I think that would be harder to do than actually reading the
parenthetical information.
You must be joking, right?
voisin wrote 2 days ago:
With the economy as it is, grandparents tend to work longer and both
work, so the early retirement and single-wage of yesteryear are largely
gone. This trend seems to be increasing. The value of intergenerational
bonds and knowledge transfer will be lost as a result.
ffitch wrote 2 days ago:
I once read that the significant growth of life expectancy could be
attributed to lowering rate of child mortality, and that life
expectancy for adults has changed less dramatically. If thatâs the
case, the point that overall life expectancy going from 47 to 72
affected the âgrandmother windowâ is probably inaccurate.
ccppurcell wrote 2 days ago:
Just a little point that the life expectancy given there is "at birth"
and unless I'm mistaken, it's the mean. Which means infant mortality
contributes enormously to this figure. It's a misconception that in the
past you would only rarely see someone much older than 50. I'm not sure
how this would affect the analysis. But it's worth bearing in mind. I'm
sure there were plenty of great grandparents before 1900. That usage of
great seems to stem from the 1500s.
URI [1]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/great-grandfather#etymonline_v...
keybored wrote 2 days ago:
> Itâs slightly paradoxical â in the past, Iâve thought about how
since life expectancy is increasing, there probably will be more
great-grandmothers. But on the other hand, people are having children
much later too.
Apparently two or more independent variables create a paradox.
lanstin wrote 2 days ago:
Count everyone on earth as your relative.
omoikane wrote 1 day ago:
URI [1]: https://xkcd.com/2608/
bdcravens wrote 2 days ago:
I'm 47. My grandparents were born in 1908. My father was born in 1939,
and I was born when he was 38. I have no kids, but we didn't get around
to trying IVF until I was over 40 (my father would have been 78)
commandlinefan wrote 2 days ago:
My kids got to meet four of their great grandparents, although they
were still very young when they did pass away - I have pictures of them
with their great-grandparents, but they don't have any memories of
them. Mine were all long gone before I was born... I don't know that
anything is being "lost" in the sense that it was something we used to
have. Meeting one's great grandparents was very rare in generations
past and continues to be.
psychoslave wrote 2 days ago:
Not necessarily false, but the author jump a bit quickly to the
conclusion with the data it takes for granted. Itâs well known that
life expectancy was far lower before due to high rate of child
mortality. This means that the main cause of the life expectancy is
more people reached adulthood.
All the more, great-grandmothers always had far less chance to die
early by being turned into a cannon fodder or driven to suicide through
toxic masculinity social pressure (though itâs not like having more
chance to be raped by invaders or beaten/abused/repudiated by your own
relatives was much more fun). Still to this days, on the average women
have generally a higher life expectancy in most countries.
juujian wrote 2 days ago:
The article got one thing wrong. Life expectancy of 45 doesn't mean
that people drop dead at that age. High infant mortality is one main
reason for low life expectancy. That's why you have many people of old
age even in the middle ages when life expectancy was abysmal. So I am
not convinced that great-grand parents is such a recent thing.
ilamont wrote 2 days ago:
Research confirms a narrowing of families with fewer children and fewer
cousins, but it also notes it's more likely for people to know their
ancestors:
In their analysis, Alburez-Gutierrez and his colleagues made three
major predictions about family structures, also called kinship
networks. First, extended family size will likely decrease over time.
Second, the composition of families will narrow: Alburez-Gutierrez
explains that people will have fewer close-aged relatives in their own
generation, such as siblings and cousins, and more ancestors, such as
grandparents and great-grandparents. Third, age gaps between
generations will grow as people increasingly have children later in
life. [1] Another thing to keep in mind: there is a lot of variability
depending on the community and social standards. People in Utah will
have a different experience than folks in the Bay Area. In rural
northern New York and Ohio, the Amish population has exploded with
couples marrying in their early 20s and families typically having at
least 5 or 6 kids, sometimes more than 10.
My spouse had our kids in her late 30s, but they have no first cousins
on either of the side of the family (of the 6 people in our generation,
we're the only two who had kids). Of all of our kids' dozens of friends
growing up, only one had more than two siblings and they were an
immigrant family.
OTOH, my wife works with people who had kids in their late teens and
early 20s and are grandparents by the age of 40, and that's typical in
the community.
URI [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shrinking-family-si...
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 2 days ago:
Heh. I knew a guy in his late thirties that was already a grandfather
(do the math). I would bet that there's a good chance he's still around
(I knew him about 40 years ago).
keiferski wrote 2 days ago:
It's interesting to compare this some research which says that children
of older fathers and grandfathers live longer. If I understand this
article correctly, it's saying that if the paternal grandfather was
also older when becoming a father, that's even better.
URI [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-18392873
silverquiet wrote 2 days ago:
Huh, anecdotal as heck, but my great-great grandfather (the only one
I know about) had the line that led to me in his 50's after his first
wife succumbed to Spanish Flu. I buried his youngest daughter at the
foot of his grave 154 years after he was born; she lived to be 94 and
so did my grandfather.
Thinking about it even more, the women on that side of my family also
had no problem having kids into their 40's.
modeless wrote 2 days ago:
> this source for example claims global life expectancy jumped from
around 47 to 72 from 1950 to 2022
I believe this is because of reductions in child mortality more than
increases in adult lifespan. So it doesn't affect the number of great
grandmothers that much.
Having kids older is definitely a big change for society and individual
families, though. Every day as a parent I wish I was 15 years younger
and my parents were too. It would be a huge difference in our energy
levels and that's so important when you're hanging out with young kids.
And it's 15 years less time that we will be able to spend together with
our kids.
pard68 wrote 1 day ago:
Yes the average age stat drastically skews our perception of how old
people were in prior centuries because it includes infant and
childhood deaths. This is valid for an average, but it doesn't relate
life expectancy for someone who made it to 18.
WarOnPrivacy wrote 1 day ago:
> I believe this is because of reductions in child mortality more
than increases in adult lifespan. So it doesn't affect the number of
great grandmothers that much.
Accepting that, I'd offer that more is a value somewhere above 50%.
That leaves a lot of modern people who aren't dying in their 20s-50s.
I look at a lot of death certs (genealogy) and and realize we've had
a lot of advances in treatment (pneumonia), regulation (black lung)
and health practices (tuberculosis, dysentery). Many routine killers
from 80+ years ago are less common/less deadly now.
Last night I ran across a death from Tuberculous Meningitis and my
take was - What even the frak? How did our ancestors survive
millennia where life just sprayed death at us?
tuna74 wrote 1 day ago:
"Every day as a parent I wish I was 15 years younger and my parents
were too."
All people over 30 with they were 15 years younger. Age, miles,
diseases and injuries gradually makes the body worser.
modeless wrote 22 hours 55 min ago:
Of course everyone wishes they could stay young longer. The point
is that some people over 30 already have 10 year old kids, while
others are just starting with newborns even at 40.
morepork wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, it seems like great grandmothers at least would have been
reasonably common as women had children so much younger than today.
If women have children at 18, you could be a great grandmother in
your 50s. There would probably have been the odd great-great
grandmother as well.
aidenn0 wrote 1 day ago:
> And it's 15 years less time that we will be able to spend together
with our kids.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
aetherson wrote 1 day ago:
My mother died unexpectedly when she was 73, a couple years ago, and
it's one of my big regrets that she didn't get more time with my
children, which were the great joy of the last few years of her life.
hn_throwaway_99 wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, the thing that kinda annoyed me about the article is that it
even acknowledges this fact ("even though life expectancy at birth as
Iâve used here isnât the best proxy for this"), but then for some
reason refuses to make the next rational leap that there were plenty
of great grandmothers in previous generations, totally invalidating
the article's main thesis.
Obviously there have been huge changes in family size, parental age
at first birth, etc. over the last few decades. I'd argue the lack of
great-grandmothers is going to be the least consequential of these
changes.
kristopolous wrote 1 day ago:
Personally when people make mistakes like that I stop reading.
Not even the next word. I'm gone.
nicolas_t wrote 1 day ago:
Iâve also adopted that policy after getting really annoyed that
90% of the time when someone mentions historical life expectancy,
they make that exact same mistake and completely ignore infantile
mortality.
burnished wrote 1 day ago:
That is exactly what I did. I want to read things from people who
have thought more about a topic than I have, not less.
lamontcg wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah that article was really thin, and at a guess I'd say that
the age of great-grandparents has probably been declining since
at least around the 50s or 60s and we're certainly not at
peak-great-grandparent. This article reads like a young
Millennial thinking they're the first one in the world to not
know their great grandparents.
kevinpet wrote 1 day ago:
Good on you for giving us the update that he does acknowledge it. I
confess I stopped reading as soon as that stat was given.
jobigoud wrote 2 days ago:
When kids die as infants they don't have time to have any meaningful
interactions with their great-grand parents so the point of the
article still stands somewhat. The age of great-grandmothers is low
infant mortality + parents making kids early.
burnished wrote 1 day ago:
They very clearly did not put that much thought into it, not sure
why you are making this up.
modeless wrote 2 days ago:
People had more kids (and then some) to compensate for the infant
mortality, so I don't think it reduced the number of great
grandmothers much.
1123581321 wrote 2 days ago:
Our children had several years with their great-grandmother. We
treasured that time for them and even arranged for her (my wife's
grandmother) to live with us for a few days a week after she could no
longer stay in her home alone. We were able to keep this arrangement
for a few years. Our children aren't adults yet, so we don't know if
our children will have children young enough that our parents could
meet their great-grandchildren, but we're glad we didn't prevent the
possibiliy by starting our family late.
parpfish wrote 2 days ago:
i think an interesting orthogonal trend is how changes in family size
affect grandparent relationships.
my grandparents were in the generation that had lots of kids, which
leads to lots of grandkids. that meant that family gatherings were huge
crowds where they served as a figureheads and i didn't really develop a
one-on-one relationship with them.
but when i look just one generation removed, i see smaller family sizes
so grandparents have far fewer grandkids. and they're developing actual
relationships with their grandchildren in a completely different way.
epolanski wrote 2 days ago:
At this rate even grandparents...
Most of my (37) friends in Italy does not have children. Some of us are
late children so the parents are between 70 and 80.
bluedino wrote 2 days ago:
My wife is only a few years younger than I am, but she still has all of
her grandparents. They are around age 80.
I didn't have my first child until I was almost 40, and my grandmother
on my father's side died the week we were going to tell everyone that
we were having a kid. My other three grandparents all died in the
1990's.
Also, many of my cousins had kids before they were 20, some of them
became grandparents before I even became a parent. And likewise, I
ended up with aunts/uncles that became great-grandparents before my dad
became a grandparent.
jeffbee wrote 2 days ago:
Some of my high school friends (a married couple, for the obvious
reason) were grandparents before I had my first child. The great
grandmother in this story was 50. Getting knocked up at 17 runs in
families. I just checked the CDC stats and Oklahoma still has the
2nd-lowest age of mother at first birth for non-Hispanic whites,
which is because that state has way too many churches and nowhere
near enough sex education in schools.
bloak wrote 2 days ago:
Although life expectancy was a lot lower in the past than today that
was mostly due to infant mortality. It's true that a lot of women died
during childbirth, which meant that the life expectancy of women was
less than that of men (I think), but I would guess that a woman who
survived giving birth to at least one child who survived probably had a
"reasonable" chance of surviving to 60 or 70. So I don't think
great-grandmothers would have been that unusual in the past.
CalRobert wrote 2 days ago:
If you haven't read the article, it's about how people having kids
later means you won't meet your great grandparents.
My mom had me when she was 23, and her mom had her at 22. I'm in my
forties and still have two living grandparents, and am very grateful
for them. I remember a lot of days where my grandmother watched me and
my sister, and she was able to do that because she was only in her late
40's herself and plenty mobile. I knew two of my great grandmothers,
one of them only dying in my teens.
Not everyone can rely on parents to help with childcare, but it is
worth keeping in mind that if you wait until your mid 30's they might
not be able to catch a running toddler like they could a decade
earlier.
My mom also managed to have a really good career, though she went to
night school when I was around 6 and worked her ass off in general.
But, she had a high earning partner to support her.
I don't really have a single point here, except that I worry we've
ignored the less-obvious downsides to people delaying childbearing
until their mid 30's.
jzb wrote 1 day ago:
It weirds me out a lot when people talk about parenting and family
planning like this. Like, having kids should be planned around
strategically based on factors like "are my parents young enough to
be supplemental child care" over "do I have the mental and financial
readiness to be responsible for raising a human being? And do I even
want to do that?"
If people want earlier parenting, then create a society that supports
it. One with living wages, universal health care, and programs to
provide childcare for working people. Because those are reasons
people hesitate to have kids, and those situations are not improving.
bitcoin_anon wrote 1 day ago:
Creating a society that supports it is an intractable problem.
Instead, the problem that we are faced with (as organisms) is how
can we raise as many successful children as possible? This problem
is workable, and hopefully involves support from ones grandparents.
Iâm curious how many children you have.
jzb wrote 22 hours 53 min ago:
I refuse the idea that I need to solve the problem of raising as
many successful children as possible. If a person chooses to have
children, then raising them successfully is a problem they need
to face. I totally refuse the idea that having children is
mandatory, necessary, or even desirable for a lot of people. The
world would be a happier place if we stopped placing that
expectation on everyone.
I have two step-children. Having children of my own
(biologically) was never something I wanted to do for a lot of
reasons. Without getting into TMI territory, I'll just say it was
apparent (no pun intended) that one of my parents never wanted
the responsibility + resented it, and the other wanted to "be a
parent" without actually doing the work. So I did not have the
desire or background that lends itself to being a good parent
early on -- whether I've made a good showing or a mess of it
later in life is something that my kids would have to answer...
resource_waste wrote 1 day ago:
>"are my parents young enough to be supplemental child care"
My first kid(late 20s) didn't get my parents watching the kid
because they were working.
My next 3 kids (early 30s) got grandparents attention because they
were retired.
Although I feel like the baby/kid thing has lost its magic on the
grandparents. But on the flip side, the kids are basically old
enough to take care of themselves(4+ yr old).
rendang wrote 1 day ago:
Do you have evidence for the second paragraph? The wealthiest
countries are generally those with lower birth rates, although the
very lowest fertility is in upper-middle income regions like
Eastern Europe and E Asia
DHPersonal wrote 1 day ago:
Sweden doesn't have exactly the things that was mentioned, but it
is far more supportive of parents than the United States:
URI [1]: https://www.norden.org/en/info-norden/parental-benefit-s...
Brusco_RF wrote 1 day ago:
And how does their fertility rate compare? Actually I'll tell
you, Sweden's is 1.66, the USA is 1.64.
South Sudan, the poorest country in the world, is 4.54
sroussey wrote 1 day ago:
Oh, donât kid yourself. There are areas of the country where
knowing a great grandmother is common, and even great great
grandmother.
If you have kids at 15, it tends to be generational.
