The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers | Hacker News Reader

The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

phys.org

247 pointsstareatgoats305 comments

> the researchers say that children may be "evolutionarily primed" to expect exceptionally high levels of physical contact and care,

What strikes me here is the phrase, "exceptionally high levels." I imagine children need a "normal" level of care; it's only "exceptionally high" in comparison to the deprived state of family systems in these degenerate times.

I often reflect on the understanding in Attachment Theory, wherein a child a needs to have a caregiver who is sufficiently attuned to the child's needs. And it turns out, "sufficiently attuned" means that the caregiver responds in an attuned manner to 30%-50% the child's entreaties. As one of my meditation teachers says, 'That's not a high bar. What grade did you get the last time you scored 50% on a test?'

Given that we actually give kids massive amount of attention compared to historical standards ... calling current situation "degenerate" is absurd. Also considering that by many statistics, children do better then they used to just a few decades ago.

For some definitions of attention, yes, but not necessarily historically massive amounts of physical contact and (non -neurotic) care.

Think of the images from the world over of indigenous women going about their days largely with their young children strapped to them.

> Think of the images from the world over of indigenous women going about their days largely with their young children strapped to them.

Until they can walk at which point they are increasingly gone to do the vital growing that happens away from adults.

This is not advocacy for replicating indigenous societies parental habits, but perhaps a key is hyper-focused for 2-3 years and then a steeper dropoff on the hand-holding (literally and figuratively).

They have another child in 18 months. This one is then unstrapped and you don't see it on the pic. Nor you see even older siblings. And those women work with infant strapped cause they have to, they can't stop working once the kid is toddler.

And by the time they are 5 they play alone unsupervised. Which was even the same in villages in Europe even after WWII. My grandma was herding goats with pack of kids at 5 and remember it as normal. School started at 6.

> Think of the images from the world over of indigenous women going about their days largely with their young children strapped to them.

Note how the extent you went is imagery rather than hard numbers, you don't have a leg to stand on.

> Given that we actually give kids massive amount of attention compared to historical standards ... calling current situation "degenerate" is absurd.

This seems to assume that ~all attention is positive and that attention is still beneficial after the Xth hour. After a time the adult role becomes less parent and more like prison guard duty.

It also seems to assume adult-time is enough for kids and that peer-only time isn't an irreplaceable environment for kids to develop their core social skills.

We also spank them significantly less and yell at them significantly less (speaking of negative attention).

Significantly better than some historical standards and significantly worse than others. We aren't doing the best that has ever been done across all cultures and history in this regard, not by far.

> Given that we actually give kids massive amount of attention compared to historical standards ...

This is literally based on a comparison with hunger-gatherer societies.

To the extent that there is any accuracy to your "compared to historical standards", its probably based on a low point reached (in the "developed" world) somewhere between the first industrial revolution and mid-20th century,

Primitive hunter-gatherer societies might have raised their children in a communal way, with relatives and friends living nearby, always interrupting and nagging us.

We, the supreme civilisation, at the summit of evolution, are locked in in individual cages, disconnected from each other, so we can spend more quality time attached to our screens.

We are “civilised to death”

The accuracy of most statements in this thread are the same.

Maybe in comparison to other species?

I think it's not really about responding to 100% of a child demands, it's maybe even detrimental, and probably better to start teaching him patience, and let him learn what to do in boredom. But the other part is having long and meaningful activities/experiences with a child

We decry "demands" when we should acknowledge "dependencies;" kids won't properly compile without their needs met.

Fantastic analogy :-)

The question here is one of alignment. I child may think "I need to eat right now" but that doesn't necessarily mean the "right now" part is correct.

Open world problems are difficult to define, even the word 'properly' you use has a vast amount of interpretability as to what you believe the 'proper' outcome should be.

There is absolutely no parent who's problem is a child who thinks "I need to eat right now".

Of course there are. That's one of the three states of infants (asleep, hungry, soiled). It's one of the major causes of upset and bad behavior in toddlers. It's obviously the case for children who don't get enough to eat due to deprivation.

That doesn't mean my toddler wouldn't prefer ice cream over whatever is for dinner, though.

You're forgetting the fourth state: too hot/too cold.

I only mention it because, as any parent knows, infants are effectively small finite state machines, and you can deal with their crying even half-awake, if you go through a mental checklist. But you'd better not miss a state to check :).

Or the fifth state, colic. It can last for months and the child will cry every waking hour. The binary flag is stuck 'on' which in my experience set every family member into a meltdown so you'll get no relief, because a baby that cries inconsolably for hours (months!) on end and can't be fixed is kryptonite to many people.

So yeah, good fucking luck if that happens. You'll have to feed on a schedule, change regularly and check even more regularly, guess appropriate temperature etc because the baby will be screaming bloody murder if awake no matter what.

You're mistaking "hungry" for "wants to eat".

My son during teething was hungry a lot. He was absolutely unwilling to eat for hours till we found whichever thing he was going to tolerate each time (since he's stopped teething for now he's gotten a lot better about it, but you still have to offer food since he doesn't always recognise he is getting hungry).

I don't know what your point is. That children can't articulate their needs? That we should consult adult peers and experts rather than taking children at their word? Of course we should. Children do not teach courses on child development.

It goes without saying that children exaggerate, eg crying over spilt milk. To repudiate children's complaints seems cruelly unnecessary.

Compilation error: I don't feel like it

We have brainwashed our western minds to make women leave their kids in daycare sometimes weeks after being born. Then we are brainwashed to let kids sleep in a separate room so that mommy can get a good night's rest and be productive at work. We need a minimum of 3 years of maternity leave in our country to being with. It is insane as one of the best countries in the world we don't let people have kids naturally.

The movie "The Pod Generation" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15768848/) has a theme that touches what you state. No need to get pregnant, give birth, stay home with your kid. While in the pod the fetus can be trained, educated, etc...

> We need a minimum of 3 years of maternity leave in our country to being with

And a year of mandatory evaluation and treatment at a psycologist for various baggage, complexes and plain stupidity that will manifest when raising a child.

I don't know about mandatory, but well funded and expected in that period would go a long way. Child rearing, especially, will surface things you might have not known were there or were so painful. You might also need a variety of help, from talking therapy to cptsd/desensitising. To parents feeling overwhelmed and daily triggered suddenly, in the presence or thinking of your children, you're really not alone, and I strongly advise getting all the help you can, as soon as possible.

Families with "women in the workplace" are not brainwashed, they are wielding hard earned rights and freedoms against violently indifferent economic structures.

Under capitalism, we are not free unless we draw a wage, and women have learned there are no wages for housework.

Yes those free loading kids need to be paying their mothers for all the labor they provide.

Having kids is a benefit to society. Even though nobody has kids "for the greater good", it still is in everyone's interest that there is a strong upcoming generation. I think it's not unreasonable for a society to pay parents who decide to stay at home during the first years for their efforts, if only to make having kids sufficiently attractive.

Lots of people just can't afford to stay home and capitalism makes it hard enough to rejoin the workforce after 3 years, let alone advance your career. A societal advance in this regard would also be needed imo

This is where theory and practice collide. In theory, society should pay parents. In practice, paying parents results in incentivizing the people you do not want being parents into having more kids.

What society really wants is to incentivize good parents to have kids, but that is nowhere near possible to measure and implement.

Do you have any evidence supporting this?

Sorry, I missed the “first years” portion of your comment. I had originally read it as simply paying people to be stay at home parents for the whole time they have children at home.

Paid parental leave up until at least breastfeeding is done is a no brainer.

Just spitballing, here, but maybe some sort of voucher system to distribute leave among all your "alloparents?" But that's hard to systematize. Probably the simplest thing is simply to increase wages and PTO across the board, and let workers/consumers act on their own priorities.

no need for vouchers. we just need the right and the support for more people to work part time. that right for example is already law in germany. the problem is that not many people make use of it, partly because it would reduce their income but partly also because there is no broad social support for people to reduce their worktime in order to do other useful things.

actually it is possible: education. basically, the reason one might not want some people to have kids is their lack of education. provide them with better education and that "problem" goes away.

Edit: before you read this, I want you to understand that I am not giving a flippant answer. I spent a half hour of my own working day to draft this response.

Childhood education is a mechanism that reproduces the existing social order, by transmitting the dominant culture—shared outlook, beliefs, knowledge, and skills which influence one’s educational and occupational opportunities—and legitimizing the inequalities that result from it.

Parents are training their children on employers behalf—to the child's detriment—when they, for example, encourage their children to adopt the dominant language, accent, dress code, manners, hobbies, and tastes. (This is especially true of extrametropolitan families.) Likewise, when parents limit their children’s exposure to their own culture and language (even only as an opportunity cost), they are complicit in reproducing the dominant cultural superstructure which principally benefits the dominant economic institutions and only incidentally benefits the workers these children go into—if at all.

Parents who cook, clean, and care for their children are providing essential services that enable their children to grow up healthy, educated, and productive. These services have a monetary value. Parents are owed wages from the employers who hire their children in the future and profit from their skills and abilities. Since we can't predict the future to track individual employers down, we might implement a form of insurance which would wring compensation from the private sector en mass.

To the detriment of the child.

You'll hear no argument from me that the loss of alloparenting is devastating to our national trajectory, but I can't take seriously any suggestion that we return to the Cult of Domesticity; those are the conditions that brought these about! If you want Stepford Wives, you'll need to bioengineer them.

Truly a modern heresy. I'd add the culture of parenting "technique" micro-analysis as another toxic drain on the potential of childrearing. Way too much thought given to dubious "science" of parenting decisions that cause parents too focus too heavily on things that ultimately don't matter.

Related modern heresies: https://www.secretorum.life/p/20-modern-heresies?s=w

The line between Galileo and Bozo the Clown is as fine as ever.

completely agree. 3 years would be enough time for parents to string maternity leave across multiple children. Assuming a normal person works from 22 to 67, taking 6-9 years off to raise children is only 20% of that time at most.

Culturally we need to make it much easier for women to leave and re-enter the workforce and to also work part time.

A 1-year old may not compile without having its needs met, but a 4-year-old may not link if it doesn't acknowledge the needs of its peers.

You’ll note the person you responded to never suggested responding to 100% of a child’s “demands”

I try to teach my baby to be patient when he’s hangry, but he slaps, punches, kicks and bites.

He doesn’t even say “I’m hangry, you incompetent giant”. He demands to be held in arms, he punches, bites and slaps my face. He did this for the first time when he was around 3 months old.

Patience is learnt through many years, specially when the belly is full.

Hangry people can turn violent, like most restaurant workers know.

As “the whole-brained child” book states, children can not be reasonable when they are in a tantrum

> children can not be reasonable when they are in a tantrum

Are you supposed to grow out of that? I’m 51 and I still notice this about myself at times!

