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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

Woefully bad take from the NYT.

For most of human history -- and until just a few generations ago -- taking care of one's parents was every adult's duty. And adults had children, among other reasons, for their own support in their old age.

Old habits die hard. With infant mortality down in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "have a lot of children so that at least some survive to take care of you in the future" made for explosive population growth.

Fast forward to 1970-present, and TFR has collapsed in every industrial country. The cause can't be put down to any one thing in particular, but two big reasons are (1) the modern welfare state, and (2) the fact that adults are expected to live lives wholly independent of their parents. (And so often seem to begrudge their parents.)

Strong family ties are a good thing. If not in every case, children should take care of their parents as a general rule. The collapse of this notion, /w woe-is-me bellyaching and snide commentary from the NYT, is leading modern societies to a very dark place.

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> taking care of one's parents was every adult's duty.

Taking care of 1/6 of one's parents (families had 5 kids or more, and sharing of responsibility. This also worked the other way around, parents subsidize their kids' houses and passed on inheritance early.

Our age is so much different. People living so much longer (and aging so much longer), fewer kids than parents, housing prices making it impossible for kids to host their parents etc etc.

Strong family ties are not always a good thing when societies don't adapt to their needs but fall for traditionalism. Southern europe is an example of traditional values, population collapse and an even increasing burden of aging that is weighing down on social and economic prospects

The problem is, society is different now. It didn't used to be "putting your life on hold", the social mechanisms that kept the old system functional have been eroded.

For a lot of people, now, life is effectively rented. Adding care of a parent with debilitating medical issues is crippling.

Soooo tired of people with their eyeballs too close together scolding others about this based on an idealized postcard-picture idea of what a typical family is. “Strong family ties are a good thing” — you know what? In a good family, they’re good; in a bad family, they’re evil. So much of what people call the disintegration of family ties in the past century is really the exposing of outright exploitation, abuse and subjugation inflicted on children by parents with traditional family structures and dependencies as their main lever. It’s decades past time for people to stop talking about blood family ties as if they’re a sacred, unmitigated good. The lived experience of people all around you ought to be a clue.

And that is why I decided not to have children myself. I never want another person to go through the atrocity that was done to me. Yes my parents were particularly horrific, but I even think the coercion of the compulsory education system that nearly everyone goes through, is wrong.

And I don't expect anyone to ever have to care for me, to me that's slavery, and instead I'll down a bottle of dog euthanasia solution when I'm ~80 and cannot survive on my own anymore.

You are making an awfully lot of moral judgements on how others live their lives in this comment.

It should also be allowed to complain about the toll it is to care for someone else, without being told you're a "woe-me-complainer". What if caring for your parent means you have to neglect your own kid? Or who takes care of the care-taker?

They did say in the general case. I think you’re running into edge cases personally, which I agree are valid but don’t refute their point.

Completely agree. A lot of this is learned mindset. The fact that lifestyles, expectations, responsibilities etc. change somewhat quickly from generation to generation is understandable and something to factor in. However, taking care of one's parents when they grow old should be a norm. A strong family unit with inter generational contact (grandparents and grandchildren) to pass on values, a place to come home to when you're fighting inner demons, a place where young children are brought up to become responsible adults - this is vital for the long term health of a society.

I'd be willing to bet that if family units became stronger and more well knit, it would go a long way to reduce the amount of mental health problems and resulting problems that are reportedly reaching epidemic levels.

Consider that some don't want their parent's values passed on to the grandchildren. While I want my kids to have quality time with their grandparents, I absolutely do not want my children to become indoctrinated with "believing without seeing", climate-change apathy, hate those born different, men don't do housework, women don't fix cars, pull the ladder up behind you, etc.

Living separately provides some much needed space and helps maintain some healthy boundaries.

And when my kids are adults I'd rather they visit me than have to care for me. Or even that I die before developing total dependence on others, especially if it means dementia.

Your kids are not stupid, you know. Just as you learn from your environments, they will learn what is right from wrong. Indoctrination is the wrong word because the grandparent would not be the ones spending a majority of the time with the children. The children’s friends, classmates and teachers are the ones who will “indoctrinate” your child. Instead you are teaching that it is ok removing your grandparents from their lives because of boogiemen .. and that they will emulate your footsteps one day.

That’s my outlook on it, and I don’t push family values on others. So take it with as many grains of salt as necessary

My parents had a huge influence on me, because kids are impressionable. My kids are homeschooled for now (don't recommend) so having their grandparents here 24/7 means the grandparents would have more time with my own kids than any other human.