Same way as having kids in your 30s+ is generational.
jd3 wrote 1 day ago:
I'm in my late 20s, but my mom had me when she was 42. My Dad's
father died 32 years before I was born and my Mom's father died 22
years before I was born, so I've always wondered what it must have
been like to grow up with grandfathers, let alone great grandfathers
or grandmothers.
On the plus side, in the early 60s, my recently windowed grandmother
put herself through night school while raising 4 teenage kids, one of
whom eventually worked on the national security council and traveled
the world; all these years later, I still wonder how she managed it
all without having a nervous breakdown. Life is strange like that,
sometimes.
gleenn wrote 1 day ago:
It would be nice if our life expectancy got longer at the same pace
(instead of doing exactly the opposite).
jxramos wrote 1 day ago:
Iâve had a similar thought about marriage, late marriage means you
forgo the likelihood for big wedding anniversaries.
arkey wrote 1 day ago:
Reading all these comments I just keep thinking it's all a matter
of priorities. If you really want to do something, the sooner you
do it the better. Responsibly, of course.
What "responsibly" means in any case might also be influenced by
your priorities. For instance, a lot of people say "We're not
financially ready to have kids" but they really mean "We can't keep
up the fancy holiday trips if we add a kid". If your priority is to
have a family, you might cut on holidays and have the kid.
That applies to some, even plenty, of cases, but I acknowledge that
not for all. At least where I'm from, it often feels everything is
set up to make it difficult for people to build a family.
throwaway6734 wrote 1 day ago:
We just had our first child at 33 and I wish we had done it at 24 or
25, although it's hard to predict if we'd be as happy as we spent
those years changing jobs, going back to graduate school, and
traveling
thaumasiotes wrote 1 day ago:
> My mom had me when she was 23, and her mom had her at 22. I'm in my
forties and still have two living grandparents, and am very grateful
for them.
My mother had me when she was 20. I am not yet in my forties, but I
lost my last grandparent many years ago.
:(
rayiner wrote 1 day ago:
> Not everyone can rely on parents to help with childcare, but it is
worth keeping in mind that if you wait until your mid 30's they might
not be able to catch a running toddler like they could a decade
earlier.
Starting having kids in our 20s is the best decision my wife and I
ever made. When my daughter was born, my parents (then in their early
60s) got a decade younger overnight. I wish we hadnât spaced them
out so much (27-37) because indeed my parents are not able to keep up
with the littlest one like they could with the first two.
anon291 wrote 1 day ago:
Same. Easiest decision we made. I don't understand the comments
about maturity. I fully agree that at 25 I would be unable to raise
a 16 year old. Luckily I've never met someone who gave birth to one
of those.
sublinear wrote 1 day ago:
Isn't the ultimate goal of parenting that your kids shouldn't have to
trust anyone but themselves?
Parents who don't have a plan and need help shouldn't have had kids.
The grandparents and great grandparents would just get in the way of
these goals. There shouldn't be anything magical about getting to
know your family. If you got to meet them, great, but you're your own
person and developing that is so much more important.
rfrey wrote 1 day ago:
This reads like a parody of American individualism that a Chinese
government newspaper might write.
The ultimate goal of my parenting is for my kids to realize they're
part of a community that gave them tremendous advantages, and to
which they have a duty to give back.
sublinear wrote 1 day ago:
Not sure what bubble you're describing, but the sense of
community anywhere at any time in human history is ultimately an
illusion.
I'm not saying the kids should grow up to be selfish, but that
the more they can do for themselves the more they can also do for
others. That is a leader. We really don't need another generation
of guilt ridden cogs.
rfrey wrote 1 day ago:
It's "rugged individualism" that is the bubble, both in time
and in space. Community and duty exist everywhere and have at
every time, despite what it is like in 2024 America.
RayVR wrote 1 day ago:
Is this a joke?
mkoubaa wrote 1 day ago:
My parents had me in their early 20s and I only met one of my
grandparents. We had our kid in our late 20s and my parents aren't
healthy enough to help at all. Take it from someone who never had the
opportunity. If you have healthy parents do yourself and them a favor
and if you're gonna have kids have them sooner.
peoplefromibiza wrote 1 day ago:
> it's about how people having kids later means you won't meet your
great grandparents.
It really depends.
When I was born my youngest grandma was 50. She already had three
grandchildren.
I already had only 3 grandparents, one had died when my father was
young, having survived two world wars, ironic ain't it?
At the age of 10 only one grandma was still alive, but she lived to
the age of 95 and managed to meet 4 great grand-children.
My cousins had children late in their lives, their parents were
average for their times.
I would say that meeting your grand parents is a benefit that has
become a given only for the past 2-3 generations, when life and work
conditions improved so much that it became the norm.
giantg2 wrote 1 day ago:
Except grandparents in their 40s are still working, so not a great
choice for childcare.
enobrev wrote 1 day ago:
My story covers both ends of this.
Mom had me at 21 (dad was 30). I knew both my grandmothers and
neither of my grandfathers. One was left behind when my mom's family
immigrated. The other died not too long after my dad's family
immigrated - just before my dad was born
I had my son (now 4) when I was 41. Both his grandmothers are
around, and neither of his grandfathers. My dad died last year and
my son barely remembers him. My wife's dad died when she was two.
I'm glad to say my son and my mother are very close - they spend
every other weekend together. His other grandmother and my wife
aren't close and so my son doesn't know her very well.
Not sure if there's much here - except to say that having kids in our
thirties should still be young enough that healthy grandparents can
be around for the formative years. And regardless of age, life
happens, and a multi-generational family unit isn't guaranteed.
tombert wrote 1 day ago:
I only got to meet one of my great grandparents, my great
grandmother, though she died when I was five years old so I don't
remember her terribly well. I am the oldest kid in my family, and my
mom had me when she was 25. My oldest sister also got to meet my
great grandmother, but my two youngest sisters never did.
I still have two living grandparents as well, both grandmothers, one
I won't talk to, and one that I like a lot. My oldest sister had a
kid almost three years ago, and he got to meet his great grandmother
last October for her 90th birthday.
That grandmother is still in pretty good health for her age, so I
certainly hope she lives a lot longer, but realistically she probably
doesn't have that much time left. I'm not having kids, but my other
sisters are planning on it and it seems unlikely that they'll get to
meet their great grandmother.
angarg12 wrote 1 day ago:
The wording here is a bit odd, almost like blaming people for
delaying childbearing. The world is complicated and a number of
factors have produced this outcome in the developed world.
My parents were factory workers and they encouraged me to study a
university degree as a sure way to a successful career. I finished my
degree well into my 20s, but then the economic collapse of 2008
happened and I spent several years living paycheck to paycheck, lucky
me who at least had a job.
In my late 20s I finally broke from economic stagnation by moving
abroad. Then I spent the next 12 years moving countries every 2-3
years, which isn't good for stability. In fact I didn't meet who
would become my wife until my mid 30s.
Now I approach 40 and have a good paying job in tech. However I'm in
the US on a non-immigrant visa and my company has done waves of
layoffs that I luckily survived. We are seriously considering having
a child, but the prospects don't look great. Everything else aside,
we don't really know anyone or have a support network here.
I know most of this is moaning and if we "really wanted" we could
make it work. But it doesn't discount the fact that it's easier to
start a family for someone with a stable job with a support network.
vidarh wrote 1 day ago:
It's not that it has gotten harder to have kids, but that people
come to expect and want to provide more.
I had a perfectly decent living standard growing up, but I also
remember very clearly in retrospect the economic uncertainty and
the things my parents did to save money, and no uncertainty I've
faced has been anywhere near that. Of course it's not like that for
everyone, but overall, living standards are up massively, yet
fertility rates are down, and the two are firmly correlated.
If I were to budget like my parents did, I could afford many kids.
But I don't want to budget like that. Not because I resent how we
had it, but because I don't want to go back to that just for the
sake of having lots of kids.
ajmurmann wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder if other parents waiting till they can offer the kids
more creates pressure. Not only on the parents but the kids as
well. I frequently couldn't get what I wanted as a kid, but that
was the norm and in fact several kids I went to school with were
clearly poorer. However, if I look at kids around me today, they
have seemingly everything they could want. If I imagined the
majority of the kids around me had had as much stuff, fancy
vacations, expensive after-school activities etc. and I had what
I had in actuality I would have felt much poorer. Just the
after-school activities alone would ruin everything. My friends
and family's kids now are always out at clubs and classes and
that's where they see their friends. This would put poorer kids
at a disadvantage.
dalyons wrote 1 day ago:
But it has gotten harder in some important ways, housing costs as
a % of median income have risen by multiples since then. Shelter
being thing that probably makes people feel the most insecure
vidarh wrote 1 day ago:
Housing costs have increased as much as they have because
people can afford to bid them up because other things do not
take up as much of income.
zbrozek wrote 1 day ago:
Those 'other things' are generally more optional than
shelter, so you'll bid up shelter until you get it while
sacrificing those other things. Inelastic demand and
inelastic supply is a bad combo.
We see affordability and population growth in places that
allow housing.
vidarh wrote 19 hours 5 min ago:
We don't see population growth without immigration anywhere
but third world countries any more, and consistently
dropping there too as living standards increase.
While I agree it's a bad combo and could be better, there's
nothing to support any notion that cheaper housing will be
enough to increase fertility rates.
bombcar wrote 1 day ago:
> But it doesn't discount the fact that it's easier to start a
family for someone with a stable job with a support network.
It is easier, but people have been having kids in all sorts of
various situations for, well, as long as the human race has been
around.
Kids are way more resilient than we think.
dotnet00 wrote 1 day ago:
The kids will stay alive, but they would certainly prefer
stability, and their parents would've just as much loved to give
their children a better life. For most of human history the
parents didn't really have much control over improving their
circumstances, nor did they have effective means of birth
control, so they just had kids whenever. I don't think it's
reasonable to just put that aside as "kids are way more
resilient".
lukan wrote 1 day ago:
"But it doesn't discount the fact that it's easier to start a
family for someone with a stable job with a support network."
Definitely. Still, sometimes you have to take risks, as you are not
getting younger. Maybe moving again somewhere, where you could have
a support network, even though pay is lower, might be an option?
We had grandparents around, that definitely helped. No idea, what
other people do without that. If both parents get sick, the child
still needs lots of care .. and you don't want some stranger to
take care of your baby.
CalRobert wrote 1 day ago:
I don't blame people, just noting that at least in my own youth all
I heard were reasons to wait.
Good luck! Funny enough my wife and I are from the US and we waited
until we knew our kids would have EU citizenship before having
them. And raising kids without a support network sucks, I can't
pretend otherwise.
Afton wrote 1 day ago:
The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely
incompetent to be able to raise a child. I'll leave it to my children
on how it turned out in my 30s. Generally I'd expect older adults to
have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally
regulate, which is a really critical ability when dealing with the
4th day of 3 hours of sleep and a colicky baby (for example).
Also no point. But honestly, if you want people to have kids earlier,
you need to make them think that their life won't be bleak if they
do.
navane wrote 1 day ago:
I'm sure you could handle nights with little sleep fine in your
early twenties. Being up all night. Dealing with childish drama.
Vomit.
kingkawn wrote 1 day ago:
It is arguable that the increased emotional regulation of older
parents is responsible for the higher incidence of adhd as the kids
have to fill the emotional void
quantified wrote 1 day ago:
Few are really prepared to have kids, until they have their second
kid. Everyone I know who had kids shortly after college (which
skews the parents a bit economically, I know, but not necessarily
emotionally or in maturity) had great family lives and outcomes.
shiroiushi wrote 1 day ago:
>The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely
incompetent to be able to raise a child. ... Generally I'd expect
older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability
to emotionally regulate,...
This is exactly why I don't think anyone should have children until
they're at least 50 years old, and better yet 75-100. We just need
to solve this "aging" disease problem first. 20-somethings just
aren't emotionally mature enough to be good parents.
rpcope1 wrote 1 day ago:
Is this sarcasm or a joke? I honestly can't tell, but I hope it
is.
Tutitk wrote 1 day ago:
Suggesting people to have child in their 20ties, to avoid
health problems, is sexist and not based in reality. This is
just extrapolation of this trend.
People can totally freeze relevant body parts, and have child
in their 70ties. Saying anything else would be sexist! Natural
selection in action...
rglullis wrote 1 day ago:
And somehow we've done it through hundreds of generations.
> just need to solve this "aging" disease.
Oh, please stop. This is the rhetoric of stunted men with Peter
Pan syndrome. If you are too scared to face this type of
responsibility, plenty of other men rose to the occasion just
fine.
shiroiushi wrote 1 day ago:
>If you are too scared to face this type of responsibility,
plenty of other men rose to the occasion just fine.
According to the most recent fertility statistics, they're not.
rglullis wrote 1 day ago:
You are trying to make a point against old values using "most
recent statistics". Do you realize how illogical this is?
shiroiushi wrote 1 day ago:
You seem to not be living in the real world, instead pining
for "old values" which obviously not many people still live
by.
rglullis wrote 1 day ago:
Your "solution" to the problem that adults now are
claiming to be unable to become parents is, literally,
"cure aging".
Mine is "accept that you can not do it on your own and
have them at a age where your parents can still help
you."
The fact that people are forgetting these "old values" is
what is bringing to this unsustainable state, and instead
of accepting the reality of our limited lifespans and
that people have managed to start having kids in the
early 20's (or before that) for centuries just fine, you
want to double down on the idea that "no one should have
kids before their 50s"?
Who is "not living in the real world"?
shiroiushi wrote 1 day ago:
>Mine is "accept that you can not do it on your own and
have them at a age where your parents can still help
you."
If people wanted to do that, they would. They
obviously don't want to do that, for various reasons.
What's your solution now, genius?
>Who is "not living in the real world"?
You, because you're the one telling people to go back
to the "good old days" and then shaking his fist
because they aren't.
If people had listened to people like you throughout
human history, we'd still be living in caves.
samtheprogram wrote 1 day ago:
I think a lot of these â20sâ lessons and better emotional
regulation you learn before the child is old enough to remember,
i.e. by your late twenties.
Although, I think going through that learning process + raising a
baby + recently newly wed is a contributing factor to divorce.
jimbokun wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting how until recently people in their early 20s were
perfectly capable of raising children, but today theyâre not.
The_Colonel wrote 1 day ago:
The standards of what's "acceptable parenting" shot up greatly in
the past decades. In the 60s, you were a great father if you
passed out drunk only sometimes, didn't beat your kids too much
and brought enough income to feed/house the family.
My childhood was all about spending the whole day outside roaming
the streets with very little involvement from my parents. I
didn't have any after-school (organized) activities, and I don't
remember a single time that my father would drive me anywhere
just because I needed it. That was all just normal, but today
might get social services called on you.
bell-cot wrote 1 day ago:
True. Though until recently, children were usually allowed some
adult-level duties and responsibilities before their early 20s,
so they could actually grow up. My mother did all the cooking
for a family of 6, on a wood stove, before she was 12 years old.