(Only half joking here. It is amazing how hard it can be to snap out of a “sulky mood” after some type of frustration or disappointment, even when you’re aware of it and that it’s doing more harm than good).

Sounds like parents too tired from work making up reasons why being exploited past the point where they can care for their kids is actually a good thing.

You can only do this once they grow older. Babies just need continuous attention. They are incapable of tending to their needs. And they too cute to be ignored :)

In the UK, 50% is a c and anything over 70% is an A.

"Nobody gets 100%"

I think the word "exceptionally" arises when comparing with other animals, the amount of effort a human child needs from its parents and family until an advanced age is unprecedented in other terrestrial companions.

Indeed, it always a source of surprise to me that human babies will cry regardless of the situation, whereas the offspring of other animals seem to have an instinct to remain quiet while the mother is not about, or there's a perceived danger.

Well if you come with an assumption we are like the other animals you are going to make an ass of someone.

Well not like ALL animals, since not all animals act the same way. I don't expect we are like fish, that (some?many?most?) are abandoned as eggs to make it on our own, or like sharks that have two wombs and the mama-shark keeps generating eggs to feed the two stronger babies (one in each womb).

I assume that those who "group" us based on similarities on the behavior and manner we raise our offspring must have use some logic to the process.

Unlike kittens and superior animals, ape babies are not meant to be abandoned at any point, under no circumstances. They are meant to be carried around by their mothers or substitute relatives, clinging to them, so their sudden whimsical needs can be catered to immediately, or else you run the risk of developing an insecure attachment relationship.

Google images for “monkey attached mother”.

Yeah maybe that’s why women live longer in order to help with the exhausting process of raising their grandchildren [1].

We love to take care of babies, regardless of (or maybe because of) how clingy and dependent they are.

From an Evolutionary point of view, This relationship between needy babies and abnegated caregivers might have given rise to a complementary schimogenesis according to Gregory Bateson, in which babies might have evolved to be more and more dependent, because having more and more invested caregivers produces fitter offspring.

Parenthood is a self-inflicted sabotage and I cannot understand how come there are so many parents bearing children worldwide.

1. The Gardener and the Carpenter: Alison Gopnik, Erin Bennett: 9781536617832

Yes, parenthood is intense, both both ways. It intensifies the highs and the lows. There's more strain and there's more joy.

And there's a lot less strain when moving out of nuclear family structures. It all becomes easier for the children and the parents.

Can you elaborate? Curious how the stress profile differs in alternative family structures.

It’s in TFA but pretty self-evident: in traditional non-nuclear families, extended kin (especially grandparents) help with childcare, reducing the burden.

i'm living with two other families in a house (separate apartments). it lifts the hyper dependency of children on their parents and creates more room to attend to needs for both adults and children. it also makes it possible to stack many things, like grocery shopping or cooking (one person cooking for 12 people does not require three times as much time as cooking for four people). plus, there's usually always other adults at the house that you can hang out with plus many other kids for your kids to play with, so less stress with playdates etc.

I disagree that there's more joy to parenthood. I think that's a lie parents tell themselves to justify their decision.

I'm happy for you if you're happy to have children. That doesn't mean people without children aren't as happy as you.

This stance strikes me as odd.

Every parent was once a non-parent, and therefore can compare their own experience before and after. I'm sure parents are a little (intentionally) delusional at times, nobody wants to seem like a 'bad' or 'uncaring' parent. But to assume that the extreme majority of parents are lying about enjoying an experience that they've been evolutionarily primed for seems like flat-earth level reality-denial.

My issue is not with the fact that some parents are happy with their decision.

My issue is the implication that the joy of parenthood is above every other joy.

For comparison, you don't see programmers claiming the joy of programming is superior to all other jobs. Mountaineers don't claim that you haven't enjoyed life unless you climb mountains.

Why? Because those things are obviously joyful, but not accessible to everyone. Not everyone can climb, not everyone can program, but everyone can find their own joy.

So why do parents feel okay saying that? If you can come up with any other reason then please let me know because I'm still searching.

The reason is quite straightforward. The survival of the human species depends on it being this way.

The same reason sex is pleasurable. We would not be here if it were not this way.

Put in different terms, there are many experiences which have an evolutionary origin. Disgust reactions to certain sights/smells are a near-universal experience, for example. Individuals that don't share these experiences (or who are attracted to them) are considered weird or degenerate precisely because they are so universal.

Yeah but no. Pleasure is brutal manipulation at play.

Sex is short-lived pleasure, dopamine. Family relationships are long-term happiness, serotonins.

Just as you think it’s annoying to have someone project the statement onto you (though I don’t think that’s what GP was doing), I think it’s annoying you’re telling me it’s a lie that I’m telling myself. I can say with confidence I’m happier with kids than without. I’ve had it both ways, and I can speak to my own experience with honesty far better than you can guess about strangers you don’t know.

Don’t take GP’s statement as a projection onto you. Take it as one’s projection onto their own self. That said, this (GP’s statement) has been the general consensus of other parents I’ve talked to. So I wouldn’t discard it so flippantly.

That doesn’t mean literally everyone would be happier with children, of course.

And I'm very happy for you.

However, what I'm arguing is not "having children makes me happy."

It's "having children is above every other kind of happiness."

Think about that for a second. What does that statement say to a person without children? To me, I hear that if you don't have children you're literally wasting your life. It's a denial of every other thing people find joy in.

Why would you say that? I can only think of two reasons:

- You're an asshole trying to feel superior to others

- You're unsure of your decision, so you have to put everyone else down

If you have any other reasons then let me know though!

Perhaps they are helpfully evangelizing a happiness that someone else may not have considered. Not everyone without children has taken a resolute stand on the matter. Some may be on the fence. Everything is anecdotal anyway so why be so offended?

Because of course it is impossible that they are genuinely describing their personal experience where raising children has brought them fulfillment and meaning beyond anything else they have ever done, right?

I think the main communication barrier between childless people and parents is that it's an experience far removed from anything else we do in our lives, so it is very difficult to grasp if you haven't been there.

Parents know that there will be times when raising your kids is the most meaningful thing you've ever done, and there are other times when it's a relentless slog that is grinding you down. It is both, and perhaps it is neither.

As a childless person you may read the above and think I'm stupid or deluded, but I bet most parents will nod in understanding, because they will have experienced something similar.

It is fine to be contend with having kids. It is pretentious to claim that everyone without kids hasn't achieved supreme humanhood. Both sides cant really know how the alternative would have felt like. If you have kids, you cant magically unhave kids and see how your life would have developed. And if you have no kids, you can't magically swipe through your alternative timeline either. So what is the point of claiming superiority over the other sides position?

> It is pretentious to claim that everyone without kids hasn't achieved supreme humanhood.

That would be pretentious to make such a claim. But I have not seen a claim like that be made in this conversation thread.

People have expressed having children has enriched their own lives. That doesn’t mean you can’t enrich your life without children, nor does it mean literally everyone with children feels enriched.

> Why would you say that?

3. I’m merely describing my experience and don’t really mean anything regarding you at all.

Can you really have an objective opinion until you experience both sides? I suspect it isn't the parents that are lying to themselves...

Once you experience the other side, outside of a psuedo-anonymous forum you're not really allowed to have the other opinion, and you'll quickly learn to shut up or 'lie' or become a hated pariah. It becomes a bit of an echo chamber.

>I suspect it isn't the parents that are lying to themselves...

I suspect some of them are genuinely happy they had kids, some others are lying to themselves, and some others lie to others because they don't want to become pariahs when it's found out that they wish they hadn't had kids.

You can read the opinions of the last group on some anonymous discussion forums; they're real people.

What the relative ratios of these 3 groups are, I have no idea, and I doubt there's any way of finding out.

You can't have an objective opinion after experiencing both sides either.

A child is a life long decision. You don't get to say "oh I was wrong" after a couple years.

> You don't get to say "oh I was wrong" after a couple years.

Parents leaving their partner and their child behind isn't unheard of. Even women sometimes do so. Sometimes, children end up at the grandparents, and the woman tries to start over. Your claim seems to come from an idealized world.

I don't think the commenter is saying you can't be happy without children, but it's a kind of experience that you either have or you don't, and it's hard to understand if you never had children. I'll add some context below in case you're interested in hearing about my own perspective.

I was pretty darn happy as someone who got to go read a book each weekend at a coffee shop and workout 3x per week. I eventually had a kid and I no longer have hardly any time for the stuff I used to love to do. Kids need constant assistance and have their own growing pains. Despite all that, it's given me a richness and depth to my life that I can't put into words. I get to experience raising someone with all the ups and downs. This has given me a kind of wisdom I never knew I didn't have. I could go on and on for days.

"A lie parents tell themselves to justify their decision"? Not at all (at least for 99% of is I'd wager). It's terrifying, but I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't trade the feeling I get from getting a hug from my kid or that first time they read a book for a combined $50B dollars, immortality, super inhumane intelligence, and movie star good looks.

Meh I mean it's true for some not others. I had a kid and never particularly found the richness and depth emotional feeling.

Of course if you express the opinion you find parenting to be basically another duty you must fulfill to the best of your ability despite finding little to no joy from the task, it will be taken poorly. So you internalize the lie, buy into it the best you can to pretend to yourself you don't have an opinion that makes everyone hate you, because apparently parenting is the one duty that is 'wrong' unless you find it satisfying.

Feels like a bunch of people got the 'dope' that makes parents feel emotional rewarded from the insane amount of labor it requires, others internalize the 'lie' so they have a way to respond to others in a socially appropriate way.

actually, i believe this experience is more common for fathers at least than people want to admit. especially in western society fathers are generally expected to be more involved, and have a hard time when they come from a family where this wasn't the case (so they don't have a good role model) nor have a partner that encourages them to be involved, or worse a partner that actually discourages them.

i have been struggling with this too, especially because i had quite different expectations going in.

but the thing is that what gives you joy very much depends on your own expectations, and you can change those. i believe it's the same thing as with a job. there are people arguing that you should love your job, and if you don't you should not be doing it, while others claim that most people don't have a choice but to take a job that they don't enjoy.

finding that joy may just take some searching.

I think it's ok if you don't find joy. Personally I had a very involved father and supportive partner. I understand my duty and am fulfilling it with full acceptance and gravity, I just keep this one piece of independence for my sanity-- the right to the validity of my emotion regarding how that duty makes me feel.

i do find joy, just not only in the way some people may expect it. (like i enjoy playing with the kids, but i don't enjoy not having much time to do so)

i think the primary problem is expectations of others. i may be lucky, that i do have a supportive family and partner that do not push any specific expectations on me, so i am free to find the enjoyment where i like. and a strong part of that for me is that i enjoy that i have been given this responsibility and am able to take care of my family to the best of my ability. in other words: i wanted this life and i am thankful to have gotten it, even if it turned out different than i thought it would be.