IME, indoctrination happens in the home more than anywhere else. Having attended public school I think the outside perspectives and opinions are the only reason I (eventually) escaped the believe-without-seeing cult, yet it took more than 15 years of being out of that house.

The danger with this line of thinking is that it ignores the adaptability of humans, especially in younger years. None of us are fully rational actors, and all of us are influenced by what is around us. Sure, the degree will change based on a lot of factors and on the individuals positions - but even if you're staunchly against an idea, hearing it day in day out will over time affect your thinking, and not in a way you can consciously control.

Interestingly enough, this is even acknowledged in a lot of folksy wisdom (e.g. "you are what you eat", or the very common idea of parents that children shouldn't hang out "with bad crowds", although the definition of what this is differs between parents).

>>Consider that some don't want their parent's values passed on to the grandchildren.

Nobody is forcing you/them. Not everybody is born to a happy family. But why would you be against a general rule or norm for tighter family connections? Isn't this is something worth striving to achieve. I think there is positive correlation between children's success and multiple generations working together, just as children from stable marriages are better off as the ones from broken families.

Because “striving to achieve” it usually takes the form of compelling people to play along regardless of their circumstances.

You have to be more specific. Do you mean by law or by twitter mobs,...?

It a weird argument anyway. Almost anything good can be used for a bad purpose. We strive to write code that is performant, extendable and bug free, but sometimes we can't, because practical reasons trump the 'ideal'. If we were compelled to do so always, that would be disastrous for our livelihoods. By your logic we shouldn't even strive for it, because of the negative possibility.

If you want to strive to achieve something in your personal life that's fine but that's rarely what these discussions are about.

It's a bit hard or actually impossible to have a society that has nothing to strive for.

OK so again, how are we making others who don't instrinsically share this value strive for it? Compulsion? Indoctrination? Ostracism? You're talking around the issue.

Have you ever read a book, watched a movie, a TV show, read an opinion article? Why should you compel, indoctrinate or ostracize somebody when all is needed are positive messages about positive things in our society. That is what culture is for and about.

> the fact that adults are expected to live lives wholly independent of their parents. (And so often seem to begrudge their parents.)

Divorce rates used to be lower. Was that because people were genuinely happier with each other, or was the divorce just not a viable option for many people? In the same way - yes, people used to live around their multigenerational families more, but was it really their choice?

One hint here is that people who still choose to live in multigenerational situations usually can’t afford the alternative.

Dad just slapped mom around and she couldn’t get her own bank account. Quite bucolic.

It's not simple bellyaching; it's systems.

We've known for half a century the inversion in population density was coming. The cultural norms of the past don't support it.

What cultural norms do support the inverted population density though? I’m not aware of one that does. Welfare states high on individual independence rely on the young and able to work and contribute tax to support the old. In the same way that traditional cultures rely on the younger generation to support their parents.

It's easier to take care of a parent when they had 5-6 children, not when you're the single one.

And to add to that, I am a single child. Knowledge that I'll be never able to leave my country or even my city because I'll have to take care of my parents isn't really uplifting.

When I was growing up I dreamed of living abroad, after I finished college I worked in a few foreign countries and then I came back home to pursue some career opportunities.

I saw most of my siblings leave and settle in different countries far from home, all of them had the stereotypical expat experience, they're considered foreigners in their new country and they don't feel like they belong, and when they visit home they don't feel like they belong here either. They don't have a strong social support system and our parents also suffer because their children left, they can never see them and they can't get any help when any problem arises.

Meanwhile looking at one of my sisters who stayed, she bought her house much faster than any of us, she has a long term partner, children, she lives close to our parents and her in-laws meaning she can get help from great array of people for childcare as well as any issues she encounters. She also has a rich social life that comes with all this.

I used to feel the same way you do about having to stay close to my parents, and I really wanted to go back out there but I've come to think living abroad might be a mirage, the call of exoticism rather than something that will improve your life in any way.

Your mileage may vary.

It's true that you lead a different life as a migrant. There are cons for sure and childcare is a big one. The problem with your anecdote is that you can't know your life otherwise - you may not have been happy or formed those social connections or been able to buy a place even if you'd stayed, just because your sister did those things. For all you know people would just talk about her weird brother who never goes out.

I grew up in one of the least affordable places in the UK and if I had stayed near my parents then I'm not sure we'd have had kids at all, and I know the kind of housing we'd have and owning that sooner doesn't appeal.

Not sure why you're being downvoted - you're 100% correct. I believe there is good news ahead, though, at least for the United States (and the broader Americas and Europe) because of remote work being good for family.

https://eig.org/remote-work-family-formation/

I'm hopeful we can return to stronger family values.