In an era (and economic circumstances) when "we need more bread"
meant "check that there is enough flour in the bin, and get some
water from the well...".
B-Con wrote 1 day ago:
There were a lot of incompetent parents, but they pushed ahead
blindly.
Today can recognize when they'd bee a pie parent and choose not
to do it anyway.
afavour wrote 1 day ago:
I donât think anyone really thinks that. The vast majority of
people in their 20s are perfectly capable of raising children,
itâs just not desirable.
I donât think itâs a bad thing (why not spend your 20s
exploring?) but itâs also easily explained by financial burdens
that didnât used to exist. Housing is now very expensive, can
you blame people waiting until they have the right size home
before they have kids?
ajmurmann wrote 1 day ago:
It used to be that the average person at 25 already had worked a
full-time job for 5-7 years. Now a college education is much more
important and at 25 many haven't had a full-time job at all yet
and in a way haven't been exposed to the real world. I sometimes
think about Robert M. Pirsig's point that young people should
work and then get further education to see better where the value
comes from. I do wonder if that would push children even further
back though.
mycologos wrote 1 day ago:
A high school education doesn't go as far as it used to, women
have more life paths that don't involve being a stay-at-home mom,
houses are harder to come by, average age at first marriage is
almost a decade higher than it was in the 50s ... notable, sure,
but interesting, I dunno.
pooper wrote 1 day ago:
They just didn't know any better.
The whole idea that everyone has to have children is frankly
asinine.
I want people to have fewer children.
I want fewer people to have children.
I want nobody to have more than two children.
The whole idea that population must grow and keep growing is
silly.
It is ok for the population to shrink a little.
Thorrez wrote 1 day ago:
The way the trend is going, the population is going to shrink.
South Korea is already down to 0.84 (2.1 means population stays
the same).
pooper wrote 1 day ago:
That is good and I'm all for it but a problem is now is that
fundamentalists still have a lot of children and at some
point, they will have too much political power.
mycologos wrote 1 day ago:
> I want nobody to have more than two children.
> It is ok for the population to shrink a little.
The first idea is way more extreme than the second idea.
yaomtc wrote 1 day ago:
They didn't say "Nobody should be allowed to have more than
two children". They simply have an opinion that people
shouldn't, purposefully, have more than two children. Seems
reasonable to me.
pooper wrote 20 hours 10 min ago:
Yes, thank you.
I'm not Mao.
People should choose to have either no children
Or ideally one or two children
And not no children.
Ideally, we as a society should support people who choose
to have one or two children,
prioritizing these families over people who have half a
dozen or more children.
But that's because in my opinion people who have dozens of
children have something wrong in their heads.
If you choose to have a dozen children, you better be able
to afford to raise them all on your own dime.
That being said, I really dislike means testing of any kind
so I'd be ok with a social safety net for the wackos and
their unfortunate children.
rayiner wrote 1 day ago:
> The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s,
completely incompetent to be able to raise a child.
How common is it that people are incompetent to raise kids in their
20s, versus people who may not presently have everything together
because nobody expects anything from or depends on them?
brabel wrote 1 day ago:
Great point. Most people are perfectly capable of raising to the
occasion, but while there's no occasion they just stay in the
comfort of their responsibility-free lives... I say, enjoy it
while it lasts!
ip26 wrote 1 day ago:
I think the optimal strategy depends partly on your genes.
Challenging kids seem to run in families, and itâs probably
easier to succeed as a very young parent if your kids are naturally
the quiet & obedient sort.
Itâs not politically correct, but we all know a few little
hellions, and they are obviously difficult to parent.
dheera wrote 1 day ago:
Emotional maturity is important, but there's also financial
readiness.
People don't have extended families and villages to be
nannies-on-demand anymore, so older parents have a lot more
financial resources to raise kids and more likely to give the kid a
comfortable life.
Especially when housing prices have gone up much faster than
salaries in the past 30 years, and that is reflected not only in
one's own mortgage/rent but also that you have to indirectly pay
the rent increases of every Chipotle worker you interact with.
bgroat wrote 1 day ago:
Everyone's life is completely different, and their choices are
their own. It seems you made the right choice for yourself, and I
hope your kids agree.
I will say though, I think there's a chicken and egg element in
this line of thinking.
A part of my thinks that being childless in twenties provides space
that facilitates being a basket-case.
I think that having a child immediately makes most people at least
50% more responsible, and 85%+ within a year.
Again, there's a huge range here for people who:
- Never get better
- Their 85%+ still isn't really responsible enough.
Unsolicited 2 cents from a guy who had a kid in his twenties
Piskvorrr wrote 1 day ago:
To borrow terms from RFC 2119, "having a child makes people more
responsible" is a SHOULD, but statistically, turns out to be a
MAY. (#survivorBias: people are likely to acknowledge this, if
they did turn out to actually be more responsible - "turned out
GREAT for ME", emphasis added. The other case, not so much.)
However, I feel like the age of a parent is a factor, sure - but
it's not an overwhelming factor...
crimsontech wrote 1 day ago:
I had my first daughter when I was 20 and grew up very quickly, I
can distinctly remember it hitting me like a bus that I was now
wholly responsible for a human.
She is an adult now and I couldnât be any prouder of all she has
achieved in life so far.
I also had two more kids in my 30s. Itâs harder when you are
older, but Iâm financially better off so they can have things I
couldnât afford in my 20s. I do have more work responsibilities
but itâs balanced by working from home so I get to be a big part
of their lives, taking them to school, here when they get home,
etc.
There are benefits either way, but I think if you are committed to
being a decent parent, having them younger has more benefits in the
long term. You get to be around for more of lives too.
serf wrote 1 day ago:
>I can distinctly remember it hitting me like a bus that I was
now wholly responsible for a human.
the problem of course being that some individuals never hit upon
that realization -- and the statistics regarding the matter make
it look like that revelation is more likely to come to an
individual who is older, financially secure, and mentally well.
> Itâs harder when you are older, but Iâm financially better
off so they can have things I couldnât afford in my 20s.
I'm a second child with after a large age-gap. My brother was
born when my mother was 16, I was born twenty years later. My
parents routinely told me how much harder it was with my brother
-- lack of cash and profession, the party lifestyle that comes
with youth and college-life, constant moving for opportunity and
cheaper housing, and an overall lack of time to dedicate to the
kid due to the instability and struggle to keep afloat
financially.
I was born at a time of great stability for them. They had
professions, they could make their own schedules. They had time
to participate in my schooling and extracurricular stuff. I had
good food, good toys, good clothing, and a stable house. They let
me voice my decisions because they had the time and freedom to
consider options other than pure survival. I was told that I was
the 'easy' one -- not because of my personality but because "The
70s sucked.", which is code for "We were young, poor,
un-established and struggling."
So, after the anecdote I feel compelled to ask : Why do you think
it is harder when you're older? You have more money, you have the
power of flexibility within your scheduling that allows for
participation in your childrens' growth and development -- is it
simply a 'strength of youth' kind of thing?
I have no kids, I have no plans for them, so I ask just as a
curiosity. The opinion varies wildly from person to person, and I
think it's fascinating what kind of 'diversity of parenting'
exists.
darkerside wrote 1 day ago:
Do you mind sharing how your brother and you turned out in
terms of career, family, and general life happiness? Sorry for
an overly personal question, but I'm very curious as a parent
myself with my own theories about the craft.
timeon wrote 1 day ago:
> the problem of course being that some individuals never hit
upon that realization -- and the statistics regarding the
matter make it look like that revelation is more likely to come
to an individual who is older, financially secure, and mentally
well.
For some it is really never.
somenameforme wrote 1 day ago:
Another thing not yet mentioned is that it literally becomes
physically more difficult to have children as you age. Female
fertility starts to rapidly drop in their thirties, and many
will hit menopause in their 40s. The exact age is somewhat
random, and some women will even enter menopause in their 30s.
Before I had children I thought it would be relatively easy -
that's why you use birth control after all. But when you
actually have children you learn things like at best you're
looking at, at best, a 10-30% probability per month if you hit
the ~48 hour ovulation window just perfectly. That doesn't
sound so bad - because a month isn't such a long time, and
ovulation is pretty predictable. But when you start late each
month matters, and then if you want to actually have multiple
children, then you're already looking at a years long process.
And then add in that as you age, all sorts of birth defects and
disorders like Down Syndrome become much more likely, and you
can't effectively test for them until about halfway through the
pregnancy. It's just not a great idea to start late. I'd also
add that for us to have a sustainable population, everybody
needs to be having more than 2 children on average. This is
going to take a pretty substantial reshaping of society and
culture, or our society and culture will simply go extinct.
jwalton wrote 1 day ago:
I thought about replying with something exactly like this,
but generally this sentiment gets downvoted to oblivion.
Iâll add that we waited longer than we should have, and
while itâs hard to conclusively say we would have had an
easier time earlier, we ended up spending hundreds of
thousands in fertility treatments.
You always think you have more time, but as they say
âitâs later than you think.â
brabel wrote 1 day ago:
I've been trying to convince my wife to have at least one
child, but I'm afraid it's too late already. She's 43.
You've just made me think it would be a bad idea anyway at
this point :(.
Oh well, at least I have many nieces.
Marsymars wrote 1 day ago:
In a kinda similar boat, though less "trying to convince"
and more "trying to decide if we want a kid". (Because
really, the boat for multiple kids for us has sailed.) My
wife's five years younger, but we only met three years ago,
so it feels like we've been speed-running our relationship
while simultaneously dealing with life and career stuff.
I live across the country from my nephew, but if I end up
not having kids, he can look forward to notably more visits
and funtime with the uncle.
somenameforme wrote 1 day ago:
I think it's more like start early > start late > start
never. There's more hurdles, and less chance of success -
but I definitely wouldn't say it's a bad idea. The worst
that happens is nothing happens. I sincerely hope you two
at least try. Good luck.
lotsofpulp wrote 16 hours 25 min ago:
> The worst that happens is nothing happens.
The worst thing that happens is the woman or the child
suffers complications that result in short term or even
life long sacrifices.
Not that it might be 51% or even 11% likely, but the odds
certainly go up for a woman, and will likely influence
her decision.
somenameforme wrote 11 hours 53 min ago:
The risks of childbirth for a healthy woman, even 40+,
are negligible. And the worst of issues for the child,
like Downs, can be screened for with perfect accuracy.
The most difficult part with aging is actually getting
to the point of childbirth!
I also would emphasize that it's not like not having a
child is without issues. Much of the West, including
the US, is already suffering with from increasing
isolation, depression, and other such issues. And
aging, especially without family, is likely to only
exasperate these issues. Friends that will last
forever, don't. And it becomes more and more difficult
to meet new people as you age. Places like Japan and
South Korea may be a foreshadowing of where we're
headed, and it's not pretty. See things like kodukushi
- lonely deaths. [1] -
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi
erispoe wrote 1 day ago:
It seems like she just doesn't want to have kids.
The_Colonel wrote 1 day ago:
> This is going to take a pretty substantial reshaping of
society and culture, or our society and culture will simply
go extinct.
It won't. You can't extrapolate the short-term recent trend
to centuries. In the past, social/cultural/religious norms
forced you to have children even if you didn't really have a
great desire for them. This changed and now there will be
selection pressure on personality traits which desire
children.
dgacmu wrote 1 day ago:
We had our first kid when I was about 37, and our second when I
was about 43.
The part that's harder is that particularly with #2, I'm just a
bit more tired, and he needs a lot of energy. It's not drastic,
but I notice it.
The part that's emotionally harder is that I'm sad I won't be
there when my kids are approximately my age. I'd love to be
around longer to help if they have kids, etc., but
statistically, I don't think it's too likely. I lost my own mom
two years ago and that was very hard. Barring some advances in
health care, my kids are likely to lose me in their 30s-40s as
well. Losing a parent is never easy, but I think it would be
easier a little later. My kids only have one grandparent left
and I wish they still had two.
The part that's easier is exactly what you note: Life is pretty
stable. We're financially sound. We've had years of growth and
therapy to learn to communicate well and have a healthy
relationship with each other and our kids. We can afford to
support our kids well, be that with high quality daycare when
they were young, or an emergency mid-year school shift (that
was interesting), or medically, or whatnot.
Lots of tradeoffs. I plan to make the most of my time with them
while they're still young. There's no clear answer on the
balance other than doing one's best.
The_Colonel wrote 1 day ago:
> The part that's emotionally harder is that I'm sad I won't
be there when my kids are approximately my age. I'd love to
be around longer to help if they have kids, etc., but
statistically, I don't think it's too likely.
This bothers me a lot, too (although I had my kids a couple
of years earlier than you). Not just the physical presence,
but also being physically and mentally fit when they're
adults. I'd like to do sports, travel with them, help them
move between apartments. I'd like to be mentally on the same
page, not an old grumpy fart not understanding what they're
thinking about. All of that can be done, but it simply gets
more difficult with a larger age difference.
nickd2001 wrote 1 day ago:
As someone who's had kids at a similar age to you, yeah its
not a nice thought not being around for them as long as you'd
like to be. Especially the thought of them having lost their
parents when still relatively young (e:g in their 30s). Your
life expectancy estimate sounds possibly a little pessimistic
to me. With modern healthcare, barring bad luck, trying to
live to 85-90 might be not a crazy ambition? That'd involve
being somewhat focused on not eating cr*p and trying to get a
decent amount of exercise, nothing crazy but just a little
bit of prioritisation. That's my approach anyway. I wonder if
in time older parents will be found to have longer life
expectancy because they have an extra incentive to look after
their health?
ulfw wrote 1 day ago:
This is exactly why I decided not to have kids. My mum had me
at 40. I lost my dad when I was 23 and my mum at 44. I'm 47
now and it's frankly too late for me (I'm male, so
theoretically I could father some) to have children now.
teaearlgraycold wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm sure youâre still a cool uncle and good influence
to the youngins.
ulfw wrote 1 day ago:
That's super sweet of you. Thank you. I do try my best.
Spooky23 wrote 1 day ago:
For one, grandkids. If I live as long as my dad, Iâll have 7
fewer years than he did with me and my wife and son.
My family brings me great joy.
r00fus wrote 1 day ago:
> The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s,
completely incompetent to be able to raise a child.
You see, in a proper early childrearing situation, you would be a)
near your parents and inlaws ideally b) they would share in the
burden of child-rearing.
We had kids later in life (33-ish) and I think if I were to do it
again, I'd have moved quicker to having kids earlier (waited 2
years to marry and 3 years before having first kid).
More and more people are living closer to their parents - which
opens up this possibility.
bradlys wrote 1 day ago:
A lot of this assumes so many things that I think people who were
born and raised in stable UMC (like most on HN) take for granted.
Even if I lived close to the family I was born into, I would
never let them get near my children. The years of neglect and
child abuse are reason enough that they should never see them -
let alone be caregivers.