Your opinion is perfectly valid.

The main expectations I am driven by are to provide the child with adequate resources to thrive, to not neglect the child, and to give them a good footing to navigate this life. I'm not sure if these are expectations that can reasonably be relaxed, I'm just pretty much resigned I'm in for a long slog to provide these for the good of the child at great effort to myself whether it pleases me or not -- the circle of life I guess.

I see you, fellow dad. Thank you for having the courage to speak up and for fulfilling your duty as a parent, rain or shine. No judgement from me, only respect.

I feel in anything you do or have to do, you can find richness and depth. At least that’s somehow what I like to believe and trying to make my life experience be by practicing meditation.

The duty of being a parent however, just comes with so much expectations from society and therefore within yourself - It is super hard to find freedom within that duty, to then actually find your relationship to your child, the specific richness and depth it can be for the both of you.

So in that regard, saying „I don’t find that in there for me“ is just as good and right as any other point of experience.

And I'm very happy for you, but I'm not arguing whether you can be happy with children or not.

I'm arguing about whether having children is above every other kind of happiness.

I'm not sure if anyone suggested that directly. It does bring happiness sure, but maybe some mean a different kind of fulfillment you get through living for others. You'd likely get the same thing through adoption or working at shelters I'd imagine.

>but it's a kind of experience that you either have or you don't, and it's hard to understand if you never had children.

this kind of mention is only ever asymmetrical -- generally in the direction you mentioned -- but i'd like to mention that being a childless adult with a long term relationship (or not) is also a unique perspective that very young parents / couples will never experience.

I had plenty of friends in school that mothered/fathered children at the age of 14-17 -- they won't get to experience my life, either -- they were busy with trying to provide for a child.

Both experiences are equally valid and unique, but for some reason we only ever speak about the one side of the coin 'missing out', as if the parents can just sort of surmise what they missed out by having a child; I'm sure that's not the case, just am i'm sure I could never understand what having a child is like -- I just wish there was a bit more understanding from the other side of the aisle that any perspective unlike your own is unique in its' own right.

I should have further specified that I didn't have a child at 14 or 17, but at approximately 30. I essentially had about a decade to live the care free life with my wife who I'd been with since 18. So I understand that lifestyle choice and it's fine. I'm offering a counter explanation for the other comment suggesting we're all delusional for saying it is a unique experience. That doesn't mean the childless lifestyle can't be rewarding as well in a different manner (I already acknowledged that), but for myself, I consider myself better off and I believe most probably agree (although I'm sure there are plenty out there that may have a different opinion).

Here’s the problem though. If you had your kids at about age thirty five and they do the same, you’re seventy when your grandchildren are born. How much can you realistically expect to help raise a child at seventy plus?

I think we should teach young people that it is ok to not have children. There is nothing wrong being child free and it ought to be the default for most people.

if not having children is the default, then population will decrease and eventually die out, or the burden of keeping the population stable rests on those few who need to have lots of children.

if the replacement rate today is 2,3 children per couple, then when half of couples don't have children the others need to have more than 4 children. in an environment that is not supportive of having children this is going to create a two class society.

better to spread the load.

also, having children late also means that more children per family are needed. so you can choose between having 2 children when you are young or having 3 or more when you are older. (i don't know the actual numbers but i think you can get the idea)

so i disagree that teaching young people that not having children is ok. we need to teach them the opposite, and most importantly, we need to teach those that do not want children of their own, that they need to actively support those who do have children instead.

we need to create a child friendly society. and we can't do that without everyone contributing to that.

> if not having children is the default, then population will decrease and eventually die out, or the burden of keeping the population stable rests on those few who need to have lots of children.

oh, no. I want the population to decrease. Please do not have more children to "offset" me not having any children. That defeats the point.

I want fewer people to have children. I also want the people who have children to have fewer children. In fact, I am against this whole idea of "reproductive rights". Nobody should have a right to have as many children as they want. There should be a cap in the number of biological children a human can have.

That sounds pretty tyrannical.

If you want to see what that policy leads to, look no further than China's one child policy and the horrors that came with enforcing it and what is now occuring to their economy.

If you're concerned about population control, you'll see that it naturally goes down with industrialization like what is occuring all over Europe right now. There's no need to move to a forced system that will lead to human rights abuses.

Other people have put it more eloquently and perhaps a bit more diplomatically, but you’re wrong.

I lived for 33 years before having a child and nothing - absolutely nothing - ever brought me more joy than something as simple as my daughter’s stupid grin when I’m on my back and she’s above me, ready to pounce.

While I’m sure not every parent feels the same way, I bet most do. I feel sorry for the people out there that would get the same feeling but will never experience it.

Wait until she hits the curiosity stage and you see the birth of reason. That's something you don't get from a dog.

Western culture no longer seems to appreciate the commitment that is required to raise children. Personally I think people are too self-centered and are too eager to seek hedonism. Whether or not it will be OK long term is to be seen.

I have no doubt that if you were to ask the people without kids on their death bed if they wished they had had them, they would say yes.

In western culture raising kids by societal norms is a bigger commitment than it ever was. My grandma had 7 siblings and no shoes for most of her childhood. It wasn't nearly as big a commitment for my great grandparents to raise her.

People in their deathbed also regret working so much but nobody's chomping at the bit to quit their job and become a bum.

Bums exist, so someone must have!

> People in their deathbed also regret working so much but nobody's chomping at the bit to quit their job and become a bum

The Financially Independent Retired Early (FIRE) movement is very popular and it centers around focusing on the essentials so that you can quit working early. And that's just an example of one of the ways in which people escape the rat race.

So true.

i didn't mean to generalize in what i said, but i see that the way i framed it makes it easy to understand that way.

i totally think that for some people having children would definitely not make them more happy, possibly many. it really depends on what gives you meaning, joy (obviously) and i think to a significant extent the setup within which you are having children. before i moved into this setup with the other families parenthood was significantly less joyful for me.

privilege is also a big factor. how much education and access to resources do you have so that you have the option to choose to work less than full-time for example?

> I cannot understand how come there are so many parents bearing children worldwide.

Because the best thing you can do for the world is to raise children well. If they raise theirs, etc. its a cycle of good over thousands of years, that will have more positive impact than anything you could do in your life as an individual.

Given that we're quickly destroying the environment we need to survive and have enough nuclear weapons pointed at one another to annihilate civilization multiple times over, it seems that a lot of people thousands of years ago didn't raise their kids well enough.

Maybe instead of having more children as the OP notes, we can take care of the tens of millions of neglected ones we already have, or try to work towards providing a healthier environment for those who are already here. The idea that we need more, when we're currently screwing up the ones we have, is silly.

> Because the best thing you can do for the world

Is to not have any children so the population gets back down to sustainable levels

massive population collapse will be disastrous for modern societies.

Who will do the work required to care for the elderly population?

Only 5% of people work in agriculture and 15% in industry. So we could reduce the workforce by 80% if only people would groom their own dogs themselves and just die when their time comes.

And if not healthcare is another 15%. But you probably can shave off a little from all those numbers if you exclude the time devoted to desperately trying to sell things to each other in the economy of abundance.

I'm all for having as many children as you can raise, and caring about old people, but interpret the following how you wish. It is a highly anomalous thing in the history that ordinary people receive real medical care when they are unable to do basic tasks themselves. You might have some basic care if your children care about you, but that's about it, and that might be our future and there's very little we can do about it except enabling policies that make having children viable option for those who want to have children.

The population is at sustainable level, you only need more nuclear power plants

Can nuclear power plants make livestock less energy intensive to raise?

Maybe, but our lifestyles are not sustainable.

Western societies are already down to around replacement levels with some going below it. It's pretty clear cut as societies evolve that population growth evens out. It's 3rd world countries driving the population growth. Over-population of humans being a danger to the earth has been proven false time and time again.

Overpopulation needs to be qualified with the context of the living standards. Ten billion vegetarians is probably feasible, but ten billion Americans (we don't currently have as many at such a standard) is a different story.

You need to watch Idiocracy

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

When some people stop procreating and educating the next generation, the world population does not simply go down. Instead it gets replaced by those who do continue multiplying.

That was a fictional comedy, not a documentary. That’s not how evolution works

Please explain how, because if stupid people have more kids, there will be more stupid people.

The heritability of intelligence and other factors is highly variable.

You want people who will care diligently for their children to have them. Not people who will be largely indifferent to them, whether they're smart or dumb.

The Musk 'I'll have ten and scatter them to the wind with bags of money, the odds will take care of the rest' strategy is not really one that works out well in real life.

I'm the oldest of 11 kids, and I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on this. I agree with your second statement, which is why conscientious people should have kids.

I have very little of substance to add beyond 'you should really think about it, and do it for your own reasons alone.'

Kids aren't something you owe the world, and Idiocracy is just a movie.

Idiocracy is a joke about a real phenomenon. The outcome will likely be less extreme, but possibly not dissimilar.

That wasn't even the point of the movie

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18489573

I fundamentally disagree with that post. The idea of Idiocracy was clear, but it made an additional statement with what it decided to portray as "stupid". Two things can be true at the same time.

> We live in polarized times, which means that for every ‘Idiocracy is a documentary!’ take that goes around, there’s also a critique that argues that Idiocracy is a celebration of eugenics. Have you thought about that interpretation of it? Well, yeah. I mean I’ve actually read that a couple of times. But to me, I thought the opening made it very clear that whatever side you take, nature and nurture are both covered in that. That guy is clearly not a good father. I mean, there’s a kid with a motorcycle in the front yard, and no one’s paying attention to this. He’s just irresponsibly knocking up different woman, and proud of it. It’s not like he’s a good, upstanding role model for the kid. So I think it’s pretty clear here that, whichever one it is, [nature or nurture], there’s some combination of both. I obviously don’t believe in eugenics. I think you could look at it both ways—you have this couple that’s trying to be so responsible that they end up never having kids. Then there’s another couple who just irresponsibly keeps having them and not raising them right. So, you know, if the other couple adopted the other kids. I’m sure they would probably be better off.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3064328/mike-judge-on-the-10th-a...

The quote gives me the impression that I'm right. My earlier comment: > I agree with your second statement, which is why conscientious people should have kids.

Two statements you made

> because if stupid people have more kids, there will be more stupid people.

You are implying that their kids will necessarily be stupid, which is not so- as per the Mike Judge quote, nurturing and environmental factors, which may included adoptive parents but is far from limited to such, may produce alternate outcomes.