He’s being downvoted (as are you) because he attributed complex systemic problems to moral failures, which is a lousy discursive tactic that makes the speaker feel superior but does nothing to actually fix the problem. In this case, “just do what people did in the past” is completely useless as actionable advice, because

- people are living much longer. There’s a considerable difference between caring for someone for 3 years versus 20

- people have fewer siblings and so the burden cannot be split up. Caring for an entire person by yourself is a colossal task, such that at market rates it can cost tens of thousands per year.

- economic precariousness means the consequences of dropping out of the workforce are more dire

None of this is addressed by snooty commandments to find God or family values. Remote work might indeed help, but even that just further proves my point— that came about because the pandemic forced it on us and any effects on the family are a happy externality, not because people made individual decisions about family values.

Good parents raise food kids.

Good families find a good way of handling this topic.

Everyone else might just not have good parents.

And therefore he is not 100% correct.

It's not the duty of a child to take care of parents. They didn't ask me if I wanted to be born....

Quite correct. To make this a family responsibility is to end up with an unjustly heterogeneous result because families are heterogeneous. For anything approaching fairness, it needs to be a societal responsibility.

Social security was created in the era of the ostensibly closely-knit, God-fearing America that people imagine was the ideal of the past. It was created because the people then observed that even with the closing at families and all of that reliance on God, the elderly died poor and ugly deaths.

>>It's not the duty of a child to take care of parents. They didn't ask me if I wanted to be born....

You are not born without responsibilities into the world. Even if you are an adult without parents or dependents, you are not free of responsibilities as long as you live in a society.

Which allows me to make a choice.

I'm even allowed to kill myself instead of caring for old people (for underlining my point).

We force you to take care vs. you care out of your inner duty

I agree with you. Of course nobody should force you. But in general it is positive thing to do, to take care of the elderly if you can. This is something to strive for as a society, isn't it?

But the phrase "They didn't ask me if I wanted to be born" is meaningless and adds nothing of a value.

To strive for?

Not in our society. We optimized it by having people who are better in taking care than I can.

With medical knowledge and more experience.

I personally also don't want to live anymore if I become so unself sufficient.

I'm happy we have other people who can do to this for us too. But I don't think a stranger will take better care of a another stranger than a loving caring family member. E.g. With all my imperfections I'm still sure I'm a better caregiver for my children than an orphanage where they would be just a number, even though they are better educated about children health and development.

That was because a single man could earn a living wage to support the family and the wife could support the household.

What was it? People didn’t age or didn’t need care in old life because of that?

If I had to guess the point was it didn't need to fall to one person to do everything, as most of the article is devoted to highlighting. I don't think traditional roles played as much a causal part in that as the general population pyramid though.

They definitely did, and such care fell upon the housewife or mother (and in the absence of the housewife... Yeah, people died poor and ugly deaths in old age).

Since we won't and shouldn't solve this problem by going back to the traditional patriarchal family structure, we must look to other alternatives. And one such alternative would be finding a way to recouple labor to employee earnings such that a married couple with one working spouse can support a family of four.

It’s the wife, at home, not working and able to take on this task without the household falling apart.

Cool. Does the wife get a say?

More than the woman featured in the article.

We can debate gender equality and whatever but the loss of real wages is a problem even if we reverse it

I somewhat agree with where you're coming from, but I don't see why you're calling the article a "bad take". The article doesn't really judge causes or solutions of the situation, but rather just describes it. And if you think taking care of aging parent(s) is possible without an emotional toll, then I seriously question whether you've actually ever done it!

My perspective of what compounds the problem:

1. Tiny 1950's ranches intended for a single nuclear family, that don't provide breathing room for multiple generations.

2. The trend of moving far far away for work / lifestyle, which then collapses to provide in-person care.

3. The trend of needing to move into cities for economically lucrative work, which creates an ongoing tension even when you are in the same region.

4. Abjectly terrible healthcare system, that makes it so even professional nurses/therapists have to be managed. (This is a bigger issue that's driving the return to DIY care)

5. As always, the economic treadmill that strips wealth away from the edges, making it so the sheer majority don't have extra cash to hire help. Providing around the clock care is at least two people's worth of full time jobs (it's really at least three, to be sustainable).

6. The expectation of women in the workforce, rather than as homemakers. What supported most historic customs was having one person able to focus on all that informal work required for living, as the other went out and battled to navigate economic society. Now our economic puppetmasters have come to expect two full time workers while the informal tasks get neglected.