Similarly, youâre assuming that your marriage would have gone
smoothly still and so would the childbearing if you hadnât
waited. I was with someone for five years and we never got
legally married. We talked a lot about kids and marriage. I still
felt like we had years to go before we were ready for marriage
and kids. We separated over financial differences once it became
clear they were never going to resolve. Imagine we had ignored
our intuitions and married and had kids based on arbitrary
deadlines? It would have been terrible. The differences
wouldnât have solved themselves with marriage or kids - we
wouldâve gone separate ways and both would experience truly
insane hardship due to such poor decisions.
Living near people who can take care of your kids sounds lovely
if you grew up where all the jobs are. Not uncommon for many SV
types here who grew up in Palo Alto and such but itâs
farfetched for so many more.
We need better regulations to give better paid leave and lower
the cost of housing so Iâm not homeless when my spouse decides
to stop working to take care of the kids.
rayiner wrote 1 day ago:
> A lot of this assumes so many things that I think people who
were born and raised in stable UMC (like most on HN) take for
granted.
You donât have to be âUMCâ to take those things for
granted. All those things are normal in the third world village
where my dad grew up.
jimbokun wrote 1 day ago:
Right, itâs less about economic class, more about cultural
values.
r00fus wrote 1 day ago:
I'm not denying your experiences - I was reasoning using my
own. I did not have a typical upbringing - I'm felt like an
outsider and went to a different school for like 7 years in a
row.
Clearly your circumstances dictated your options. Nowadays, in
this truly oligarchic economy, most young people simply don't
feel they'll ever be able to afford a home or family either
(which is a massive regression). Perhaps the future means -
you raise your family in your parents house (with their
help)... if you trust your parents.
Agreed about better support for families and housing.
JamesBarney wrote 1 day ago:
Housing affordability has little to do with an oligarchic
economy and everything to do with policy decisions we made to
make housing expensive.
munificent wrote 1 day ago:
It's complicated. It's definitely true that we're less mature in
our 20s than we are in our 30s. But, also, maturity doesn't just
accumulate on us like growth rings. You can easily be a completely
immature thirty-something if you don't have the kind of challenging
life experiences that cause maturity.
Probably the number one life experience that increases maturity is
having kids. If you'd had kids younger, you would have grown up
faster too and earned some of the maturity needed to raise them
well earlier.
Of course, there's an obvious counter-argument that no one should
deliberately have children as a tool for their own person growth.
That's fair. But it's also reality than you can never be fully
prepared for any situation until you're in it. Sometimes you just
have to accept that live is one long improv scene and do your best.
I'm not saying anyone should have kids early, or at all. But I
think there's pernicious, unhealthy meme in our culture today that
says kids deserve perfect parents and therefore no one should have
children until they're perfectly prepared, but that's just an
impossible bar.
nyokodo wrote 1 day ago:
> no one should deliberately have children as a tool for their
own person growth
Iâm not suggesting youâre saying this, but there seems to be
an idea floating around that any motivation to have children that
incorporates your own good is evil. There is absolutely nothing
wrong with anticipating and desiring an ancillary benefit to
having children or from any other relationship for that matter.
Yes, if itâs your primary goal then that is cold and inhuman
since children have a right to exist and be loved and cared for
for their own sake, and they and other people do not exist merely
to sate your desires. However, the fact that they also sate
oneâs good and ordered needs and desires and that those are
part of the equation of forming relationships and having children
is perfectly natural and an unavoidable human experience across
cultures and times.
munificent wrote 23 hours 58 min ago:
> there seems to be an idea floating around that any
motivation to have children that incorporates your own good is
evil.
This is a really good observation.
Yes, there's a whole toxic thread in today's culture that if
you are not 100% altruistic towards any dependent then you must
be an evil person who is traumatizing them. It seems like there
are a lot of people out there today who believe that no one is
good enough to deserve to have kids or pets.
BirAdam wrote 1 day ago:
A very close friend of mine was murdered at 18, his sister was a
year younger and she matured very quickly as a result of this
experience. Sheâs now in her early 20s and youâd assume
sheâs 35 by her personality and view points.
pfannkuchen wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder if youâd mind sharing some examples of her
viewpoints? Itâs not obvious to me what sort of maturity a
sibling murder would induce. She moved to the suburbs already?
jwells89 wrote 1 day ago:
Not a parent, but I feel the same about myself. Having a kid at 22
wouldâve been a mess to say the least. Looking back at that age
halfway through my 30s, at that point I wasnât much more than an
overgrown 16 year old that could legally walk into a bar who
wouldnât get his head screwed on quite right for another 6 years
or so at minimum.
ein0p wrote 1 day ago:
As someone who had his first kid at 23, you grow up real quick
once you become a parent. Moreover I doubt itâs even possible
for a person to fully mature if they donât have kids. Or to
really understand their own parents for that matter.
digging wrote 1 day ago:
> Moreover I doubt itâs even possible for a person to fully
mature if they donât have kids.
This is my favorite of the lies parents tell, it's so obviously
nonsensical
ein0p wrote 1 day ago:
I take it you don't have kids.
doubled112 wrote 1 day ago:
I was 24 and still in college. This thread is full of people
saying "I was a mess" or "I wasn't mature enough".
When we found out we were pregnant, I was working at a gas
station, my off hours spent riding around in a truck with my
friends yelling things at people walking by on the street for
reactions. There's maturity and stability.
Now I'm "ahead" of many of those friends because I knew I
needed to hurry up and get things done. Didn't have time to
rage quit jobs. Didn't have time to sit around and make less
because it was easier.
So I agree with you. It tells me a lot about being responsible
and mature. Most won't until they have to, and a kid has that
effect.
ddsf wrote 1 day ago:
I often see people settled into being more financially
responsible, and it's good. But not in term of personality
maturity.
Al-Khwarizmi wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, same here. I don't think I was mature enough to have a kid
at 22, apart from the fact that I was still studying, and when I
started working I had low salary and needed to work long hours to
fight for job stability in a competitive sector. However, it
would likely have worked at 30, and reading through all this
makes me think that it would have been better than waiting until
36 as I did.
Easier said (especially in retrospective) than done, though.
em-bee wrote 1 day ago:
the component that is getting lost in our culture, which in other
cultures is still more present is that grandparents play an
active role in helping the young parents to raise their children.
in chinese culture for example the young couple moves in with the
husbands parents, and so grandparents are always around to give
advice and help.
when our first was born we moved to live a few km from the
grandparents, and there was always someone nearby to help and to
show us how things are done.
oh, and going with the theme of the article, great-grandpa from
my wifes side was still around, but my son does not remember him
now.
and as my dad was the youngest of 7 kids, i just barely remember
his parents.
elzbardico wrote 18 hours 23 min ago:
The boomer generation in general kind of broke this social
contract. Too busy being eternal teenagers.
IG_Semmelweiss wrote 1 day ago:
I thought you were going to say it for a minute there - the
cultural component that you speak of that I feel is missing in
our US culture during the younger years is 'duty'
I was also a mess in my 20s and i had a lot of growing up to do
to prepare for kids. Yet. Even after kids, I didnt really grow
up quickly enough until kids forced the issue.
Having kids and being responsible for someone else who is
solely deoendent on you to have a shot at decent life is a
monumental duty. I did not have this imprinted on me and I can
see why. Our values today are very different from those of my
parents and grandparents, and I think that's the big
difference.
Im not sure how we lost that as a culture. Maybe its bad
leaders (bill Clinton affair etc), loss of religion, loss of
community time due to diminished economic opportunity locally
(flyover states, most former industrial towns and even cities),
economic migration to large metros breaking family ties, all
certainly played a role.
it seems correct to say that duty was the slowly boiled frog in
the pan, and it looks increasingly hard for the frog to jump
out
em-bee wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
well, i think it is or was more than duty. it was necessity
because your children were there to take care of you in old
age. (and i have seen that in action with the great
grandfather of my kids)
and there is also a sense of purpose. with the same
conviction that young people work to provide for their
family, which is something they learn to do because everyone
else is doing it, grandparents simply see their purpose as
taking care of their grandkids. i think that's much more than
just duty. its their reason to live.
this is in part demonstrated by the distraught reactions by
the hopeful grandparents when there are no grandchildren
coming. (based on one person sharing their experience with
me)
danparsonson wrote 1 day ago:
I personally think it stems from a strong focus on
individualism in the western (and, increasingly, the wider)
world. We're all taught to prioritise our own needs over
those of others around us, and go it alone if necessary to
achieve that.
everforward wrote 1 day ago:
> Maybe its bad leaders (bill Clinton affair etc
I would add to this the increasing speed and volume of news.
I don't know whether today's leaders are truly worse so much
as that were all just much more aware of their failings than
we were in the past.
There are no secrets these days.
I also think there's an aspect of societal propaganda
breaking down in the face of the internet. "Duty" is a
clearly artificial term, people are only bound to it so far
as they believe in it. Society has gotten less good at
convincing people to believe they have a duty.
We also have a lot of infighting between political and
cultural factions that ruins the sense of shared obligation
underpinning duty. It's hard to feel a duty to someone Fox
News or Reddit has been telling you to hate your whole life.
thaumasiotes wrote 1 day ago:
> in chinese culture for example the young couple moves in with
the husbands parents, and so grandparents are always around to
give advice and help
That's a common mode. Another common mode in Chinese culture is
that the young couple lives separately from their parents, and
the child is raised by the grandparents, rarely seeing its
parents.
lotsofpulp wrote 1 day ago:
> in chinese culture for example the young couple moves in with
the husbands parents, and so grandparents are always around to
give advice and help.
Same for Indians. And 90% of Indian dramas are about mother in
laws butting heads with daughter in laws.
Obviously, a daughter in law that earns sufficient money
herself is not going to give up her agency, and many in laws
who are expecting the deference they had to give their in laws
when they were young are going to have trouble meshing with the
new power dynamic.
tuatoru wrote 1 day ago:
But only 20% of Indian women are in the workforce, due to
culture--family honor concerns.
lotsofpulp wrote 1 day ago:
It is due to those Indian women not having the opportunity
to earn money. If you look at American women who are
children of Indian immigrants, the rate is much higher,
because women have a far easier time obtaining higher
income jobs in the US (or UK/Aus/Can/other developed
countries).
But that is rapidly changing amongst the upper classes in
India too, almost everyone will support their daughter to
get as good of an education as they can and secure as good
income earning opportunities as they can.
tuatoru wrote 1 day ago:
Children of immigrants rapidly absorb the core culture of
their new country. Especially when in grants them greater
independence.
The upper classes in India are a rounding error, maybe
the population of Spain at most.
Edit: you are right that it's a trade-off. In Bangladesh
keeping women at home may mean starvation, so they are
grudgingly allowed to work.
triceratops wrote 1 day ago:
28% of Indian students are enrolled in higher
education. The gender split is 52:48 in favor of
males.[1] For the US those numbers are 39% and 45:55
(more women than men).[2] Since they're from different
sources the participation rates might not be directly
comparable shrug but the gender stats should still be
applicable.
At least going by that, there doesn't appear to be a
great deal of "lock your girls and women away" going on
over in India.
1. [1] 2.
URI [1]: https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.o...
URI [2]: https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-...
tuatoru wrote 19 hours 8 min ago:
Sure, they go to college. Which makes the low labor
force participation rate even more of a tragedy for
them and the country.
rodgerd wrote 1 day ago:
> the component that is getting lost in our culture, which in
other cultures is still more present is that grandparents play
an active role in helping the young parents to raise their
children. in chinese culture for example the young couple moves
in with the husbands parents, and so grandparents are always
around to give advice and help.
That's great if the grandparents are good people. Not so much
if they aren't.
jethro_tell wrote 1 day ago:
Additionally, in generational cycles where you can maintain
or exceed your parent's class status without moving away.
Whole swaths of the US don't have enough good jobs to
maintain a middle class lifestyle for kids of middle class
parents.
And parents are working longer as well, meaning that overlap
is less likely to happen.
I went to my grandparents every Wednesday. My mom just
retired, my kids are 12 and I didn't have kids until my 30s.
There's so much about life that has changed the fabric of
families in the last few decades
em-bee wrote 1 day ago:
you can't choose your parents obviously, but having parents
so bad that you don't want them in your life is not the norm.
you have my sympathies if that is your experience.
for most people the problem is not that they don't want their
parents around, but that the parents don't feel like helping
as much as their kids would need it. and here the culture
makes a difference.
my wife was not her mothers favorite. girls in china were
always treated as secondary. and according to their tradition
we should have been living with my parents. they favored
their son and his wife in everything, and yet they did what
they could to help their daughter, because that is simply
what what grandparents in china do regardless of how well
they relate to each other.
but in our culture it's not, and whether grandparents are
willing to help varies a lot, and it depends on the
relationship to their kids
robertlagrant wrote 1 day ago:
> That's great if the grandparents are good people. Not so
much if they aren't.
This is specious. If they are particularly awful, their kid
probably won't want anything to do with them raising his/her
kids.
aidenn0 wrote 1 day ago:
This retort is true of literally everything involved in
raising kids.
Substitute "parents" "preschool teachers" "sports coach" &c.
for "grandparents" in the sentence and it's still true for
the domain for the children. It's true that with
grandparents you have a maximum of 4 to choose from, but you
might not have more than 4 preschools to choose from either.
sublinear wrote 1 day ago:
The best part about being a mature parent is that you have
much more control over how you raise your kids. No way in
hell did I ever trust teachers, grandparents, coaches, etc.
over my actual parents.
My parents were in their 30s when I was born. Their
skepticism not only decoupled them from depending on people
they didn't trust, but their perspective rubbed off on me
and set me up for success. Older parents have no problem
showing their kids the reality of the world early on.
Individualism is not a bad thing at all if only you could
convince all these people stuck in the past. This world
will fall apart if we don't focus on higher quality
parenting from the actual parents. Since long ago we've
been saying we don't want "kids raising kids". My parents
weren't the only ones thinking this way.
rayiner wrote 1 day ago:
The notion that parents have much to do with how kids
turn out is a myth: [1] . Itâs just something old white
guys said in the 1960s without support, like Jungian
archetypes and things like that. Somehow itâs become
part of the unexamined truth of society.
URI [1]: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/blueprin...
arkey wrote 1 day ago:
> The notion that parents have much to do with how kids
turn out is a myth.
This is honestly fascinating. It's obviously not true,
just by taking into account the consequences of it
being actually true.
Am I missing something? The study says, at some point
"We would essentially be the same person if we had been
adopted at birth and raised in a different family.".
Are they limiting this to the genetic composition of a
person? It seems they refer to the character,
behaviour, overall identity... which to me sounds
unbelievably absurd.
I mean, being raised by a single mom vs. being raised
by an Army dad MUST introduce some differences, right?
And what about all the studies about the consequences
of father absence? Oh, all criminals were going to be
criminals regardless?
Come on.
JamesBarney wrote 1 day ago:
> "We would essentially be the same person if we had
been adopted at birth and raised in a different
family.".
