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Comment by rodgerd | Hacker News Reader

> the component that is getting lost in our culture, which in other cultures is still more present is that grandparents play an active role in helping the young parents to raise their children. in chinese culture for example the young couple moves in with the husbands parents, and so grandparents are always around to give advice and help.

That's great if the grandparents are good people. Not so much if they aren't.

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This retort is true of literally everything involved in raising kids.

Substitute "parents" "preschool teachers" "sports coach" &c. for "grandparents" in the sentence and it's still true for the domain for the children. It's true that with grandparents you have a maximum of 4 to choose from, but you might not have more than 4 preschools to choose from either.

The best part about being a mature parent is that you have much more control over how you raise your kids. No way in hell did I ever trust teachers, grandparents, coaches, etc. over my actual parents.

My parents were in their 30s when I was born. Their skepticism not only decoupled them from depending on people they didn't trust, but their perspective rubbed off on me and set me up for success. Older parents have no problem showing their kids the reality of the world early on.

Individualism is not a bad thing at all if only you could convince all these people stuck in the past. This world will fall apart if we don't focus on higher quality parenting from the actual parents. Since long ago we've been saying we don't want "kids raising kids". My parents weren't the only ones thinking this way.

Arguably you can chose other teachers and coaches and daycare

You have up to 4 grandparents to choose from (in the case where all 4 are still living, but separated).

What about crappy parents?

Exactly. That's the distinction. While you can chose other people in most roles for your kids, you cannot pick their grandparents.

Additionally, in generational cycles where you can maintain or exceed your parent's class status without moving away.

Whole swaths of the US don't have enough good jobs to maintain a middle class lifestyle for kids of middle class parents.

And parents are working longer as well, meaning that overlap is less likely to happen.

I went to my grandparents every Wednesday. My mom just retired, my kids are 12 and I didn't have kids until my 30s.

There's so much about life that has changed the fabric of families in the last few decades

you can't choose your parents obviously, but having parents so bad that you don't want them in your life is not the norm. you have my sympathies if that is your experience.

for most people the problem is not that they don't want their parents around, but that the parents don't feel like helping as much as their kids would need it. and here the culture makes a difference.

my wife was not her mothers favorite. girls in china were always treated as secondary. and according to their tradition we should have been living with my parents. they favored their son and his wife in everything, and yet they did what they could to help their daughter, because that is simply what what grandparents in china do regardless of how well they relate to each other.

but in our culture it's not, and whether grandparents are willing to help varies a lot, and it depends on the relationship to their kids

> That's great if the grandparents are good people. Not so much if they aren't.

This is specious. If they are particularly awful, their kid probably won't want anything to do with them raising his/her kids.

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