> When some people stop procreating and educating the next generation, the world population does not simply go down. Instead it gets replaced by those who do continue multiplying.

Just because there will be other people who procreate says nothing about the rates in which they do so, that does not guarantee world population will not continue to go down regardless.

Well, hello! I am also the oldest of 11 kids; I rarely encounter another like me.

One of the many reasons I have carefully avoided making any children over the years is that I already had my fill of child-rearing by the time I left home, through looking after my younger siblings. I wonder what your experience with this was.

The heritability of intelligence is pretty well established.

Your second point is true, of course.

> those who do continue multiplying

So we have to stop the ones who can't stop themselves, fine.

Ah, the Thanos approach to eugenics

There are no signs that intelligent people are not procreating. More affluent countries are not procreating, but that does not correlate with intelligence.

We could 10x the human population and still be sustainable. Your idea of sustainable is a common misconception.

What makes humanity unsustainable is not the amount of human but the unleashed greed of a minority.

100 billion aborigines would pollute less than a handful of western oligarchs

> Yeah maybe that’s why women live longer in order to help with the exhausting process of raising their grandchildren.

Except that men become more important, especially for boys, but also as exemplars for girls, the older children get. Nurturing is more important earlier on, which is also the specialty of women. Men are generally terrible at it and generally hate it, while women tend to have a much greater affinity.

> We love to take care of babies, regardless of (or maybe because of) how clingy and dependent they are.

We must be careful with words like "love", because in our day and age, we have assumed a very reductive and immature understanding of it (as that which gives us pleasure or sensuous delight and "good feelings"). Love toward children is dominated by the hard work of charity. The aim is to guide a human being into adulthood for that other person's sake, for the sake of their true end, not for ourselves (hence the self-centeredness of thinking one is entitled to having children, resorting to all sorts of immoral technologies to have them). Disinterested charity, of course, has the effect of actualizing us as people, and nothing is as actualizing as parenthood, as that is our essential identity (one that can be exercised in surrogate ways, of course).

> babies might have evolved to be more and more dependent, because having more and more invested caregivers produces fitter offspring.

The major reason human beings require more investment is intelligence. Many species are born or hatched ready to go, and perhaps never meet their parents. Some require only a relatively short period of parental support. But human beings must go through a long period of formation. Intelligence is also the reason why we lack all sorts of anatomical features that other animals have. Why? Because intelligence allows us to pursue all sorts of ends, while other animals are quite limited in this regard. Thus, we lose the baggage and instead make technology, like clothing, that allows us to adapt to any environment. Fur or scales or whatever are far more limited.

> Parenthood is a self-inflicted sabotage and I cannot understand how come there are so many parents bearing children worldwide.

What a freakish statement. Sabotage of what, and how? If anything is being sabotaged, is it our nature to be parents by the culture of mindless, emtpy distractions of hedonistic and superficial consumerism. This antinatalism is an attack on the human person. It destroys the common good. Attack parenthood and you attack the raison d'etre almost all of the activity of humankind.

> hence the self-centeredness of thinking one is entitled to having children, resorting to all sorts of immoral technologies to have them

Huh? I'm confused how you reconcile this (seeming) attack on fertility treatment with the pro-natalist sentiment expressed later in your comment. Who or what principle is transgressed by what technologies?

In-vitro fertilization involves treatment of embryos that is regarded as illicit by some groups that are staunchly pro-natalist. The Roman Catholic Church is the biggest example, e.g. [0], but similar positions are held also by some other Christian denominations.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36518712/

Octopus are undeniably intelligent and are not known for being parents, primarily because the mother soon dies after the clutch hatches.

>I cannot understand how come there are so many parents bearing children worldwide.

one might call it a survival bias

Hi to you too, Darwin.

> 'That's not a high bar. What grade did you get the last time you scored 50% on a test?'

An A: it was graded on a curve.

They make a lot of entreaties. And if they are sick, there may be nothing the caregiver can do about it. If 20% of the entreaties are things like an upset stomach, then that 30-50% becomes 38-62%. If the baby has colic, good luck!

The book Hunt, Gather, Parent touches on this a bit. It takes 3-4 humans, not necessarily adults but cousins and whatnot, to take care of a child. Two? 6-8. Since western societies broke up tight knit communities, the support system for this in the west has been lacking and jerry rigged with tired parents and nannies etc ever since.

The reason for the breakup is fun - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/roman-catholi...

Interesting hypothesis, but I don’t know if I buy it.

Much of India had also long barred cousin marriages, probably long before the Roman Catholic Church, but the dependencies and village raising the kids dynamic still existed (until recently).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapinda

If I were to guess, the main causal factor is economic/security independence. If living in a tight knit village, sacrificing your freedoms is the best option you have, then that is what most people choose. If there exists an option for you retain your freedom and have financial independence and physical security, then people tend to choose that (e.g. getting an education and a well paying job, etc).

The latter basically destroys any chance of “village raising a child”, because no village bonds will exist, since everyone is moving around for their economic opportunities.

If living in a tight knit village, sacrificing your freedoms is the best option you have, then that is what most people choose. If there exists an option for you retain your freedom and have financial independence and physical security, then people tend to choose that

you make it sound like these are opposing incompatible choices. why not choose both? i'd love to live in a small tight knit community. going to school and getting a good education does not prevent that. and with more options to work from home it is now even more possible than it was in the past.

also, people didn't move because they wanted to gain independence. they are forced to move because they can't find work at home. in europe the majority of people live where they grow up and do not move far from there, unless lack of local jobs forces them to. which is one reason why big cities are popular and growing because jobs are there, and it is more likely that future generations will have jobs there too, so they can stay.

This.

I grew up poor and moved far away from my family to change it. In the rich land where I now live, most people I’ve met could do a little better by moving to another town but they choose to remain close to their families and their birth community. With that said, they still have to raise their children on their own, because it is culturally inappropriate to ask, accept or (god forbid![^1]) offer help.

[^1]: You want to do what with our kids? What are you? A budding, wanna-be child molester? You never know, the media says they are everywhere. No sir, and you have upset me so much that I’ll write to my local representative to install CSAM surveillance in all the phones.

I am guessing women have low labor force participation rates in the poor land you moved from ?

i would guess quite the opposite. from what i have seen in places that i have been to women are doing most of the work, like selling food at the market while i saw more men hanging around doing nothing. i guess some of the men that did work went elsewhere for the better jobs.

Listing some specific places would be a good way to validate your anecdote with actual data.

not really. it would still just be the experience of one person in one place. not enough to generalize. someone made a guess, and i countered with a different guess. i am however not ready to go on a deeper exploration here until i have had more opportunities to observe other similar places and spend more time to talk to some of these people to get a better understanding of their situation

> not really. it would still just be the experience of one person in one place

If you provided a location, others could research the labor participation rate among men and women in the area you’re talking about. It would literally be the exact opposite of “the experience of one person”.

Because they are incompatible choices. You have to live by the rules of the said small tight knit community. since gp said indian, in indian communities you have to marry within the community otherwise you "bring shame" to the community. This coercion doesn't even have to be explicit like that it acts on you in insidious ways .

Its the classic tradeoff between security and freedom.

> in indian communities you have to marry within the community

Is this not evidence for the original point?

Marrying within the community is not marrying (near) cousins. Once you are beyond 2nd cousins, you might as well be not related (for disease purposes), and the old Hindu scriptures go even further than that.

Specifically, men and women would not be married within the same village, but within the same community in other villages (which may only be within a radius of 50km, but that is a lot of people).

> why not choose both?

I just don't see that realisticly possible. People move a cross the city for a new job, that enough to break the family visit. Remote work is nowhere near guaranteed.

>people didn't move because they wanted to gain independence.

They do, when they don't fit into the community they grew up with.

> you make it sound like these are opposing incompatible choices. why not choose both? i'd love to live in a small tight knit community. going to school and getting a good education does not prevent that. and with more options to work from home it is now even more possible than it was in the past.

Tight-knit by definition means everyone's up in everyone's business. You would know your neighbour's business intimately, as intimately as they'd know yours (think what you pooped last night as a sense of how intimate). If that strikes you as unnecessary and potentially disgusting, then tight-knit isn't for you. I came from one... and I know for a fact it isn't for me.

ok, fair enough. it needs to be tight knit and open minded. unfortunately many people still lack in the open minded aspect of it.

I think the analogy to fibers in food is very good (which I take from Wood o Eden). We now discover all kinds of similar phenomena.

That linked article also appears incorrect about the Eastern Orthodox Church as well. The churches in the east inherited the Roman ban on marrying cousins.

The linked article is pretty ridiculous. I am pretty sure it leaves out a lot of nuance from the underlying work - as these types of press releases normally do - but there is a bunch of stuff in there that just does not make sense.

First the taboo against consanguineous marriages was most likely because of genetic diseases. Biology may not have been very advanced, but people were smart enough to pick up on patterns. Similar to taboos against cannibalism despite having no concept of prion disease.

If this was pushed by the catholic church then explain Italian families!

Is “the hero’s journey” not a story about rugged individualism that has been told over and over in different forms across cultures since the beginning of history?

> Is “the hero’s journey” not a story about rugged individualism that has been told over and over in different forms across cultures since the beginning of history?

I don't think so. The heros journey does not need to be about "rugged individualism" at all. Not is about it all across cultures and history.

We like stories about rugged individualism. We prefer them. And oftentimes, we change original stories fro. other culture to fit the patterns we like or ignore those that don't fit them.

And also, across cultures and history, the hero journey is far from the only or even primary kind of story.

> Is “the hero’s journey” not a story about rugged individualism that has been told over and over in different forms across cultures since the beginning of history?

I dont thi k thats true at all -

Lets see, oldest stories - buddhism, hiduism - none of them are about individualism.

I wouldn't say the christian writing or that of ancient Egypt is about individualism either.

The oldest 'hero's journey' I can think of, would be myths of ancient greece - but ewually, many of them are not heroic, they are dramas.

The dominance of this genre is a compeltely modern phenomena

The whole point of the hero monomyth is that the hero is a hero. They're an exceptional individual, sometimes the child of a god, sent on an exceptional quest that nobody else can accomplish. And even so, they are reluctant to leave society at first, and eventually return to it. I don't think its purpose is primarily to facilitate individual aspiration.

The hero usually has companions and almost always has a mentor. The hero must be of strong mind and body, certainly, but that doesn't necessarily suggest individualism.

So does The Anthropology of Childhood, which is a fun book: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/02/10/the-anthropology-of-child....

The main reason for the break up is the movement of people. Into cities for economic reasons or off to university.

Western Society seems to be doing pretty well.

Based on the only metric we care about: money.

Also on life expectancy, happiness, child mortality, and looking at migration figures, revealed preference too.