If you look at twins that are raised apart this is
freakishly true. Twins raised apart have outcomes
that are far closer than 2 unrelated kids raised
together.
> And what about all the studies about the
consequences of father absence?
If you look at children with an absent father vs
children with a dead father you find that 80% of the
effect disappears in the second group. And that still
doesn't entirely eliminate the genetic component
because genes influence behavior that can lead to
death. This strongly suggests that sharing genes with
a deadbeat dad is worse for you than not being raised
by a father.
arkey wrote 1 day ago:
> This strongly suggests that sharing genes with a
deadbeat dad is worse for you than not being raised
by a father.
I find that the implications of this being true are
very troubling.
Maybe you could attribute the outcomes to the
difference between your father abandoning you vs.
your father unfortunately passing away? I'm sure
both cases would have different effects on a
person.
I have the hope that someone with a deadbeat dad
being adopted by a caring family will have a better
prospect than someone thrown into the system.
program_whiz wrote 1 day ago:
Sorry to nitpick this, but there is a subtle flaw in
this thinking. The main argument of the article is that
our experiences in the world (e.g. having a good
teacher, getting bullied, parenting, etc) don't account
for much difference in our personalities and
genetically determined proclivities in the long term.
Although the article says only half of personality /
psych traits are genetically determined, which is still
substantial imo, so the argument isn't strong enough to
say "parents don't matter" even by the arguments in the
article.
>> Research shows that inherited DNA differences
account for about half of the differences for all
psychological traits â including personality.
>> The notion that parents have much to do with how
kids turn out is a myth
This is a much broader claim that the evidence does not
support. Nourishment, physical activity, mental
development, emotional support, getting a good
education, avoiding the wrong paths, these are things
that parents facilitate that absolutely affect "how a
kid turns out". Sure, you can't force your kid to be
enthusiastic about sports if they aren't, but having
good parents that foster interests and development is a
huge difference in "how a kid turns out".
Are you asserting low-income and neglected children
have equal outcomes to those with stable households,
access to resources, and good parenting? I would say
your statement is a broad generalization unsupported by
the flimsy article you reference, and contradicted by
all available evidence. Just one small one:
URI [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/fa...
rayiner wrote 14 hours 11 min ago:
The other half is mostly unshared environment (peers,
etc.) Of course the parents affect both indirectly.
But parenting style matters very little compared to
genetics and who your kids are around.
hollerith wrote 3 hours 53 min ago:
I'm surprised that you are so ready to abandon your
common sense in the face of a psychology book
(Judith Rich Harris's book specifically, which
asserts that how a parent treats a child has almost
no influence on how the child turns out).
Psychology papers and psychology books misuse and
misapply statistics all the time. Surely someone as
well educated as you knows this? (Maybe your wife
is a psychologist, so you are overly accepting of
psychology results?) The basic mistake being made
here is to ignore the possibility that a parent has
treated different children differently: one kid is
shy: a good parent will nudge him into making
friends, but avoid forcing him into unstructured
situations with many children because that will
tend to overwhelm him. I.e., a good parent is part
of the so-called "unshared environment": the shy
kid's non-shy sister is not treated the way I just
described. (There is for example no need to nudge
her into making friends.)
program_whiz wrote 6 hours 32 min ago:
when people make this argument I think they mean
"assuming the person has an approximately normal
parenting style". Its a bit like saying the infra
doesn't matter, only the app does (assuming the
infra is built with best practices for availability
and scale). When in reality, its missing the
forest for the trees. You're essentially claiming
that a parent who neglects feeding a child, drops
them repeatedly, and lives in the drug-infested
dangerous area of town, abusing drugs and alcohol
while pregant "matters very little", when its
obviously _the_ defining factor in how this child
will grow up.
Your point holds when we assume most parenting
styles are roughly equal (but this would also hold
for environmental factors and genes, since most of
those won't be too drastically different for most
people).
Put another way: perhaps the most important factor
is the one furthest from the mean. If your genes
are basically average but your parents are horrible
(abusive, neglectful), you may not live to 12. If
parents and genes are average, but your environment
is war-torn 3rd world, you may not make it to 12.
If your parents and environment are average but
your genes are horrible, you may not make it to 12.
But its clear all the factors can be extremely
important, and the claim of the GP only applies
"all else being roughly equal".
Back to the app example: assuming sane infra, yes
the app might be "more important" to the business.
But if you have an average app, but your infra is
terrible (long load times, constant outages, losing
data, payment system failures), well, you aren't
going to succeed.
em-bee wrote 8 hours 0 min ago:
wikipedia quotes a study claiming the opposite:
parents differ in their patterns of parenting and
that these patterns can have a significant impact
on their children's development and well-being [1]
and from my own experience i would concur.
parenting styles define the relationship parents
have with their kids, and that relationship
absolutely matters.
i find it worth considering however that when
discussing parenting styles it gives the impression
that the chosen style is a deliberate choice that
parents can switch around at will, when in reality
i believe most parenting styles are defined by
circumstances and by the experience of the parents
themselves.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_st...
JamesBarney wrote 1 day ago:
Have you found any studies that show that shared
environment makes a "huge difference" on broadly how
a kid turns out? I haven't seen any.
And that cdc site isn't evidence. If you look
through any of those studies it's all correlational.
So they have literally 0 power to differentiate
outcomes driven by genetics vs shared environment.
circlefavshape wrote 1 day ago:
> Itâs just something old white guys said in the
1960s without support
Oh please. You think the nature versus nurture argument
was invented in the 60s? You think that a pop psych
article from a behavioral geneticist is the last word
in the matter?
IG_Semmelweiss wrote 1 day ago:
I 100% disagree.
On the average it may be 100% right, but of you zoom
in, you will see a bunch of problems.
For example:
- kids turning out really poorly if they have bad
parenting. Magnitude matters too.
- I suspect the data is not capturing kids that
literally died (is the fentanyl crisis over? Are those
kids counted?)
- some parenting groups likely have lopsided outcomes
(Ie kids from yougest parents may turn out badly, while
those from older parents may not be impacted at all)
In conclusion. Outcomes are strongly tied to genetics
up to a breaking point, where if the "parenting"
variable is so deficient, things go bad, fast.
My contention is that parenting doesnt matter at all on
average, except that when it does, it's the main
determinant for outcome.
And further, i posit that this parenting variable is
increasingly worse over time.
visarga wrote 1 day ago:
Can confirm, have 3 kids. Parenting doesn't have much
to do with how kids turn out. The genetic factor is
more important. Not just genes of the two parents, but
also how they recombine and surface various traits.
Best thing to do is to let the kid discover who they
want to be. Observe and support their explorations.
baq wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, have 4 and 90% of my psychological strength is
spent in making them not do bad things like punch
their siblings in the face for looking the wrong way.
I'm now resigned to the Sun Tzu principle: if you
cannot lose, you'll win - just want to make sure I'm
eliminating the obviously losing paths and they'll
need to walk the successful paths themselves or I'll
end up in an institution.
thaumasiotes wrote 1 day ago:
> Itâs just something old white guys said in the
1960s without support, like Jungian archetypes and
things like that.
It is that, but it's not just that; the concept is
attested farther back. [1] > Give me the child for the
first seven years and I will give you the man.
If Voltaire invented it from whole cloth, that's still
the 18th century.
Though on your topic, Piaget is an amazing example of
someone just inventing a completely ridiculous theory,
doing experiments that fail to support it, and getting
it enshrined as wisdom anyway.
URI [1]: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Loyo...
aidenn0 wrote 1 day ago:
Oh man Piaget. Responsible for bad information on
kids for both Object permanence, and abstract
reasoning.
His views on egocentrism at least seem not as
obviously wrong as those two; not sure what modern
studies have to say.
paulryanrogers wrote 1 day ago:
Arguably you can chose other teachers and coaches and
daycare
aidenn0 wrote 1 day ago:
You have up to 4 grandparents to choose from (in the case
where all 4 are still living, but separated).
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote 1 day ago:
What about crappy parents?
paulryanrogers wrote 1 day ago:
Exactly. That's the distinction. While you can chose
other people in most roles for your kids, you cannot
pick their grandparents.
pixl97 wrote 1 day ago:
I think a potential problem (depending on ones point of view) is
that when parents wait till they are responsible they tend to
have one, maybe two kids, which is below replacement rate. When
coupled with things like costs, you end up with a rapidly
shrinking population.
gonzo41 wrote 1 day ago:
Don't worry, there's plenty of irresponsible people out there
still. And the planet is thankful for a bit of steady decline
in population.
DiggyJohnson wrote 1 day ago:
The planet doesnât care either way. The question is
whatâs best for the humans - and those things or beings
that humans value.
em-bee wrote 1 day ago:
add that waiting longer also increases the replacement rate.
jwells89 wrote 1 day ago:
Cost and support networks are both big factors here.
30-somethings are probably more likely to have replacement rate
or more if itâs affordable to do so and thereâs
family/friends around to lend a hand, but few enjoy such
circumstances.
Things like remote work couldâve helped here, allowing
couples to live near family instead of wherever the best
employment prospects exist currently, but the RTO push
prevented that.
tuatoru wrote 1 day ago:
The (lack of) social prestige for pregnancy and motherhood
among UMC women is a bigger factor. Women have been
indoctrinated to place career first and only.
Try saying "soccer mom" with an admiring tone instead of a
sneer if you want to understand this.
BeFlatXIII wrote 20 hours 57 min ago:
The sneer of "soccer mom" isn't that she's a mother busy
raising children. It's that she's too busy shuffling the
kids between enrichment activities to take the downtime to
be their mother. That and her children are her
personality.
lotsofpulp wrote 1 day ago:
Is it possible women could want financial independence
without being indoctrinated?
Or are they incapable of desiring power over their own
lives, perhaps unlike men?
tuatoru wrote 23 hours 10 min ago:
It is possible to live well enough to raise children with
"a job", requiring high school or maybe two-year
technical college training, instead of a four year
college degree and postgraduate degree as is required for
"a career". A job with flexible hours.
Women have been indoctrinated (as have men) to see "a
career" as preferable.
havblue wrote 1 day ago:
You can simply ask whether women really are financially
independent today: You have student debt, mortgage costs,
credit cards etc on one hand and the necessity of keeping
that job once you're "independent" of your family and
significant other on the other hand. How independent are
you if you're paycheck to paycheck?
lotsofpulp wrote 1 day ago:
> How independent are you if you're paycheck to
paycheck?
This is a useless measure of independence in the
context of this discussion since it applies to men and
women. When discussing differences in genders,
obviously we are discussing one gender being able to
achieve more financial independence than the other due
to laws/customs/discrimination.
> You can simply ask whether women really are
financially independent today: You have student debt,
mortgage costs, credit cards etc on one hand and the
necessity of keeping that job once you're "independent"
of your family and significant other on the other hand.
Student debt is optional and highly variable, mortgage
is irrelevant in this discussion since it applies to
men and women, credit cards are also highly variable,
and the job thing was also irrelevant as pointed out
above.
Also, note that 99% of women (and men) in 99% of the
world for 99% of history have never had or been in
families with enough wealth such that they did not have
to work. They simply worked for their own family, with
no explicit pay, and hoped they would get a sufficient
spot at the decision making table.
But all of that is irrelevant anyway. The question is
does my daughter have the same opportunities available
to her as my son? Or would she have to hope for having
nice in laws while my son could aim for the stars and
secure a high paying job?
arkey wrote 1 day ago:
Independence is cool and all that, but I'd rather go with
the teamwork of marriage and family.
Power over their own lives... well, I'd say both men and
women give it up in marriage, at least in a functioning,
idealistic one.
If you want absolute power over your own life, and your
goal in life is financial independence, that's okay, but
maybe marriage and family is not for you.
carlosjobim wrote 1 day ago:
Of course a lot of people would like financial
independence. Young working women (and men) of today
normally have almost no financial independence, because
they are indebted or renters. They have to work a salary
job or be out on the streets.
A stay at home mother in the past with a part time job
had much more financial independence together with her
husband than most working young people have today, even
though they get fancy titles now.
Basically the current elderly generation used
indoctrination to turn their children into serfs in some
kind of foolish attempt to end humanity.
Also to remember is that traditionally in most cultures,
the wife in the family controlled the household's
finances.
lotsofpulp wrote 1 day ago:
> Young working women (and men) of today normally have
almost no financial independence,
A greater proportion of women today have more financial
independence than they have ever had in the past.
> A stay at home mother in the past with a part time
job had much more financial independence together with
her husband
This is financial dependence, not independence.
> Basically the current elderly generation used
indoctrination to turn their children into serfs in
some kind of foolish attempt to end humanity.
Nonsense. I imagine it is pretty insulting for a woman
to read that they could only be capable of wanting
control of their own lives if they were fooled into it.
> Also to remember is that traditionally in most
cultures, the wife in the family controlled the
household's finances.
Also nonsense. In almost every culture, for almost all
of time, women did not have power over the familyâs
assets, much less the ability to earn enough to power a
family. They were and are literally married off
because they were liabilities. Inheritances passed
down to sons instead of daughters. And umpteen other
examples.
This is ignoring that even with legal/social mechanisms
that provide women equal access to power as men,
biology throws them a curveball every month with the
effects of menstruation cycles and the effects and
risks of pregnancy/childbirth.
carlosjobim wrote 1 day ago:
> This is financial dependence, not independence.
Do you really think that somebody who owns their own
house and has supplementary income is less
independent than somebody who works full time and
owns nothing? The first has the option to stop
working, the second will be out on the streets if
they do.
> Nonsense. I imagine it is pretty insulting for a
woman to read that they could only be capable of
wanting control of their own lives if they were
fooled into it.
Both women and men, and yes, the indoctrination is
massive to convince the young generations that they
want to work full time at an extremely elevated
productivity and still not afford to own their homes
to have families.
> Also nonsense. In almost every culture, for almost
all of time, women did not have power over the
familyâs assets, much less the ability to earn
enough to power a family.
Then you are ignorant of history regarding this,
which is your problem and not mine. I trust that you
will deny this even if you read about it and find
out. Just say "Nonsense!" and shut it out.
lotsofpulp wrote 1 day ago:
We are simply living in different realities. In
mine, women only (relatively) recently obtained the
right to vote, and have legal systems that try to
prevent discrimination against them in the labor
market. And this is not even worldwide.
In the world I live in, many or most women are
still contending with uneven workloads in the home:
[1] >and grueling workplace norms that are
inhospitable to family life, especially for women,
who are still expected to do the bulk of housework
and child care.
>Do you really think that somebody who owns their
own house and has supplementary income is less
independent than somebody who works full time and
owns nothing? The first has the option to stop
working, the second will be out on the streets if
they do.
False dichotomies, and also most women did not own
their own house outright and have supplementary
income. Either in laws own it, or they had
mortgages and had to work outside the home, or they
were expected to do all the housework. There was
no option to stop working (housework is work).
URI [1]: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/real-re...
carlosjobim wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
I think we are living in different realities yes.