By all means, please live out your moral imperative and take care of your elders as they age. But I'm guessing that by doing so, you'll end up empathizing with the article rather than writing it off.

(My point #6 is most certainly NOT meant as a "things would be easier if women were still stuck in the home", rather I'm pointing out a major difference between how things used to be, and how they are today. Progress would be reforming the labor/financial markets so that "full time work" for a two person household is defined as either person working ~40 hours, or both people each working ~20 hours. Women entering the workforce was a good thing, but it was also an opportunity for the economic slavedrivers to reverse decades of labor progress)

It isn't a bad take to the extent that society doesn't accept this.

I had to care for two relatives from my mid-20s, almost every employer and prospective employer has had a massive issue with this. I worked somewhere where employees would knock off throughout the day for their kids, the boss would disappear every Friday afternoon, I took no holidays, no days off, my mother had a stroke and I had to take her to the hospital, I did this in my lunch hour, came back an hour late...lost my job.

I agree with you completely, it is going to be a bigger and bigger issue because parents will start dying more slowly than my relatives but in the West there is a massive stigma against caring for your parents (this is most bizarre because the govt expects you to look after your parents...my relatives didn't get care until a few years ago because I was expected to do things, my employer had a very different interpretation of my responsibilities).

It is unfortunate being forced to pick, I am in my early-30s now, career has gone. I don't regret one second of it, strong family ties are a tremendous comfort even if you are only giving care. But it is frustrating because you get a pass for kids, and not for parents. I understand I can't have a high-flying career but it is just a wasted opportunity. The reality is that the article reflects a viewpoint that already exists (there are structural reasons too, it isn't possible to have high labour mobility and people with multiple caring responsibilities...it doesn't work).

I’m interested in understanding what sentences in the linked article you consider “snide,” as I did not get that at all from the article.

While everything you said is true, I believe the message of the article is not “boy it sucks to have to care for your parents,” it’s “We have a generation of people who are required to do it at a younger age and for longer, preventing them from building wealth at a key age when our current economic system expects that.”

> Children should take care of their parents as a general rule.

Your long drawn out comment doesn’t actually support your core argument, which can be shortened to one sentence, copied above.

In fact, it’s ironic that you’re calling out the author for being self-centered when you, yourself, are presupposing that your subjective family values are best without any rhyme or reason.

What's new is people typically living beyond 70, and the myriad of failure modes that exposes. Many illnesses such as dementia will completely consume the lives of multiple caregivers.

This is a new development.

People have been living over 70 for a long time now. Statistics was skewed because of higher child mortality in deaths at birth.

Maybe, but the percent of US population that is 80+ has grown quite a bit. For example, between 1950 and 2020 the percent of those 80-84 more than doubled. In the same period those 85+ went up five-fold (source: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2015/10/09/t2_age_...). IMO this is the result of modern medicine extending lives well beyond where they would have gone before. Based on my parent’s experience, once you’re kept alive by machines and medicine, your quality of life sucks.

The percentage in the population went up, because there are fewer young people (their percentage went proportionately down with a huge drop in the under 18 category). I'm not claiming the modern medicine doesn't help, but it's not evident from your linked table.

Throughout human history you had societies that would kill or shame the elderly because they became burdens on society. Simplifying it to just be that 'taking care of one parents was every adults duty' isn't really correct at all. Many it was the duty of the son. In Roman times if you were not of use to society you were considered a burden. Poorer families would leave the elderly to die, richer ones would marry younger women to serve as caregivers.

This reminded me of a scene in a forgotten movie (North), where Elijah Wood goes on a quest to find the perfect parents. He's initially taken with Eskimo culture and his potential new parents who expect nothing of their children. However, he's fairly quickly disillusioned when they take grandpa out to an iceberg to abandon him to the sea as he has outlived his usefulness. Grandpa does make some half-hearted assurances that this is what he wants, and so it's all ok.

Elderly kept contributing in someway or an other. Maybe not the hardest physical labour, but what they could still do. And those who weren't functional I would guess tended to die pretty quickly if not extremely wealthy to pay servants to keep them around.

I wonder if the things if not for current pensioners, but those coming will change and we are not ready as society to keep them barely living despite them not being able to carry out most basic tasks like going to bathroom.

TFR stands for Total Fertility Rate.

Oh good news everyone. It’s trad. That means it isn’t a hardship after all.

Completely agree. Social norms are shifting and people are becoming more individualistic.

Sure, if your parents weren’t good to you, and you have other constraints then don’t look after your parents.

But the general case should be based on looking after them as you say.

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