Buddhist countries (Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia) have a West-like kinship intensity index. So, hmm, no. You can do better (as better than Muslim like countries and the Western individualistic societies).

The technical term for this is alloparenting, and it should be more well known outside anthropology. It has been extensively studied and I cannot find very much unique about this study, except perhaps the involvement of a child psychologist.

If it helps get the word out I’m all for it, though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alloparenting

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,44&qsp=1&q...

This is once of the things that remote work/homeworking may enable, if companies don't succeed in taking it away. If people can rely on getting remote work, they can arrange their living situation to improve the rest of their life, instead of for work:

- young people living in large halls, to improve their dating prospects

- groups of friends living close together across job moves, enabling longer term friendships

- new parents living in groups to reduce the burden of parenting

Is this a thing?

Other than one-off communes, I think this is still pretty rare and I’m not aware of it growing due to work from home.

Given that it requires changing property market choices, its only going to happen on a big scale if working from home beds in and people feel they can rely on it longer term.

Having said that, I've seen some adverts for 'student hall ' like living for young professionals. That works because the investor can switch to the actual student market.

I laud your foreseen outcomes but we are far away from everything else we'd need.

ex: A scenario where large public halls are widely built for young workers.

An income to housing ratio that would allow people to make block-level housing choices.

Widely available, affordable, walkable neighborhoods.

As I mention in my other comment, halls for young workers is the one I've actually seen happen already, albeit only at the top end of the market

Only for the upper class. The lower class still has to go man the gas stations, grocery stores, warehouses, and factories.

Yes, this is true. I'm not sure that the opportunity should be foregone for that reason, but it would widen the cultural and living standard has between the classes.

Don’t think it has to do with class. Surgeons and dentists still need to show up to work. Even in tech, the higher up you are, the more likely you will want to be in the office.

The upper class at least gets the choice. The lower class does not.

If you don't show up to work, you will be fired. If you are fired for not showing up to work, finding your next income source will be more difficult. This is true regardless of whether you're making $7.50/hr or $350k/yr.

Yes, the doctor making $350k/yr can arrange his life in such a way to be more flexible in the face of diversity, but he's just as likely to have $150k worth of school debt and a house/car/etc. he couldn't afford if he had to switch careers. At $7.50/hr, you can probably walk down the street and find a better paying job.

Edit in reply due to depth restrictions: I'm not suggesting this is about ease of switching careers. I'm suggesting that you will be forced to switch careers if you don't show up to work, and it's probably easier to switch between jobs with no prerequisites than careers with 8 years of intensive prerequisites and $150k in university.

I didn't mean "choice to easily switch to whatever job they want at their convenience" and the notion that I did mean that is so absurd that I find it to be a bad faith read of my comment. I encourage you to first steel-man my position. Or don't, that's fine too. Just don't respond with such a technical and self-assured response that is in fact arguing against a point you yourself imagined (and is not rooted in reality). It is exhausting to debate against, especially on the internet.

You are missing the feedback loop - if middle class doesn't need to be crammed in a megacity to have a career, then neither does the grocery store.

I’m already doing this with a set of friends in a big city with decent public transportation (relative to the world).

We all share a two story two flat. It’s quite fun, and my mental health is great. The big “but” is that it’s unlikely to last because people value different things. Most of us are doing this arrangement because it’s ridiculously inexpensive compared to other forms of housing. One has already moved out to live with his girlfriend, and another is probably going to move to another city.

This is of course ignoring the other very real problems: job prospects for industries are not uniform across cities (you may have friends in another industry that is in decline for your local)… etc.

I wouldn’t mind a return to communal apartments, with a dining hall, and a lounge away from the property manager and the entrance. But it’s doubtful very many people will ever use those facilities (when you have more interesting stuff to do outside the complex, or inside your own room, why settle for the third place?). The culture of friendship is also lacking in my current country (U.S.), and communal values are nonexistent.

I don’t think remote work is the bottleneck to people living like this. It’s fun when you’re young but most people outgrow the situation relatively quickly as they age (barring budget-driven forced decisions).

I also see a growing detachment from reality in some of the remote work maximalists who forget that not everyone has a job sitting at a computer all day. A significant number of younger people have jobs involved in-person work where remote isn’t even possible. This seems to be forgotten about in some of the writings about how remote work might change society, especially on HN where many commenters have only known jobs sitting in isolation at a computer.

>It’s fun when you’re young but most people outgrow the situation relatively quickly as they age

It might be fun if you get the right group of friends together. Until one of them has to leave and now everyone has to pay more rent, or a new roommate moves in and everyone hates him.

I got tired of the roommate thing in college very quickly after having a roommate with terrible hygiene who refused to clean and ate my food. It's better for people to have small, private apartments so they don't have to deal with all the stresses and annoyances of living with someone, without any of the benefits a romantic relationship provides.

> childcare needs to give parents an actual break.

In my experience caring for your small children is really demanding work. On the one hand you need to be focused on the situation in order to protect the children and on the other hand there is not much going on for entertaining yourself.

Creative or focused deep work where you get a positive feeling of accomplishment also counts as a break from childcare for me. So a break does not necessarily mean not working. But I believe there are a lot of demanding jobs that are not a break from childcare.

The other aspect I can relate to is the fact that in hunter-gatherer communities many different caregivers support each other. Every summer we travel in the mountains with 3-4 other families and their kids. Last year there where 12 kids under the age of 8. Sounds very stressful but actually it was really smooth. Having multiple parents available all the time allowed everyone to take a real break once in a while. And also the children enjoyed having multiple different adults they could interact with apart from their parents.

So I really think this concept works, but only if you all live under the same roof. Which in practice is only possible during holidays.

In our Montessori school, parents do pick up other kids occasionally, and the kids would just stay with the family for the afternoon. Ideally, kids take turns so sometimes parents get an afternoon off.

Another thing that sometimes works (lots of preconditions) - living in walking distance of grandparents or siblings, and let the kids visit family frequently.

> Another thing that sometimes works (lots of preconditions) - living in walking distance of grandparents or siblings, and let the kids visit family frequently.

If you are not sufficiently rich such that you can afford personal services such as live in nannies and flights to visit family and whatnot, I find that living walking distance to close family is one of the biggest quality of life upgrades one could make (obviously assuming you get along with them).

The redundancies it provides makes for much less stressful living, along with many other benefits.

> living walking distance to close family is one of the biggest quality of life upgrades one could make

And yet those with the power to change this situation choose not to. We have to work in office buildings located in expensive commercial districts with small homes/accomodation and no real community, or spend hours commuting each week if we want to live in the suburbs.

After a few decades we earn enough money to escape and retire to a small town with greater space and more community, but our now adult children are forced to trek back to the big city to earn a living.

The grandchildren get to see granny and grandpa a few times a year, if they're lucky. One of the few developments improving this situation, remote work, is sadly considered a privilege.

If there weren't so many cars and the associated danger, it'd be easier to use public spaces and not feel like your "small" apartment is cramped.

I bought a house and miss my 2-bedroom apartment. Enough that my wife and I are considering moving back into an apartment and renting out our house.

It doesn't help either that outdated fire codes pretty much dictate apartments in the US to follow the double-loaded hallway pattern which makes apartments less pleasant and makes it hard to build ones that are pleasant for families. https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-to-build-more-family-size...

> If you are not sufficiently rich such that you can afford personal services such as live in nannies and flights to visit family and whatnot, I find that living walking distance to close family is one of the biggest quality of life upgrades one could make

Being able to choose housing with that level of granularity still requires wealth that exceeds most incomes. For most, just finding housing without lots of significant negative impacts - this is about the edge of possibility. For even that minimal outcome, the odds aren't terrific.

This is a very high quality comment and I suspect will capture many parents’ feelings. Something that shocks me, even as an experienced parent, in caring for two small children is how physically and mentally tired I am at the end of the day without having done anything particularly challenging. The level of alertness required to track and monitor several mobile toddlers is quite draining.

Actual mental rest can be quite hard to come by and the need to get parents breaks that are not simply “being at work,” is real. I often get to the end of the day, particularly on weekends, and I realize that I have maybe an hour of downtime to eat and get to bed to achieve a reasonable amount of sleep.

The only thing I would like to add to this thinking is that it also explains cultural norms. If a child is getting input from that many different adults it becomes an averaging of the culture norms.

> If a child is getting input from that many different adults it becomes an averaging of the culture norms.

More directly, it greatly softens the inevitable blows from highly-concentrated, inexperienced parenting.

I would also add that by the time of becoming a parent every girl was already familiar with most of the chores and tasks of raising a child and most likely familiar with giving birth because no one went away to hospital to give birth - it happened at home.

The child situation in that group vacation sounds like the shared child raising in a Kibbutz:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

I'm already hearing the comments on Monday, people asking me how my "break" was, since I took off all of last week (I mean, I had to since the preschool our twins attend and the daycare our singleton attends were closed). Work is typically a break from what happens in the home, but when things at work are stressful it feels like coming out of the frying pan and into the fire.

We also have a similar experience, where adding families (with kids) is greatly beneficial for everyone, but the folks who have kids that we are truly good friends with live far away. Nearby we have playdates and dinners with other families but I wouldn't want to cohabit with them, not even for an overnight stay. So we also only get the holidays or special occasions with other families and then we can finally get a break.

In a very similar situation too, but add in that both sets of grandparents have one with Alzheimers so instead of extra care givers we actually have even more work with having to actively baby sit parents. Holidays are pretty stressful and this year we threw a nice thanksgiving stomach bug into the mix!

> the folks who have kids that we are truly good friends with live far away. Nearby we have playdates and dinners with other families but I wouldn't want to cohabit with them, not even for an overnight stay

many such cases

> In my experience caring for your small children is really demanding work. On the one hand you need to be focused on the situation in order to protect the children

I expected this going into having children, but I was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed it. Yes, it’s more active work than sitting in front of a computer, but for me personally I’ve found it much less demanding than my jobs.

> and on the other hand there is not much going on for entertaining yourself.

Honestly, I don’t identify with this either. At least not since my children were more than 6-7 months old. Playing with kids is a lot of fun once you get into it. We go on a lot of adventures around the neighborhood and beyond where everything is new and exciting to them. It’s like they’ve re-opened the wonder of the world for me.

On the other hand, I have some friends who struggle with parenting because they approach it more as babysitting than as quality time with their kids. For them, it’s just a matter of passing time until they can go do something else. That’s a minority of my friends, though.

> go on a lot of adventures around the neighborhood and beyond where everything is new and exciting to them.