And also, none of us are living in the past to
really know how things were. We can not rely too
much on the testimony from the elderly
generation, because they are known liars and
cheats.
But what we can do is try to look at things today
in the most logical way possible. Why should
young men and women work hard and be highly
productive at their careers? For financial
independence and freedom says you and others, and
that makes it worth foregoing having families.
But the fact is that young people are more broke
than ever. They are working hard and are highly
productive, but all their productivity is eaten
by taxes, profits and land rent (either outright
rent or a mortgage). They didn't get the
financial independence they were promised. So
they've sacrificed everything and become erased
from history and from the genome in exchange for
almost nothing. To the benefit of other people
who are reaping all their productivity, not least
the elderly generation.
Why would somebody do that voluntarily to
themselves? What sane person would forego taking
care of their own family, people who love them,
to instead sacrifice their life to take care of
shareholders, political rulers and unrelated
beneficiaries of their labour. All of them who
are at best completely indifferent to the welfare
of young workers who are supporting them.
It takes some indoctrination for that, most
importantly schooling, which indoctrinates
children to stay locked in a place for 8 hours a
day, five days a week, and put obedience to
authority as the most important thing in life.
> Either in laws own it
Those in-laws didn't live forever, and I think
this is something crucial to the whole issue that
the article brings up.
> or they were expected to do all the housework.
If you limit the definition of "housework" to
anything the woman is expected to do and nothing
the man is expected to do, I guess.
myko wrote 1 day ago:
I am so glad I waited until my late 30s to have a kid. It sucks not
being as physically capable as I would've been, but being calmer
and more understanding I think is a big help in child rearing.
mrbgty wrote 2 days ago:
Good points to think about. One I consider is that traditions and
family roots are often good for people to feel connected and find
meaning although traditions should be questioned from time to time.
I think having family members of varying ages alive at the same time
does help people feel connected, safe, and confident in having
meaning and purpose. (Not that people can't have those things
otherwise, it's just without that support)
Merad wrote 2 days ago:
It's not just great grandparents, but the family calculus on
grandparents changes significantly as well. If my parents were 35
when I was born, and I don't have children until 35, my parents are
70. With a life expectancy of 80, my children never really get a
chance to know my parents. Whereas if each generation is having
children at age 25, my children will likely be able to know their
grandparents for 30 years.
I have no idea if it's good or bad, but it's interesting to think
about. I do have to wonder if it affects how younger people perceive
the past, since they have less of a direct connection to the past.
mgkimsal wrote 1 day ago:
My mom's parents were relatively old when they had her, and my
dad's parents were relatively young when they had him. I had a set
of 'old' grandparents, and 'young' grandparents.
My mom's parents were gone by the time I was 24 - I didn't really
ever get a chance to interact with them as an adult. My dad's
father passed away when I was 39, but I had many visits with them
as an adult while he and my grandmother were still pretty active.
My grandmother is now 94 and not in great health, but still with
us, still mentally there. When I was in 5th grade, they came to
'grandparents day' at my school, and she won 'youngest
grandmother', but wouldn't come up on stage to accept the award!
;)
vidarh wrote 1 day ago:
I realised last year that I'd reached the age (48) that my mums dad
was when I was born. I remember him "always" being "old", but I
also know that I have memories of him from before he turned 55 (he
took early retirement around then, and I remember clearly the
discussions about what would happen to his workplace that led up to
the offer of taking early retirement). He lived another 32 years
after that, and all of my grandparents were young enough through
most of my childhood and teens that not only were they around but
they had the energy to have us stay for whole weeks during the
holidays and take us all kinds of places...
Meanwhile my son, at 14, has only one living grandparent, and it
does feel weird.
Unfrozen0688 wrote 1 day ago:
Its bad. Ofc course its bad to have a smaller support network.
082349872349872 wrote 1 day ago:
Support networks are not necessarily limited to blood relatives.
(in particular, I was never within 5 hours of gp or ggp until my
teens, and born multiple TZ away. then again, I'm in the "come
home before it gets dark" generation; ymmv)
Unfrozen0688 wrote 1 day ago:
No but its nice
We have cheap daycare, maternity leave etc etc here in Sweden
but having some another dropoff for the kids is still nice for
parents
xico wrote 2 days ago:
One of the (maybe more) obvious downside being the increase in
mutations this brings, in the order of 1 full generation of mutations
for every decade the fathers are older for instance. There are plenty
of studies on these issues, notably paternal age genetic disorders
and "selfish genes", as well as increase of autism, schizophrenia,
mendelian disorders, ....
URI [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001502822...
Rury wrote 1 day ago:
Increased mutations/mutation rate is not necessarily a downside.
Mutations aren't inherently bad, they can be beneficial, and the
vast majority actually have no effect whatsoever, as the majority
of our DNA is never used. But yes increased mutations means
increased chances of bad mutations happening even if it also means
increased chances of good mutations happening. Anyhow, it may put
evolutionary pressure for longer lifespans. Studies involving fruit
flies, and selective breeding them as old as possible for
successive generations, show that can be the case. And other
studies involving natural selection show that high mutation rates
are a good thing (ie they help species survive), when environmental
change is high (but high mutation rates are detrimental if the
environment remains stable).
ralusek wrote 2 days ago:
Probably a good thing to speed up the evolutionary landscape during
these rapidly changing times.
seanhunter wrote 1 day ago:
It would not speed up evolution at all.
I remember seeing a talk by Steve Jones[1] where someone asked a
question like this and he said the human species has basically
not evolved at all for I forget how long he said but it was at
least hundreds of thousands of years. He said specifically if
you took the children of someone like this dude[2] and put them
in a modern school system they would not perform noticeably
differently in any way from a modern child as long as they had
decent food etc all the other benefits of modern society. [1]
(emeritus professor of human genetics and evolution at university
college London and the author of a fantastic book on the subject
called "In the Blood")
URI [1]: https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/7056
URI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi
jncfhnb wrote 2 days ago:
The economic situation of your mom having a great career is not the
same as the economic situation of today; appeal to her hard work
considered. People cannot afford to have kids like they used to. And
yes, the older grandparents make this much worse because theyâre
now a costly liability rather than a useful child watcher.
I find the idea that people havenât considered downsides of waiting
to have kids to be grating personally
throwway120385 wrote 1 day ago:
> I find the idea that people havenât considered downsides of
waiting to have kids to be grating personally
Why do you care about what other people do? It's not harming you.
jncfhnb wrote 1 day ago:
Publicly asserting incorrect reasons why people do things is in
fact harmful due the social dialogue it creates.
acover wrote 1 day ago:
I think being judged feels bad. If someone thinks you haven't
considered the obvious it feels pretty insulting.
djur wrote 1 day ago:
Why does anyone care about anyone else's opinions? I think it's
pretty reasonable to take issue with others assuming that you
made a particular decision because you hadn't fully thought
through the consequences. Do you like having people second-guess
your decisions, or does it annoy you?
humansareok1 wrote 2 days ago:
Conversely even people who start young don't necessarily end up
having living great grandparents let alone grandparents. My parents
were both the youngest of 6 and 7 kids so my grandparents who started
having kids in their early 20s had already passed or were quite old
by the time I was born.
fkyoureadthedoc wrote 2 days ago:
I got fairly unlucky in the great grandparent department. My
grandmother had my mom at 15, and my mom had me at 19, and all my
great grandparents were already dead!
em-bee wrote 1 day ago:
oh wow, talk about having the best conditions to have your great
grandparents around for quite a while, and still no luck. at what
age did they have your grandmother? i am sorry they had to leave so
early.
fkyoureadthedoc wrote 1 day ago:
My grandmother was the 2nd youngest of 9 sisters, so they weren't
that young when they had her, but I don't know the exact age. Her
dad killed himself when she was a young child, alcoholism and war
trauma among other things, and her mom passed from some illness.
hackable_sand wrote 1 day ago:
Those sound like awful conditions.
titzer wrote 2 days ago:
My family has really long generations. Going back 7 generations for
me patrilinearly is exactly 280 years; 40 years per generation. When
I was young my grandparents were already in their 80s and both
grandfathers gone before I was 14. Sadly, both had mental decline
(stroke, Alzheimers) and I never knew them in their right mind.
They'd be in their 110s today. The idea of knowing my
great-grandparents, who would be in their 140s-150s today, is
basically unthinkable for me.
082349872349872 wrote 1 day ago:
In the line I've been able (most just showed up in the New World
from somewhere or other...) to trace back to 7 generations, it was
a little less, but they were in the colonies before the US was a
thing, so more than 35, less than 40 years per generation?
My wife can go back 7 as well, and her family has also tended
towards high parental investment in offspring; next time I'm in the
cellar I'll have to check but I'd easily believe they'd also be on
the longer side.
(NB. age matching is a post-WWI thing. I believe the pre-WWI ideal
was mid-30's men* marrying early-20's women, which seems to have
been inherited from Aristotle's recommendation for 30 year olds to
marry 15 year olds)
* Stefan Zweig has a chapter on how this gap influenced porn in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire â not that anyone in this august
assemblage might wonder how the Viennese equivalent of OnlyFans
worked.
082349872349872 wrote 1 day ago:
(it turns out my wife's family took more generations to get back
into the XVIII, so that line runs ~30 years per generation)
selimthegrim wrote 1 day ago:
I am shocked, shocked that Josephine Mutzenbacher didnât
reflect reality
ajmurmann wrote 1 day ago:
Wait, given the age differences described here, the book very
much reflected reality, no?
082349872349872 wrote 1 day ago:
No, what I took away from Zweig is that 19 yo men were very
much interested in 19 yo women, but (although some were for
rent) they couldn't successfully date them due to competition
from men "of substance".
EDIT: hmm, was it really a change in mores, or did WWI just
kill off enough 20-40 yos to reset this dynamic?
ajmurmann wrote 1 day ago:
Isn't that how it was in the Mutzenbacher as well? I mostly
recall her having sex with much older men even before she
enters prostitution
I wonder how much this change was due to the modern idea of
romantic love taking over rather than older men becoming
unavailable
082349872349872 wrote 6 hours 15 min ago:
Good question! It's on my slush list, but atm I have a
lot of physical things which need to be rearranged at or
near the surface of the earth, so unlikely I'll dig into
this before it's slid well out of HN's attention span.
> in the Mutzenbacher
Familienname, eh? I've yet to read her, but given her
reputation I'm glad that makes at least two of us who are
not already per Du.
DiggyJohnson wrote 1 day ago:
I do get frustrated when I hear people saying negative or
unfounded things about couples with relatively small age gaps
7-15 years. Itâs the norm, not the exception.
And I say that as someone who has only dated people my own age.
082349872349872 wrote 6 hours 11 min ago:
see
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39851970
rdlw wrote 1 day ago:
Many things were historical norms, with current practices being
the exception.
CalRobert wrote 1 day ago:
My neighbour is a fifty year old guy and his grandfather was born
in the 1860's. Both the grandfather and father had kids with much
younger women. Funny how we're closer to the past than we think.
ajmurmann wrote 1 day ago:
My grandpa's mother worked as a servant in a castle that I only
know as a burned-out ruin and my grandpa fought in Stalingrad as
a teenager. Unfathomable
robertlagrant wrote 1 day ago:
> Funny how we're closer to the past than we think.
I really love this recording[0] from 1941 of a photographer born
in 1843, talking about the American West. It's one of Youtube's
many gems.
[0] [1] (video)
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ab5nv4Suc
jackcosgrove wrote 1 day ago:
There's also this video interview of Bertrand Russell, whose
grandfather met Napoleon as a young member of Parliament.
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/4OXtO92x5KA
MenhirMike wrote 1 day ago:
John Tyler was born on March 29, 1790 and served as the 10th
President of the USA from 1841-1845.
His Grandson, Harrison Ruffin Tyler (Born November 9, 1928), is
still alive today.
jrussino wrote 1 day ago:
According to Wikipedia, John died in 1862 and Harrison was born
in 1928. So he never met his grandfather.
It makes me wonder - who is the oldest "directly-known" person?
Maybe there's a better term for this. What I mean is, of all of
the currently-living people, who is the person that one of them
actually met who was born the earliest?
jl6 wrote 1 day ago:
> Maybe there's a better term for this.
Seems to be the rule used in Coco.
ghghgfdfgh wrote 1 day ago:
If you think about it, there are about a couple of hundred
super-centenarians (110 or older) alive[1]. Surely at least
one of them met a very old relative when they were young -
for example, when I was 9, I met a great uncle who was 100
years old. Taking into account life expectancy, if you assume
at least one of them has met someone 85 years older than
them, that means this oldest "directly known person" would
have been born at least 195 years ago (1829). Which means
thereâs a good chance someone alive has met someone born in
the 1820âs.
URI [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercentenarian#Inc...
WillAdams wrote 2 days ago:
Same.
When my were in school and had friends who were visiting
great-grandparents in nursing homes (and in one instance
great-great), I had to explain that my great-grandfather was a
Civil War veteran, and that I'd only met my grandfather (who worked
as a sharecropper alongside freed slaves and the children of freed
slaves on my great-grandfather's farm) once. One of those children
lived behind us when I was growing up, and if I'd paid better
attention when helping him with his garden would have taught me how
to plant by the moon and stars --- he did teach me how to gut and
skin a squirrel.
whimsicalism wrote 2 days ago:
feel like it is questionable to describe yourself as a
sharecropper if your daddy owns the entire farm
WillAdams wrote 2 days ago:
He married one of the daughters --- two different family
branches here.
thriftwy wrote 2 days ago:
Some of my relatives had told their toddler "we're going to granny of
your grand-dad".
Yep, that's 5 generations at once. That particular sub-branch has
children later so they are a full generation ahead of my own branch, so
I've told.
cacheyourdreams wrote 2 days ago:
Aren't life expectancy at birth figures heavily skewed by infant
mortality rates. I think this is quite a commonly misunderstood
statistic for this reason. So while it's true that in the past a new
born baby's chances of becoming a great grandparent were much lower
than they would be today, that would mainly be due to the low chances
of them ever reaching adulthood and becoming a parent at all, rather
than the chances of parents living beyond 47.
tgv wrote 1 day ago:
Not only. Check the mortality rates. They've gone down for the higher
ages. People really live longer past childhood.
timeon wrote 1 day ago:
I think it was not just infants but young kids as well but yeah.
bregma wrote 1 day ago:
"Infant mortality" refers to the mortality rate for those under 10
years of age.
keybored wrote 1 day ago:
This is such a rookie mistake to make (by the author). Canât
believe that people who write about this topic still donât know
this in this day and age.
gmane wrote 2 days ago:
I thought this as well, but I did a little research before
responding, and it looks like even though this is broadly true,
people still weren't living particularly long before the modern era.
For example, in Ancient Greece, a man who lived to 15 would expect to
live to 37-41 years, in Rome if a man made it to 20 they could expect
to live to 60, in the late medieval if you made it to 25 you could
expect to live to ~48 [0]. You still need to make it to 60 to be a
great grandparent, assuming you and your kids are having kids at ~15
years of age (edit: and that might be a friendly assumption given how
high infant mortality was).
[0]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
alex_young wrote 1 day ago:
There's some uncertainty about this, and while not properly
controlled for obvious reasons, a study of lives of men of renown
in 5th and 4th century Greece found a median life expectancy of
around 70:
URI [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/
jncfhnb wrote 2 days ago:
Pretty sure the probability of making it to adulthood has never been
below 50% excluding war, plague, or famine (which were common, so
hard to normalize)
ako wrote 1 day ago:
Wikipedia seems to suggest you might be wrong: [1] For example, for
Ancient Rome it says â while the ~50% reaching age 10 could
expect another 40 years of lifeâ.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_ov...
jncfhnb wrote 1 day ago:
Hmm Iâm surprised.
But if 50% reaches an average age of, say 2, assuming itâs
right skewed for those who died before 10; then an average life
expectancy of 50 for the remainder means the average life
expectancy overall just 26. That squares with the numbers stated
I suppose.
gampleman wrote 2 days ago:
Exactly. While life expectancy from adulthood (say 20 yo) has
increased (i.e. UK males have gone from expected average 60y to 80y
between 1841 to 2011 [1]), it hasn't increased nearly as much as the
life expectancy from birth (i.e. 33% vs 98% increase over that
period).
[1]
URI [1]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
levocardia wrote 2 days ago:
The increase for a 40 year old is still nearly 14 years of extra
life, though. That's a big difference.
binarymax wrote 2 days ago:
I (and I'm sure others) call this the idiocracy bias. While your
friends are mulling over the ideal age and economic circumstances to
have children, there are plenty of other families not thinking about
this. They're having kids in their late teens and early twenties.
That doesn't mean we're doomed to live out the idiocracy future, but it
explains this blog post.
mschuster91 wrote 2 days ago:
> While your friends are mulling over the ideal age and economic
circumstances to have children, there are plenty of other families
not thinking about this. They're having kids in their late teens and
early twenties.
On average, birth rates have been shrinking virtually everywhere on
this planet over the last decades.
keybored wrote 2 days ago:
I remember that scene. But I think itâs more about neurosis bias:
thinking that there will ever be a perfect time to have children.
Which never comes. So it just never happens. Contrast that with
having children young. Maybe you might be financially worse off in
the long run. But most people seem to make it work.
So if the goal is to have children eventually? The young parents win.
In any case. Shouldnât people be a bit embarrassed to embrace such
an upper-middle class sneerfest in current year? Idiocracy? Christ.
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote 2 days ago:
There may be "many" people not thinking about it, but there are
measurably and verifiably not plenty, which has a definition
something like "more than enough". Fertility rates in western
countries, including the United States, are below replacement level.
There is a far more disturbing dystopia waiting for us than
Idiocracy.
pengaru wrote 2 days ago:
> That doesn't mean we're doomed to live out the idiocracy future,
but it explains this blog post.
We're already living in the idiocracy future. Actually, the film
needs a sequel something fierce, smartphones and now AI is fast
making our reality post-idiocracy.
RGamma wrote 1 day ago:
"Don't look up" is a sort of spiritual successor. Of course, as you
said, there's room for more, now that half the population is
TikTok'ed.
hackable_sand wrote 1 day ago:
Satire is a cathartic tool that helps us reflect on the
absurdities of daily life. Critically, satire challenges us to
introspect beyond the facile projection of its themes and
subjects. Cynical acceptance and refusal to engage with the
source material is another exercise in anti-intellectualism.
That being said, Don't Look Up wasn't good satire for me. It was
funny and well made, but negligently validates emotional
ignorance.
nemo44x wrote 2 days ago:
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
- Jesus
jofer wrote 2 days ago:
If that were the case, then the demographics data would not show a
major shift. It would just bias of a relatively small group.
However, demographic data clearly shows a trend over the past several
decades. Look up "Mean Age of New Mother" statistics. E.g. here's
data from the US: [1] It's more dramatic if you extend the data back
to the 70's. You can see the same trend in most countries.
On average, people are having their first children at a significantly
older age than a couple of generations ago.
That doesn't mean that folks _aren't_ having children early at all.
E.g. I have _tons_ of friends that had kids as teenagers (and a lot
at 14, too) and were already grandparents years ago in their 30's.
But that's not representative of the overall population.
This means that children knowing their great grandparents really is
becoming more rare today than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
URI [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db232.pdf
binarymax wrote 2 days ago:
I don't think mean is a good measurement for this. It's probably
also being skewed by new science and treatments enabling more
mothers to have children in their mid 40's. I want to see
distributions!
hyperpape wrote 2 days ago:
What you wrote sounds superficially plausible, but you're
overcorrecting.
It is true that the average age of first birth varies widely based on
socioeconomic factors, but it's up for all groups. The average age to
have a first child was 21 for a woman in the US in 1972. In 2018, it
was 26. For women without a college education it was 23.8, but that's
still higher than it was in 1972. [1] .
The US is not the most extreme country in this regard either.
So yes, there will probably be fewer great-grandmothers in the
future, though of course there still will be some.
URI [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/04/upshot/up-bir...
binarymax wrote 2 days ago:
2016 looks almost binomial. We also need to take into account
population size (significantly more in 2016 compared to 1980). It
could be that there are just as many young women having children -
but there are now more mothers >30. So maybe there won't be less
great grandmothers, just a lesser percent of the population.
nkozyra wrote 2 days ago:
It's very anecdotal.
There are countries where the average age of first childbirth is
still in the early 20s, and countries like Switzerland, where it's
over 30.
Among western countries, it looks like the median age for a mother's
first child has gone up about 5 years in the past 50 years, which
obviously reduces the likelihood of a great-grandparent even with
increasing longevity offsets, but it's still going to happen because
there is a natural cap to this figure.
jonhohle wrote 2 days ago:
Longevity plays a big role. My grandmother is 96 and grandfather
94, so even with a first child at 29 theyâve still had over a
decade with their great grands. I had 6 great grandparents still
alive when I was growing up. My parents were young, so will
probably be in their 70s for great grand kids and if they make it
near 100, could see great-greats (wild!).
CalRobert wrote 2 days ago:
Absolutely, but for some reason pointing this out is considered
massively classist in some quarters.
I don't really think it's classist to say that if people who don't
value science, think climate change is fake, fear outsiders, etc.
have 6 kids, and people who hold different have 1 or none, it will
have a large impact on public policy in a generation.
keybored wrote 2 days ago:
> I don't really think it's classist to say that if people who
don't value science, think climate change is fake, fear outsiders,
etc. have 6 kids, and people who hold different have 1 or none, it
will have a large impact on public policy in a generation.
âClassistâ is a faux-woke term for the belief that certain
socioeconomic groups are better than others. If you believe that
certain socioeconomic groups are inferior compared to [probably
upper-middle class people] then that is by definition classist.
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote 2 days ago:
If you don't have children who will live in the future world, why
would you deserve an opinion on how that future world should
operate?
anonym29 wrote 2 days ago:
What about the wealthy assholes that think climate change is fake,
pay thousands of dollars to have the catalytic converter removed
from their own vehicle to deliberately increase it's exhaust
emissions, eat hundreds of pounds of top-grade beef per year, are
flying around seemingly constantly on their private jet, but have
zero children?
Are those otherwise-horrible people comparatively cleansed of their
sins solely from their decision to not have kids?
Is it not classist to hold more contempt for the poor rednecks in
some flyover state with the traits you describe than the
conservative millionaires and billionaires hiding among us?
maxerickson wrote 2 days ago:
Isn't it wildly classist to so patly assume that attitudes are that
transmissible?
My great grandfather had like 10 siblings and worked on a farm.
What's that tell you about me?
pixl97 wrote 1 day ago:
Of course your great grandfather worked on a farm, a majority of
people before mechanization worked on or around farm related
tasks. Now, when it came to the 10 generations before your
grandfather, it's pretty damned likely they worked on a farm.
The industrial revolution shook things up.
maxerickson wrote 1 day ago:
Well it's good that the world has stopped changing and we can
rest assured on our assumptions about how children will
obviously follow their parents in most things.
pixl97 wrote 1 day ago:
>Well it's good that the world has stopped changing
I'm not sure you're paying much attention to politics, but
there are massive movements that want exactly that, if not to
drag us back to the past kicking and screaming.
I think the premise of we are like our parents is actually
incorrect.... Our parents are like our culture would be the
more correct assessment. In conservative more hierarchy based
cultures you're much more likely to be like your parents,
because if you are not you'll be shunned or worse.
Western culture in general has more of a "make your own path"
ideology that increases the chances you'll be different from
your parents.
CalRobert wrote 1 day ago:
Well, it's about averages really. If scientists were having eight
kid families and creationists having one kid families the same
logic would apply. Most people have value systems reasonably
close to their parents'.
vel0city wrote 2 days ago:
You may be pretty radically different from your grandparents,
outliers always exist, nobody's futures are truly written in
stone. But what percentage of your distant cousins are more like
your great grandparents?
TheCoelacanth wrote 2 days ago:
Less than 10%. The outliers are the ones who have stayed
similar to our great-grandparents, not the ones who are
different.
psychoslave wrote 2 days ago:
You donât need to wait the answer to take into account that
they most likely arenât farmer for most of them. Though of
course it doesnât mean they all topped the social pyramid as
it is by definition structurally unclimbable for most with its
power distribution.
vel0city wrote 2 days ago:
"More like" not "exactly like". I'm not expecting them to all
be farmers. But say, having similar-ish religious views,
similar-ish social views, etc.
psychoslave wrote 2 days ago:
And how should we measure that?
vel0city wrote 1 day ago:
There are literally hundreds of ways to slice population
statistics other than just primary occupation.
Practically any of those, maybe!
Do you find your primary occupation entirely defines
every aspect of yourself?
psychoslave wrote 1 day ago:
"yourself" is mostly nonsense illusion throw at current
present attention. ;)
The thing with statistics, is that you have to gather
data which have some consistency before you apply any
statistics tool and try to draw some conclusions.
We can agree that any individual is more than the
indefinitely various number of categories under which
we can label this individual, but at the end of the day
there only a limited amount of data we actually really
have on any person that ever existed, and even less
consistent set of data other many people under any
category we can think of.
cool_dude85 wrote 2 days ago:
Pointing out differences in age of first child for different groups
(race, class, etc.) is not necessarily classist. It's the part that
so often comes next, "therefore, we should..." that causes offense.
Anyway, what's wrong with having 6 kids? People used to do it all
the time and society was fine. Why shouldn't we set up our society
in a way that allows this as a reasonable possibility?
nemo44x wrote 1 day ago:
There's nothing wrong with having 6 kids but I think more people
used to because effective birth control didn't exist. People had
lots of sex back then too and wife's were getting knocked up
frequently and at a younger age when vastly more fertile. My
mother had ~40 cousins. I have 12. My kids have 4. It's no shock
that the birth control pill was invented between the time my
parent were born and started a family. Throw in the 64,000,000
abortions in the USA (and the ~70 millions per year globally!)
since it was legalized and this is why we don't have big families
anymore.
titzer wrote 2 days ago:
Because of ecological overshoot ( [1] ), which is a real problem
( [2] .). Gradual population decline through declining birth
rates is the least jarring and least fascist way of getting human
population down to sustainable levels.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot
URI [2]: https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/earth-overshoo...
CalRobert wrote 1 day ago:
I generally agree, but a key issue here is fairness. Telling
someone in India they can't have three kids because Johnny
techbro wants to feel ok about flying 100,000 miles a year
isn't great.
anonym29 wrote 2 days ago:
A vast supermajority of the entire inhabited human planet is so
far below replacement-level fertility that human extinction is
now closer than the ice caps being completely 100% melted.
This has been the case for several years and is a trend that
still accelerating. Fun fact: human fertility per person is
shrinking faster than GHG emissions per person are growing.
Even with a handful of countries still breeding like rabbits
with 6.0+ TFR, the world population is set to peak before 2100
before entering a prolonged decline.
Ecological overshoot is a bunk idea. From wikipedia: "Global
ecological overshoot occurs when the demands made by humanity
exceed what the biosphere of Earth can provide through its
capacity for renewal."
Earth's capacity for natural resource renewal is routinely
increased by human activity.
For instance, when humans switched from hunting and gathering
to agriculture, earth's capacity for natural resource renewal
rose rapidly as many new reccuringly-planted crops sprung up in
places they never had before.
Another example, the invention of fertilizer. Food scarcity
used to be a real problem for large swaths of the planet. It
isn't a problem for most of the planet now, in spite of the
fact that demand has grown, and demand growth accelerated by
orders of magnitude relative to e.g. 1000 AD. In fact, human
activity has made the renewal capacity for earth so much
greater that we now have an entirely different problem: for the
first time in human history, there are more people consuming
too many calories than there are people consuming too few
calories. Clearly, food isn't the problem.
The sun provides enough energy to desalinate every ocean on the
planet hundreds of times over even with our current rudimentary
PV technology with efficiency rates in the ballpark of just
~20%. Water isn't the problem.
While fusion may still eternally be 20+ years away, we've had
fission for decades now. You can power the global electricity
needs of twice the population of today's planet with reactors
taking up less space than Rhode Island. The waste can be
permanently and safely disposed of continuously by launching it
into the sun for something like 0.000001% of the annual global
GDP.
Of course, the sun is also blasting us with the product of
nuclear fusion constantly, so we could just massively scale
solar to humanity-sized installations. Imagine using a bullet
train to get from one side of the humanity-scale PV
installation because driving takes too long. So ultimately,
electricity isn't the problem.
In order for humanity to be able to run, we need to not kill it
right after it started crawling.
I must be missing something here because it seems like we have
pretty straightforward roadmaps to meeting the water,
electricity, and food needs of a population 2x the current
global population - just what demands are being made by
humanity that our solar system is incapable of meeting, when
combined with human ingenuity giving us the stream of
groundbreaking technological improvements that pretty much
everyone on earth is not only accustomed to, but continuing to
expect more of?
RGamma wrote 1 day ago:
> 2100
Too bad hundreds of thousands of species are going to have
gone extinct by then. Hope we don't kill the wrong ones.
Just a sidenote, I know.
anonym29 wrote 1 day ago:
question for you: how many species have already gone
extinct without us really noticing because the impact on
humanity was too small to measure? 100,000? 1,000,000?
10,000,000?
RGamma wrote 22 hours 49 min ago:
It is unknowable by definition, how many undocumented
species have gone extinct.
All I know is they're never coming back. If that doesn't
hurt you as a fellow living organism in this, as far as
we can measure, dead universe, there's nothing left to
say.
Enjoy your meal while it's still plentiful. Just recently
they found a thousand starved birds (1) near the North
Sea, who couldn't find food because their hunting grounds
are overfished.