I mean, first time and second time. But when they get excited 55th time over exactly same hedgehog, it just was not so exciting to me anymore.

well, if you can't get excited over seeing the same hedgehog again and again (which would be a comparable experience to having a pet) then you just have to pick something else. the challenge is to find things that you and the kids enjoy. and i sympathize. this can be hard.

My big discovery was I underestimated how different kids could be. I watch some two year olds happily draw for hours, and lay themselves down for nap. Meanwhile, mine possessed a natural talent for destruction, boundless energy, and refused to sleep more than about eight hours a day.

A saying most black Americans will be familiar with is, "It takes a village to raise a child." It resembles proverbs common to cultures across Africa; one could say that it's cultural knowledge embedded deeply within the African diaspora. American black culture is often derided as being inadequate, particularly in efforts to raise well-adjusted and pro-social children, but what's rarely mentioned by these commenters is how frequent and widespread are the historical and contemporary destruction and dissolution of black communities in America. In the too-common case of single mothers rearing children alone (the absence of the father often itself a product of poor social support), the difference seems to be in the presence or absence of older siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and supportive teachers, especially when the mother is forced to work multiple jobs in order to cover ever-increasing expenses. (It should also be noted that when the father is present, married or not, he tends to spend more time with his children than fathers of other ethnicities.)

I bring this up in order to maybe open some minds as to why we see racial disparities of certain types - and also because, as mentioned by another commenter, the increasing atomization of families and communities of other ethnic groups threatens to replicate the aforementioned dysfunction. Common and widespread understanding of the dynamic could head-off tragedy; they hit us with crack before they hit y'all with opioids, after all.

We can only move forward, not backward. The hunter-gatherer existence is often endowed with some notion of pristine, peaceful existence in harmony with nature, which is likely far from the actual truth. That said, I for one find many aspects (but not all!) of the present situation unsatisfactory, where the needs of macroeconomy and national priorities supersedes many of our most basic needs as humans.

This article could indicate how one of those needs are currently neglected, and point to the need for more grownups to spend more time with their children (and other children) than currently is possible.

With all the massive life improvements we have with technology we could be investing so much more into our kids. Jobs could be flexible with short work weeks, and we could use that time to invest in kids. Parent, volunteer, mentor. Remote work done on a school site giving even more time to help kids learn.

Having worked remote most of my kids' lives, I'd say there are other challenges. Parents need time away from their kids too, and if every parent in society is working then how are kids supposed to get the adult attention and allow the parents some child-free time?

When I was younger kids played with others in the neighborhood, and there was always a homemaker parent in every household. Now every adult has at least a part-time job. Kids still play in the neighborhood, yet weekly instead of daily. More often they are in daycare, school, or staying home.

I’m thinking about everyone being more involved with kids. Not just parents of young children.

Lots of folks don’t want kids or to be involved with them too, another important consideration.

those that do not want to be involved with kids would obviously not choose to participate in such an environment, so they are out of the picture.

Has to be explicitly said, lots of folks expect a village without asking if the village consented towards the effort (n=1). Managing and openly communicating expectations derisks disappointment and suboptimal outcomes.

Not wanting to be a parent is one thing, but people who don't want to be involved with kids need to work on themselves, that's a deeply antisocial trait - your own existence depended on everyone around you being involved with you to some degree.

That is an opinion, not a fact. Freedom of association and to be happy can include not interacting with children you choose not to, and optimizing for happiness is important (versus a social contract requiring otherwise). No one will optimize for your own happiness besides you.

I have kids, but fully respect people who don’t care for or want to avoid time and interaction with kids. I respect their boundaries, that is what I advocate for here.

I’ve had over a decade of therapy, so I’m fairly confident in my position on the topic.

it is one thing to ask someone who doesn't want to deal with kids for help taking care of them, but quite another to expect them to tolerate kids and behave in a manner that gives the kids space they need. (like not smoking near kids, etc)

in a city i can't choose my neighbors, but some neighbors don't like kids and will complain if they are to noisy because they are playing soccer in the yard, to the point that they force the building management to disallow it, which then takes a lawsuit from the parents to remove that rule because such a rule is in fact illegal since kids playing is natural had has to be tolerated.

if someone feels that kids playing infringes their boundaries then they do need an attitude adjustment.

Agreed. Kids need the space to develop as you mentioned, and it’s somewhat trivial to determine where to live to avoid children using granular census and school availability data if desired.

it’s somewhat trivial to determine where to live to avoid children

given the discussions of how much more housing most cities need, i actually think this is not trivial at all. not wanting to live near children pretty much comes down to not living near people.

I will think on how to improve this.

i am not exactly sure where you are going with this, so i am curious what you have in mind.

> I have kids, but fully respect people who don’t care for or want to avoid time and interaction with kids

How would this sound:

"I fully respect people who want to avoid time and interaction with black people"

Why is okay to say "I hate kids", we would not think kindly of someone who says "I hate Women/Jews/etc.".

Kids were exploited, historically, just like any other minority - we used to send them into the coal mines and many didn't come back.

Even today, we discriminate against young people all the time. A 17 year old is not allowed to vote, but come 18 and they may be forced into the army and sent to fight a war, without ever having a say in the matter.

They are the last minority that we world does not respect, and has no plan to respect as the world is becoming more geniatric (look at the age of congress) whils moving into a climate calamity.

And I am not writing this as a young person, not any more.

how are kids supposed to get the adult attention and allow the parents some child-free time

not everyone is going to work all the time. obviously someone has to be available for the kids but not all the time either. the point is that life improvements, technology and flexibility makes this more easy.

Not if the cost is both parents having to work a day job.

I look at it from this perspective, we have been hunting-gathering for 95% of our time on earth, it may be the case that from our bubble we think we are "more advanced", but if we think about the test of time, we have not yet passed, and call me crazy, but it seems that this "advancement" of ours does not hold up for long at this level.

Today we know that many "non-advanced" cultures, aware of the limits of growth, limited the consumption of resources in many imaginative ways.

It is ok to say, hey you did this better than me.

We may not have stood the test of time (yet?), but we certainly stood the test of population. About as many people are living today as hunter-gatherers ever lived, that is about 10% of the total number of people who have ever lived.

Non-advanced cultures limited the consomption of resources because they couldn't do otherwise, their environment couldn't provide enough. But with agriculture, we made our environment orders of magnitude more productive, and growth is a consequence of that. Also, the "imaginative ways" advanced or not cultures have limited the consumption of resources mostly boil downs to different ways for people to kill each other. From murder to global wars. Killing people is not as popular as it once was in modern society, so instead, our limiting strategy is more about making less kids.

I look at if from a logical lens rather than a romantic one. Modern lifestyle outpaced our human evolution.

> He argues that recent changes in UK policy show childcare is becoming more of a priority for the government

Seems like some massive cognitive dissonance going on here. Outsourcing childcare is why there would be less attentive care in modern society. Virtually all women - old, young, mothers or not - would stay together with the children at all times in these hunter gatherer societies.

We already have great daycares (albeit expensive) which are apparent contributing to this less attentive care. If we want to return to the old ways that would be communities of women staying home together.

Sure, the mother would always be with the other women, but she would at least be able to nap. Modern parenting of small children operates by the maxim, sleep when the child sleeps; as there is no one else to look after them. (This is much more difficult in practice than it sounds)

The Zionist youth organizations [1] worked and work in a similar way where teenagers take care of children and a cycle is built. This is implemented also in Kibbutzim [2] and the diaspora as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_youth_movement?wprov=s...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz?wprov=sfti1

The book "Mothers and Others" discusses this at length, positing not only did mothers have much more "Alloparental" support in the past, but this was the key fact that allowed the evolution of our big brains. That is, alloparental involvement was a necessary precursor to homo sapian big-brain evolution and the key thing that was lacking in other apes.

Very interesting and highly reccomended

> When considering the implications for Western countries, the authors highlight that the provision of affordable high-quality childcare support, which goes beyond effective supervision, should be prioritized.

> Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children.

There is now way you can pay for these kind of ratios. These ratios can only happen due to a social structure that involves large extended families and a social structure that has a large proportion of the population (pretty much all the females) that spend all their time with each other and the children.

However, that would be a huge step backwards from the progress we have made in women’s rights and equality.

Why does it have to be all women?

Exactly the right question.

People make all kinds of assumptions and thanks to the corporate world, both sexes now slave away for the market: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286

I wrote that in 2017 and it's only gotten worse since then

People could accept lower living standards and opt for single income families.

However, people like to compete, for purposes of fulfilling their own ego and attracting a mate. That is why higher income individuals attract other higher income individuals.

Corporations did not make people competitive. People want financial freedom, people want to buy goods and services, and people want to attract a partner per their liking.

Corporations, just like governments, engage in pervasive propaganda, from impressionable school years all the way to adulthood. Edward Burnays said propaganda got a bad name after WW1, so they renamed it to "PR".

It's how corporations got women to smoke, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom

How they control the crowd, featuring Edward Burnays and his uncle Freud (whose theories became famous ironically because of his nephew): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04

How the corporate world market to kids: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/

They marketed it to Black youth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BjKyVzRr_U

They marketed it to teen girls: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/03/30/social-m...

Sometimes the mask comes off and they do it too openly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8

The for-profit model of news corporations and social networks has led more and more adults to become perpetually angry and tribal politically: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/

There is even a term for what they resort to in order to please shareholders: surveillance capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

I was at the event in NYC when Sheryl Sandberg unveiled her book, "Lean In": https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/03853499...

Make no mistake. YCombinator and shareholder capitalism leads to this inevitably. Corporations have to please shareholders forever. And there is more and more push for inclusivity and part of that means adapting people from traditional roles (e.g. women homemakers) into types of work that benefit the market. As both sexes flooded the labor pool, wages got depressed, and marriage declined. People are distracted into being e.g. gender warriors (Red Pill vs Feminism) rather than realizing they are all being exploited by a for-profit capitalist system that gradually relegates them to gig-economy workers and depresses their wages as they get replaced by AI. It's like a slowly-boiled frog.

Anyone can opt out if they want. Opt out of the over-diagnosis of ADHD for their kids in public schools, by spending more time with them. Opt out of single parenthood and nuclear families, creating something far more expansive and with the benefits of traditional societies. Health benefits abound. Kids aren't overmedicated by amphetamines. Teens aren't depressed due to tiktok or angry due to drill music. Middle aged women aren't on antideprssants. Men aren't on opiates. Elderly parents aren't in nursing homes being drugged up. I'm not saying it's a utopia but the capitalist system has gone in a very bad direction, arguably worse than USSR where people drank vodka to cope.