(1) these guys: [1] and
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_murre
URI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razorbill
mrguyorama wrote 1 day ago:
>I must be missing something here because it seems like we
have pretty straightforward roadmaps to meeting the water,
electricity, and food needs of a population 2x the current
global population
The problem is collective action. It's ALWAYS collective
action. As long as people keep lapping up petrochemical lobby
propaganda, it doesn't matter that we could pretty easily
solve our climate crisis, nobody is going to DO it.
titzer wrote 2 days ago:
I posted links because I've had this conversation many times
over. The short version is: yeah, I used to be a
techno-utopian too, 20 years ago. But none of those magic
technologies are realistic, we aren't on the path to them
being widely deployed, the population and emissions and
resource consumption are all worse, as summarized in the
conclusions of the experts who put together the Earth
Overshoot Day report. If you want to argue about it, take it
up with them.
> the invention of fertilizer
Nitrogen-based fertilizers are made with hydrogen from
natural gas. The agriculture industry, at its base, is like
the rest of modern economy: based on drawing down a vast
reservoir of non-renewal fossil fuels, with the unfortunate
massive externality of altering the composition of our
atmosphere and the global climate in a bad way.
While technology will play a role in how humans adapt to the
changes we've brought on ourselves, it's important to take
realistic stock of where we are and where our trajectory is.
Human population peaking will happen--the question is whether
it's gradual or whether it's sudden. You don't want the
global equivalent of this:
URI [1]: https://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/nats104/00lect21r...
analyte123 wrote 1 day ago:
It's estimated that green ammonia costs between $800 and
$1500 per ton today to produce [1]. While this is higher
than conventional ammonia, it is less than how much ammonia
cost in the 2022 energy crisis [2] and likely to decrease
further in the future.
Massive amounts of nitrogen fertilizer are wasted because
it's so cheap [3]. There's headroom for bringing back crop
rotation of nitrogen-fixing crops. Nitrogen-fixing microbes
are an emerging technology [4].
I am not convinced that we're all going to die. [1] [2] [3]
[4] pivotbio.com
URI [1]: https://itif.org/publications/2023/04/17/climate-t...
URI [2]: https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2022/09/fertiliz...
URI [3]: https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2016/06/07/nutrien...
PaulDavisThe1st wrote 1 day ago:
Anybody who argues that "we're all going to die" is, from
where I sit, clearly delusional.
So that's not really a problem worth refuting.
On the other hand, hundreds of millions of people dying,
10s of millions of species going extinct, massive
migration causing chaos in our current understanding of
"nation states", sea level rise causing the abandonment
and destruction of many of the world's great cities ...
these are actual likely problems. The human race will
still exist in the face of them, but what will be lost?
anonym29 wrote 1 day ago:
Hundreds of millions of people die from war, and
avoiding war is a lot easier than what the
(well-meaning) climate change evangelists/zealots want
us to do. You don't need to destroy the entire modern
economy and western civilization to avoid war.
Also, why is it that the people constantly screaming
about sea levels rising are the same millionaires and
billionaires who own $$$$$ properties in places like
Miami or Martha's Vineyard, which are ostensibly going
to be underwater within their lifetime, if true?
Migration can be ultimately be summed up as someone
else's problem, if you have a political elite with
enough backbone to represent the interests of the
citizens of their own country above those of
non-citizens.
PaulDavisThe1st wrote 16 hours 19 min ago:
Your blithe dismissal of migration seems likely to me
to put severely to the test.
According to the US Republican Party, the USA is
already suffering from an invasion that is out of
control, when climate change has barely gotten
started.
What the US can and will do if and when it faces 100M
people trying to get north is an open question. The
US military will not be able to use ground force to
keep out that sort of mass migration. Will it drop
bombs on migrating populations? Is that what you call
"backbone" ?
Finally, it seems as if you think that having lots of
money somehow exempts you from the same cognitive
biases as everybody else, as if the behavior of the
rich is an indicator of "the smart move". It never
has been, and it never will be.
anonym29 wrote 2 hours 12 min ago:
>According to the US Republican Party
You're losing credibility quickly
>the USA is already suffering from an invasion that
is out of control, when climate change has barely
gotten started.
Okay,
A. What's happening at the southern border isn't
any more of an "invasion" than the J6 riots. If
only 1/500 people in your "invasion" even has a
firearm, let alone training with it, it ain't much
of an invasion.
B. What's happening at the southern border has
absolutely NOTHING to do with climate change, it's
strictly economic.
>What the US can and will do if and when it faces
100M people trying to get north is an open
question. The US military will not be able to use
ground force to keep out that sort of mass
migration. Will it drop bombs on migrating
populations? Is that what you call "backbone"?
What if there were some kind of relatively safe,
yet impassable barrier? The kind that doesn't
exercise force against anyone, ever. One that's so
safe that the only people who get injured by it are
those stupid enough to delibarately decide to try
to scale it, while being incompetent enough to be
incapable of doing so safely. Perhaps one that was
tall enough that it couldn't be scaled by 20 or 40
foot ladders? Besides, this is a ridiculous
question. Even under the president with the highest
amount of illegal immigration in US history, Joe
Biden (10,000,000 and counting!), we barely hit a
tenth of that figure across 3.5 years.
Sadly, there's just no way we're gonna be able to
afford such a barrier. That would have to cost
what, $10bn? $50bn? Except that's still less than
we've spent securing the border of a country on the
other side of the planet that almost no Americans
have any real, significant, substantial interests
in (besides Hunter Biden, of course, who made
millions of dollars per year as a Ukrainian energy
executive thanks to his deep expertise and
demonstrated thought leadership in the hydrocarbon
exploration and extraction business... /s)
>Finally, it seems as if you think that having lots
of money somehow exempts you from the same
cognitive biases as everybody else, as if the
behavior of the rich is an indicator of "the smart
move". It never has been, and it never will be.
No, what I'm asserting is that the people
screeching about the oceans rising and the sky
falling are the same ones buying up all the
properties being sold by the people who are afraid
of oceans rising. It's a racket.
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote 2 days ago:
> This has been the case for several years and is a trend
that still accelerating.
Of course it will continue to accelerate. There's a mechanism
that causes this. Some conspiracy theorists mistake this for
an active, purposeful goal, but it may be as simple as
children growing up in environments where childlessness has
become a norm, internalizing that same norm. Since there are
fewer children with each successive generation, the norm is
amplified for the next.
> In order for humanity to be able to run, we need to not
kill it right after it started crawling.
There are some who seem to want to kill humanity. They don't
come right out and say it, of course, that would sound weird
and awkward. If you're oblivious to that widespread
sentiment, they're perfectly ok with that. The curricula they
design for your children in school will slowly be modified so
that they aren't quite so fond of your Star Trek visions for
the future.
skulk wrote 1 day ago:
How does your second paragraph ("they design") not directly
fly in the face of your first ("mistake this for an active,
purposeful goal")?
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote 1 day ago:
Because the two aren't connected. They do want to design
school curricula... "to make it better". But they're
neither smart enough nor quite so self-aware that it's
designed to deliberately lower fertility rates. One might
say they're doing it subconsciously, but that seems more
like mumbo jumbo to me.
skulk wrote 1 day ago:
> But they're neither smart enough nor quite so
self-aware that it's designed to deliberately lower
fertility rates
So who's doing this deliberation? Again, you're
pointing to a conspiracy but also denying its existence
in the same breath.
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
No, you've confused my words. Happens in threads that
stretch past a few hours.
There is a desire that humanity go extinct. But this
isn't a goal for them, more like a fantasy. They're
not actively working towards it, and they don't like
to say it out loud.
They do design curricula (they're in positions where
that's a responsibility, quite often). But they
aren't conspiring. They're bumbling towards a
doomsday, instinctively. They merely want to change
the curricula to discourage the Star Trek future. In
some vague hand-wavy way, this "makes it better".
They're not sure why, and if you were to ask one
hundred of them, you'd get 100 answers. And then if
you asked months later, you'd get 100 different
answers. It's just not purposeful, and there is no
actual conspiracy.
If only there were one. Conspirators can be found
out, rounded up, the evil plot exposed. But this
microbe-like quorum sensing, where none need feel
guilty, but simple coordination can take place,
they're all innocent. There's no secret documents, no
secret plan, no sinister mastermind.
Even you, you're part of it, and you don't even know
it. People like you come by, mistake it for some
conspiracy theory, and stir up shit as a sort of
invisibility cloak. Unless of course, you were doing
it deliberately. like when you quote a statement
where I said "neither/nor [...] deliberately" with
the very direct and simple negation of that idea.
skulk wrote 17 hours 3 min ago:
Deliciously rich to claim I'm the one stirring shit
up while you accuse me of desiring the end of
humanity. Get some help man.
anonym29 wrote 1 day ago:
Hanlon's Razor always seemed like the perfect cover for
deliberately committing malicious acts without others
being able to identify the activity as deliberately
malicious. You do evil shit and then you just play
dumb.
How can anyone prove your intents if you fully conceal
them?
That said, I do find your argument here pretty
compelling. Hanlon's Razor exists for a reason, at the
end of the day.
BurningFrog wrote 2 days ago:
Some see people as burdens, some as assets.
I think this is a very important world view conflict.
CalRobert wrote 1 day ago:
The situation can be far more nuanced than this. It's not the
people, it's the cars, cows, planes, land, and fuel they
consume.
BurningFrog wrote 1 day ago:
For most of those things, people produce as much as they
consume. So more people doesn't make things worse.
Fossil fuels are a bit of an exception, but the transition
to non fossil fuels is in full swing, and will be complete
long before the oil runs out.
Land is a better argument, though multi story buildings is
a partial answer. Either way, we are very far from running
out of land.
CalRobert wrote 1 day ago:
Land for housing isn't the concern, land for livestock
the person eats is.
hersko wrote 1 day ago:
Earth can sustain a far larger human population. More
humans is absolutely a net-good.
cool_dude85 wrote 2 days ago:
"Number of kids you have" is a strange place to focus on
environmental impact, don't you think? A modest household with
6 kids, even one that lives to developed-world standards, has
much less of an environmental impact than a single billionaire
with a private jet. Like, orders of magnitudes less. If the
family has one car and doesn't eat a lot of beef they probably
have less of an impact than a family with 2 kids and 2 cars
that goes to McDonald's a few times a week.
Basically, the environmental impact of having more kids is sort
of drowned out by various consumer choices, which are in turn
drowned out by societal choices that no one family can impact
at all.
MauranKilom wrote 2 days ago:
FWIW, "number of flights you take" also drowns out your
eating habits in environmental impact. Compared to how much
they cost, flights have stupid CO2 equivalents.
However, I don't know why you are comparing a single
billionaire vs a single X kid household. Like, the number of
each (or even of private jets) are not even _remotely_ in the
same ballpark. Which is why "number of kids" is not at all a
strange place to focus on environmental impact, but
"billionaire lifestyle choices" is.
earthscienceman wrote 2 days ago:
You see, the thing is, it's deeply classist. It's also misplaced
outrage. The poors have been doing this for millenia and we still
have a society that progresses rapidly and much of the heavy
lifting that moves us forward is done by folks you and others here
are denigrating. If they believe the things you disparage it's
because the governments and systems that the "smart" and wealthy
have created have utterly failed at getting those people educated
and involved.
Using your education to feel better than others doesn't serve us to
advance as a society. I suggest that if you're as smart as you
think you are then you find a way to frame the issue such that
you're lifting up those people and not punching down.
coffeebeqn wrote 2 days ago:
The idiocracy thesis supposes that children will mirror their
parents behavior and beliefs. As a former teenager and a parent
that is very much not the likeliest outcome. Itâs also on the
wider society to lift all the kids to roughly a level playing
field
danbruc wrote 2 days ago:
The poors have been doing this for millenia [...]
Why the poor? And is poor the correct label or is this just
strongly correlated with the actual reason? In the past children
were desirable as sources of additional income and for support at
old age, is this still relevant? Otherwise it seems that you
would want fewer children if you are poor because they obviously
come with additional costs. Is it the cost of contraceptives or
abortions instead of a deliberate choice? If it is not poverty
directly but worse education because of poverty, how exactly
would that work? How much education do you need to realize that
additional children will cause additional costs? What other
mechanisms are there? In the end it will probably be a mix of
factors, but the phenomenon seems more complex than it looks like
at first glance.
parpfish wrote 2 days ago:
yeah, the classism in the "poor/uneducated people are having too
many kids!" always has this assumption that class and values are
perfectly presevred across generations and ignores the social
mobility and the fact that children are capable of making their
own path and not just following in their footsteps.
children raised in big families by uneducated, closed-minded
parents often rebel against their parents and espouse different
views. just look at any subreddit that has youths are complaining
about the backwards views of the parents/uncles/grand-parents --
i know it's not a representative sample, but children challenging
their elders views is not an anomaly.
on the flipside, there's the trope of only children raised being
raised by high-class, open-minded families turning into spoiled,
selfish brats.
vel0city wrote 2 days ago:
Of the big households I've personally experienced that most
would consider closed-minded parents might have a few of their
kids complaining about the backwards views, but not necessarily
the majority of the kids. I'd be interested in seeing some
actual statistics other than assuming the people ranting on
reddit about their families are the majority of that
population.
The kids who agree with their closed-minded parents probably
aren't going online to rant about it.
parpfish wrote 2 days ago:
yeah, that's why i said it wasn't a representative sample.
the subreddit threads don't prove that these views are a
majority, just that they are a non-zero proportion.
kelipso wrote 2 days ago:
But then you say "children raised in big families by
uneducated, closed-minded parents often rebel against their
parents and espouse different views". So non-zero
proportion becomes often...
mason55 wrote 2 days ago:
> If they believe the things you disparage it's because the
governments and systems that the "smart" and wealthy have created
have utterly failed at getting those people educated and
involved.
I think the issue is that there are two groups of smart & wealthy
people.
There's a mid-level of people who are happy to have more than
they need and don't have the Machiavellian drive to extract every
last ounce of money and power.
And there's an upper-level who are fine exploiting anyone and
everything.
There are of course altruistic people who are extremely wealthy.
But sort of by definition, the middle-level is never going to
have the drive & energy to fight that upper-level, who's willing
to do anything.
I guess my point is that there are two groups of smart & wealthy
people, and the ones complaining about the lower class being
exploited are not the ones who are doing the exploiting. It's a
classic setup where the upper class keeps the middle class happy
enough to not make it worth the middle class joining the lower
class in revolution. And they aim the ire of the lower class at
the middle class while they exploit the lower class.
pixl97 wrote 1 day ago:
I'm pretty sure it was Mondays episode of the Daily Show that
covered this pretty well in the intro. There are a lot of
different groups out there, but the rich and greedy group does
seem to lock up a huge amount of resources and propaganda.
thriftwy wrote 2 days ago:
Is it better to be one of those 0 to 1 kids, science valuing types
who fear insiders? They're not okay with a significant fraction of
their peers, which does look maladaptive to me.
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