Look at any traditional society even within the US, such as the Amish, or religious orthodox Jews, or Christians in small-town America who still get together for Church etc. You don't have to be religious to make it work. But it takes a village to raise a child, and today's children are raised by government schools and indoctrinated to be corporate drones, for a job market that will be gone by the time they graduate. I recommend phasing in a UBI, at least, to help save the increasingly under-employed (i.e. making too few $s) people and families from falling through the cracks even further. The best kind of UBI can be done on a community level, for newlyweds and new parents etc.

> As both sexes flooded the labor pool, wages got depressed, and marriage declined.

Corporations did not force both sexes to flood the labor pool. Women wanted (and fought) to gain the ability to be paid. To reduce their struggle and achievement as a “corporate conspiracy” is an insult.

Might businesses influence people’s decisions with marketing? Sure. But that is not why people yearn to be financially independent. People want to be financially independent so they can live life how they want to live it, and marry or date who they want to be with, and so on and so forth.

Insult or not, well-meaning movements are often hijacked and co-opted by corporations and governments. Women's lib is just one example.

People are often not given a choice, individually or even collectively. For example when Crimea overwhelmingly (94%) voted in 1991 to be independent of Ukraine, no one honored it. Then 6 months later they voted 54% for Ukraine to be independent of USSR, and that was taken as them wanting to be part of Ukraine. Then in 2014, the only choices given were be part of Ukraine, or be part of Russia. They never again got to vote for independence in a referendum, as Montenegro or Kosovo did. Kurds and Catalonians voted for independence in 2017, but none of that was honored. Uyghurs, Rohingya, Palestinians and many others are stateless. In short, people are usually just kicked around by whatever system the governments set up. And similarly with corporations, though it's more voluntary, it's still a system. As a young woman, to declare that you aspire to be a mother and homemaker, is something of an oddity and peer pressure is strong at formative young years. I wouldn't say most young people are really making "their own choices" statistically speaking, and in any case, the choices society has collectively made has led people psychologically to be more miserable across the board, and we are using medication as a way to treat the symptoms.

I could be wrong. Perhaps today's women are actually happier than their grandmothers ever were. But it doesn't seem to be borne out in the data. And I think it has to do with the labor market.

https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intel...

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-...

I should say that the USSR has enfranchised women much earlier than USA, and given them equal rights to jobs much earlier. It's hard to me to gauge whether people there were happier by the 1990s (fall of USSR) than people in USA are today (we may be reaching a breaking point here as well).

All of this is pretty obvious to anyone that takes some time to actually observe what is going on. But we are currently under a very strong political ideology that has replaced what was previously called a religion. You can't say those things and nobody will agree publicly (even if they think alike) until the whole thing falls appart...

To be honest it won't take much longer, because this system by itself creates poisonous inter sex competition that ensure a very low level of reproduction. The numbers are already in. So, either it gets replaced by alternative ways of organizing society (it's already somewhat happening in some places, the problem is the alternatives are a lot less nice) or some spark ignites a revolt that brings back some balance.

But from where I stand it's probably over already. Nobody seems to question having both sex/parents working (and often competing for the same job!) and women definitely do not want to take the breadwinner role after somewhat refusing the homemaker role. But that's very consistent with reality of interacting with women. In my opinion any society that start to listen to the infinite demands of women is doomed to failure. I don't have much to bet but so far, I'm winning...

The high levels of marriages were to large extend result of "women can't eally survive without a marriage, they need man to eat" and following "therefore single me are pressured into marriage cause someone needs to pay for them".

Not all of that was free choice.

Competition is not opt-in, especially when it's about scarce but required resources such as housing.

When the majority of households in the market became dual income, every single income family inevitably had to compete with them for housing as the prices for that have gone up to what the dual income families can afford to pay - and with that being a so large portion of most people's expenses, simply accepting 1950s (for example) living standards won't be sufficient to for a single income family to afford renting or buying a home in that city.

The whole pedophilia scare makes people suspicious by default of adult men in contact with non related small children. There's a great movie I recommend on that problem, The Hunt (2012): https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2106476/

The vast majority of child abusers are male and known to the child and family (not strangers), so there is some evidence behind the bias, I suppose.

All stereotypes grow from a kernel of some truth. Lets calculate.

- 80-90% of child abusers are male. (Lets use 90% further on).

- Us population is 330 million. (So half will be 165m male).

- It has 750 thousand registered sex offenders

Calculations:

- 750t * 0.9 = 675t male offenders; 675t / 165000t = 0.4% of male population in us are registered sex offenders. (1 out of 243 males).

- 750t * 0.1 = 75t female offenders; 75t / 165000t = 0.045% (1 out of 2200 females)

Caveats apply: not all are caught; these numbers are for all sex offender (I think it includes adult rapists and public urinators); distribution through society is not uniform, some occupations will be more “lucrative” for phedos.

The numbers are even worse when removing young boys.

I wonder what kind of impact removing priests from the statistics would have

37 thousand priests in us.

(675t-37t) / 165000t = 0.386% (1 out of 259)

>> Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children.

> There is now way you can pay for these kind of ratios.

As it turns out, 5:1 is the legal limit for pre-k (age < 3) daycares in most of Germany, and the average in 2020 was 4.1:1. For older kindergarten kids, it's roughly double.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betreuungsschl%C3%BCssel

The government seemingly pays about 40 billion EUR per year for pre-school childcare; participating parents, depending on their income, pay up to around 250 EUR a month (+50-100 EUR a month for meals). All of these figures are very rough, but should be in the right ballpark.

The ratios you mentioned are 1 caregiver for 5 children.

The ratios in the article for the societies they studied are 5 caregivers for 1 child.

Wow, okay, that hadn't even crossed my mind. I see your point, then.

Note that the 5 caregivers per 1 child also contains a chain of older children, each looking after one another.

You take those 5 kids, and put them in school from ages 5 to 22 or even 26, obviously, there is going to be a dearth of labor supply.

The gain is those older kids in school gain financial freedom (especially the girls) rather than having to take care of younger kids. But the cost is still coming into view (not that it isn’t worth it, but we are in for big changes).

I find that part of the article and the parallels drawn to nurseries in the UK (by one of the researchers apparently) quite weird. My understanding is that what is denoted caregiver in the article is quite different to a careperson in a nursery.

I don't think that a caregiver in the hunter gatherer society will exclusively watch one child only (and not all the time). I suspect more that they are available if needed.

If we look at the scientific article, it studied 18 children across 3 camps and the camps of 20-80 individuals. The article says children had often 10-20 caregivers, based on the 18 children that's a minimum of 180 adults. Assuming an average camp size of 50 that would mean more adults than living in the 3 camps.

So clearly caregivers are not exclusive which makes the whole comparison to child to adult ratio completely non-sensical IMO and I'm quite disappointed that researcher was tempted to make a comment in this way (to be fair, often journalists try to pull out a political angle in stories, in our communication training as researchers we were actually warned to be vary of this).

The article says children had often 10-20 caregivers, based on the 18 children that's a minimum of 180 adults.

i do not understand how you could even come up with that kind of interpretation. that caregivers are not exclusive in such a scenario should be obvious. how could it be any different? and no, it doesn't make the whole thing nonsensical. there is a qualitative difference when a child has many adult role models to choose from. it helps put the experience with their own parents in relation to how they experience other adults.

the point is not the absolute ratio of adults to children, but the number of adults each child has access to that they can learn something from. and that doesn't require any exclusivity.

I agree that the caregivers are not exclusive should be quite obvious, and yes having a lot of caregivers at different times would give the child a lot of rolemodels to choose from. The part I take issue with is:

> Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. In fact, regulations on adult-to-child ratios in early years settings have recently decreased for two-year-olds to one caregiver for five children—the opposite of what the researchers observed in the Mbendjele communities.

That is nonsensical. There is at best a very weak correlation between the adult-to-child ratios in nurseries and how many overall caregivers a child has and the ratio of children to one adult in a nursery is certainly not "the opposite" of the ratio of 5 "non-exclusive" adults to one child in the Mbendjele communities.

In fact it's quite conceivable that even in the Mbendjele communities for parts of the day 10 children might only be looked after by 2 adults, the same ratio as UK nurseries.

I feel like in lieu of spending money on research they could have just asked parents.

Basically every parent knows this. The difference between happiness and madness is having several babysitters on standby.

One of my favorite throwaway movie quotes -- from Annabelle (2013).

> Dad: Hey. You know what, you shouldn't even be watching that stuff. All right? It could upset the baby. There's new research out there...

> Mom: Oh, boy, more new research?

> Dad: It's true. They are learning that babies in utero... experience more of the outside world than they ever thought possible. They recognize voices and noises, songs.

> Mom: You know, I bet the men that did that research spent millions of dollars... when they could have just asked the mother for free.

A much more logical inference would have suggested that being surrounded with other individuals with familial ties is important, not others who are only there purely based on financial motives.

What the post implies about the article (which I haven't read) is that in some measurable way this increased attention results in children growing into functioning, balanced, effective, productive, balanced, adults whose presence and efforts contribute in a more positive way to their community... but this expected result is not mentioned. It is also implied by comparing it to "the West" where, of course, it is easy to find examples of today's youth behaving selfishly, destructively, and self-centeredly. But looking at the accompanying image... well, there doesn't seem to be many opportunities for deviant behaviour in the middle of the jungle! I will eventually read the article, in which I'm expecting to find that these people live longer, assert more confidence, happiness and contentment, within peaceful and harmonious communities (since _everyone_ has had 15 hours of care growing up).

> the researchers say that children may be "evolutionarily primed" to expect exceptionally high levels of physical contact and care,

This seems like garbage article with just one interesting line that's never further delved into.

A lot of attention given to the inadequacies of the nuclear family, but industrialization seems likely the reason we broke into nuclear families to begin with. Smaller family units could move to where the breadwinner needed to go, breaking up intergenerational communities. Funny how our mobility is greater than ever, yet somehow less able to stay together.

Is this generally true of hunter gatherer societies, especially those in temperate or arctic climates?

Most of our ancestors have been living in agricultural villages or pastoral camps for the last 50 or more generations, which is long enough to evolve adaptation to that lifestyle. Admittedly, urbanization is a quite recent and abnormal lifestyle.

That's an interesting observation. Studying "childcare" probably shouldn't focus as much on the difference between "city lifestyle" and "untouched by civilization" like whatever hunter-gatherer remains but between city and, God giveth, the still overly abundant (if not statistically the majority?) rural dwellers.

Where kids still spend most of their time around their parents, help with house chores, attend the garden and the animals etc.

Do we have to go that far back? Multi-generational living was much more common, in cities as well, just a few decades ago and made all this much easier.

https://open.substack.com/pub/woodfromeden/p/hell-is-other-p... similar conclusions from an author that I like

I wish the article mentioned the proportion of cries (or other metric such as time being held) answered by non-parents/older siblings. That's the more important figure than number of different caregivers (where 10 people each holding the baby for half an hour total would count).

Suburbanization is pretty much the exact opposite of hunter-gatherer life.

I'm not a big fan of suburbs but in no way did this trend begin with suburbs, nor are densely urban or sparsely rural areas close to the community model described in the article.

Speaking anecdotally from my own experience, having multiple caregivers may just increase the probability that the child can tell that at least one of them actually wants to be there.

It takes a whole village to raise a child?

"It takes a village to raise a child" is more than just an empty truism.

After a years of work, petabytes of data analysis and centuries of case study we know finally what's good for children care: a real family consist of mother, father, grandparents, siblings and friendly neighbors. It will be forgotten gieeber5as unimportant, mainly because AI hype does not follow such boring science...

> "For more than 95% of our evolutionary history we lived as hunter-gatherers. Therefore, contemporary hunter-gatherer societies can offer clues as to whether there are certain child-rearing systems to which infants, and their mothers, may be psychologically adapted,"

You can cherry pick anything that fits a narrative. This narrative advocates for more funding for state sponsored daycare, which does not resemble anything close to the 'caregiving' that was going on in hunter-gatherer communities.

I bet 95% of our evolutionary history also involved bashing in skulls over arguments regarding food or resources, mass rape, living in caves, and not wearing clothes. Should we return to that too? The difference between those things and the example given in the article? Fortune 500 companies don't get more workers. Big corporations can pass the buck to taxpayers to fund childcare. Naïve activists will promote this in the vein of 'womens rights' as if dumping your kid at a state sponsored daycare is empowering or something.

It could also be used to do away with the capitalist system for more anarchistic one and instead rely on community rather than on the state.

In any case it all points to the fact that the way our society is set up, is creating a lack of well-being among humanity.

Disagree with your last statement. We can each look back on our own childhoods and make a local and biased assessment. I loved my childhood and all of the experiences. I thank both the modern American social structure and my parents. Could it have been improved. Well sure, probably—but that is not an experiment I can run.

Interesting work but yes, trying to extrapolate to best courses of action for child care in technologically advanced cultures should not be the focus of the discussion.

Almost every epoch and population will have common and idiosyncratic features. Why not look back on child care 25, 50, 100, 200, 300, or 3000 years ago in any group/deme of humans? The variability will be striking even within any one population and will depend in large part on class structure, rank, and mean family size. Patterns of raising children will be all over physical, social, and behavioral maps.

The groups studied here are primarily forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers in the western Congo region—-what used to be referred to as Pygmy populations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_peoples).

Fascinating topic but not of much policy relevance.

You realize that off-loading overwhelmed parents even a bit is already a massive step in positive direction for literally everybody including companies and taxman, and kindergartens can help a lot.

You can be much happier and better parent when rested rather than being semi-constantly on the verge of breakdown. Who hasn't walked this valley with at least 2 kids can't really comprehend the topic appropriately. Apart maybe of those suffering long term insomnia combined with some serious stressors in their lives.

That would also be true if every family had a parent that mostly had free time. Then you just need to know more than one family in the world et voilà!

It would cost way less money to everyone, while allowing more diversity and more actual ressource to be used for the child instead of stupid bureaucracy...

But it looks like you are deep into communist propaganda, as if a third-party institution run by a government would be empowering anything instead of completely destroying everything, including the society it stands on...

No need for baseless insults, that's primitive behavior. I actually grew up under communism and hate it with passion since I saw first hand how it destroyed lives of my parents and grandparents. Something spoiled western kids with unbelievably easy life like apparently you will never comprehend.

Rest of your post doesn't make much sense, you clearly have no clue about topic discussed.

So, you actually admit that your viewpoint is clearly corrupted by communism! No matter how much you say you hate it, it is bound to leave marks in how you think.

So now that we have determined that I was actually spot on and that it wasn't an insult at all, we can deal with your insult; ironically you accuse me of insulting you and in the same sentence call me a primitive. Then you follow with insults on spoiled westen kid, yet you have no clue how much I had to work in my youth nor have any idea of how much collectivism I had to suffer. It turns out you do not need to live in a fully declared communist country to have a similar experience but since you do not want to understand and instead let your emotions talk, you cannot make that realization.

If there is primitive behavior in this conversation, it is you unable to handle the emotions caused by the truth.

I am sorry you were hurt by my words but it doesn't seem like you are still defending communist ideals even though you are out of it. Not surprising, Stockholm syndrome and all that...

I hate those types of "research" that base all their "findings" on observation of what is undesirable primitive living. What's more they don't even meaningfully quantify what can be qualified as neglect or abuse.

My opinion as well as my own experience is that those children are far more likely to be subjected to much higher levels of abuse and neglect in this type of situation. As someone who has been neglected by his parents very early in life, and been given to be taken care of by various family members/friends/institutions I cannot wish this for anyone. You will forever wear a feeling of abandonment and insecurity that is unfixable. That someone seriously pushes this as a valid method for raising kids is beyond ridiculous and just shows how disconnected from reality modern "researcher" can be.

It also entirely removes the principle of responsibility in reproduction. We are conscientious animals and we have a responsibility to not reproduce if it is suboptimal to do so. The problems we face right now as a species are precisely because we created a system that removed many of the problems preventing too large reproduction but without also enforcing full responsibility (without the modern support system the sentence would be death).

I get pissed off at all of this nonsense modern take. We had a system; it was working pretty well. In fact, it successfully kickstarted the industrial revolution and continued until relatively recently. Then feminism happened and suddenly nothing works. Women are the only one biologically able to create new humans and they have all the necessary toolkit to grow them to maturity; up to the point they are ready and stable as humans to be able to learn and collaborate with others. But we destroyed all that, following dangerous ideologies that distort reality. And now we going to "fix it" by going back to primitive behavior. I guess that's a way to go full circle, no very efficient, but that's a way alright...

> We had a system; it was working pretty well. In fact, it successfully kickstarted the industrial revolution

You mean like when both parents worked 12 hours a day 6 days a week and 3-4 years old roamed streets in little gangs? Older siblings and other relatives worked those 12 plus hours a day too.

That was industrial revolution and actual situation. In Germany, it led to kindergartens - you know so that 4 years olds have a place to go to.

I’ve been down this alley. No-one will understand you.

Now I just moved back to being a normal person seemingly integrated and all in favour of feminism and all this shit, and I just laugh internally every time a woman tells me “I have been raped.” In my city, they add “But don’t tell anyone, it will make people racist.” Every. Single. Time. Ahh, it’s already bad enough that I know several of them.

Not very healthy, but you have to admit that you can’t do anything about it, they’re not asking you for advice before they do it. So just take that popcorn and move on. Kids being disenfranchised? Kids abandoned? Needing state benefits for studies because they only have a single monster as a parent? Cousin getting mugged on the street? Throwing away a perfectly working system? Promoting the criminals while abandoning the adorable pupils?

Take some distance. You can’t do anything. And if you promote the good thing, they’ll take revenge upon you. People actually want all of those quirks in the system.

Criminality is historically pretty low now. So is interpersonal violence including domestic violence and rapes.

Well, I know people try very hard to not understand. So, they don't have to feel concerned and actually do stuff to fix it. That's how people are generally, let's just ignore everything until the house is on fire...

But that doesn't make it much less frustrating. And to be honest there are more and more people understanding my view in between words telling me their stories and ultimately agreeing. I have to say that is somewhat necessary because otherwise it makes you feel crazy for being the only one that can see. Like giant permanent gaslighting...

And yeah, people are still delusional but the stats keep telling the same story. At some point we are going to run out of prison and benefits for single moms I guess...

Is single motherhood still the bogeyman as during the era of 90s entitlement reform? In these times when the younger generations are having less and less sex, much less getting pregnant? You might as well be complaining about Cadillac driving welfare queens.

i am sorry for your experience. i can relate to a degree. my first thought when reading "given to be taken care of by various family members" was: at least you had family members who cared for you (as in showed you loving care). i didn't even have that. (except for my grandmother who was to far away to see her more than once a year) on the other hand i didn't develop a feeling of abandonment and i came out of the experience with extreme independence and strong self confidence. my brother wasn't so lucky.

however on second reading i had to realize that i can't judge the quality of care that you did get. likely it may have been worse than anything i had to go through. again, i am sorry for that.

the common point though is that we both had something missing when growing up. for me it took decades to understand what what missing and more importantly how that affected me.

but most importantly, neither your nor my experience have anything to do with the experience described in the article. the key difference is that while the children in the article have many caregivers, and possibly spend a lot of time away from their parents, they didn't get any feeling of abandonment from them.

your experience is something entirely different, and rejecting the living arrangements described in the article is the wrong conclusion. that your parents abandoned you had nothing to do with the community you were in. that community didn't make them do that.

my parents couldn't show love because of the experience they had growing up during and right after the second world war, having to flee approaching armies and then living in a destroyed city giving them an experience that is hard to imagine.

in my case, living closer to grandparents and cousins would have made a big difference. i was able to make up for the shortfall by finding a loving and caring partner. my brother needed therapy.

As much as I welcome more actual science on this topic, I don't think the words 'new key' are at all justified here (and they aren't used in tfa).

New to some WEIRD nuclear families maybe, but not actually new or surprising.

What‘s a weird nuclear family?

That’s the mode of operation. Without grand parents it gets harder. Single parents have it the hardest.

Relationships to neighbors are not that deep.

WEIRD = Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic

Imo it’s a derogatory term people in … alternative circles, like to use.

Is "alternative circles" also a derogatory term?

I'm guessing the term is supposed to point out the idea that what we think of as normal is actually not.

Except it is normal to have a nuclear family?

https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publicatio...

It’s actually more common in the rest of the world than Europe and the US. It’s kind of crazy to say it’s WEIRD to expect nuclear families, when it’s the west that is the least likely (still the majority have nuclear families).

It was invented by Western psychologists upon discovering that the results of their experiments on Western psychology students did not, after all, generalise to results that were applicable to all humans.

If you’re hanging round in circles that use it as a derogatory term, you’re hanging round in the wrong circles.

The title had to be shortened - 'new' was the best I could think of. But it can be justified I think, both in relation to the gist of the article and the original title. If this was well established knowledge that that is new to me at least, albeit not really surprising, admittedly.

(tfa? I couldn't get a hit on that acronym anywhere)

TFA is "the fucking article".

> (tfa? I couldn't get a hit on that acronym anywhere)

“the fucking article”

I recommend using urban dictionary if a generic search doesn’t yield a result that makes any sense.

ah, thanks. Did try UD but it didn't show up for me on the first nor second page.

edit: seems I missed the top entry!

Interesting. First result for me.

I wonder if they adjust search results by geo.

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