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Comment by WarOnPrivacy | Hacker News Reader

"People would like to have a house that's large enough for their family and access to good employment."

"Over the last 50 years, America has kind of told them, 'You can't have both'."

I'd go past that and say you probably can't have a home over 3 bedrooms without already being in an upper income bracket.

So no large families (to offset population challenges). No extended families to help the existing family. No space to help relatives relocate.

No homes for four income earners in a 4-income economy.

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> So no large families (to offset population challenges).

There are lots of reasons we're not having large families, but this doesn't seem like one of them. Average family size has shrunk dramatically while houses have gotten bigger. Lots of familes of 6 or more shared 1000-sqft bungalows in the past, with 2 or 3 kids in a room, so this doesn't jive.

In the 1800s, it was commonplace to have 8 children. Did they all lived in huge houses?

No but the living conditions were atrocious, dangerous, unsanitary, and probably quite psychologically traumatizing (e.g. kids growing up in households where adults would have sex in the same room have all sorts of problems)

Edit: Since HN contrarians who'd never want their children living in some particular conditions find it so confusing how others might not too:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01452...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3805127/

Overcrowded living quarters is a well known vector for a huge array of problems. Academic underachievement, sexual abuse, substance abuse, mood disorders, abusive relationships, the list goes on. Even after controlling for socioeconomic status!

  … traumatizing (e.g. kids growing up in households where adults would have sex in the same room have all sorts of problems

Sure, to my western/puritanical upbringing that is weird, but I suspect for the majority of human history: parents have being having sex in very close proximity to their children. Separate bedrooms, even separate beds are a modern luxury.

The issue is that we raise kids into this world, and not a different time and place. They grow up to be maladapted to this world.

You are suggesting it’s maladapted if they go and do the same thing in their own families later? Why should they care about what the majority thinks is good and normal?

Because if you need to spend time in a classroom, or a workplace, or form romantic relationships, it's important that you have attitudes that are somewhat in line with meaningful portions of the society around you. Obviously.

i always drag this one out: For a lot of modern history, public hangings were a family affair. Pack up a picnic and go downtown to watch a man hang.

Yes, and that was bad. If you prefer a society free of violence (I do), then exposing people to violence in their daily life is bad.

> If you prefer a society free of violence

I would prefer to ride a Unicorn to work. This is pure fantasy. There will always be human violence. Preparing children for it is a lost art in sections of the world.

In many civilized/industrialized places, these children (sometimes already matured) are immediately traumatized or pretend it is of no consequence through various rationalizations. It's a cycle that repeats in throughout history.

We’re currently witnessing what happens when people who know violence works encounter people who think vibes and peaceful protest are effective. I think kids would do well to understand that violence is part of life and how to handle (or use) it.

I think this is about as well as this can be said--failing to teach kids about bad stuff about humanity isn't protecting them, it's failing them.

My wife grew up in a very sheltered church environment where everyone at school and in her life pretty much followed the rules. It didn’t teach her how to handle real life and the real world was a rude awakening.

Similarly my older relatives keep saying “but they can’t do that!” About a lot of what’s happening in the US without realising that they very much can. Because nobody is physically stopping them. The exception is my grandfather, who is an honest guy but says he got in some fights in his navy days and ended up better for it.

Maybe we need to bring back superheroes who beat the shit out of the bad guys.

I want my own daughters to know how to protect themselves with diplomacy-or- violence if the former fails.

> Maybe we need to bring back superheroes who beat the shit out of the bad guys.

Superheroes don't exist and never have. People who work tirelessly to chip away -- often imperceptibly -- at sources of badness exist. That's it.

I meant the fictional characters.

Is public hanging "teaching kids about bad stuff?"

No.

There's at least a little space between "a world free of violence" and "public hanging".

I said we should want a world free of violence, and not purposely exposing people to violence as a matter of daily life (such as public hangings) is an important step towards that. Both in the direct sense that public violence is obviously violence, and indirectly in that there's good evidence that exposure to violence increases proclivity to violence.

Two simple questions:

1. Do we want a world without violence?

2. If yes, is public hanging a step towards that world, or away from it?

1. I don't think this is possible. I think it's better to pursue a world where violence is unnecessary and aberrant.

2. I'm refusing to indulge your strawman. Let's use something like "is teaching your kid how to deal with bullies a step towards that world or away from it"

> I don't think this is possible. I think it's better to pursue a world where violence is unnecessary and aberrant.

I didn't say it was possible. I said it's worth striving for, and then you stated the same thing with different words. We agree.

Ah so you think societies that did public hangings tended to have a strong and reasonable sense of justice.

You are wrong.

Justice in the sense of "punishing people who are legitimately antisocial" tends to yield less indulgent punishments because they recognize that true justice must be dealt cold and with solemnity.

Or do you think it's only a coincidence that the most abhorrent justice systems on the planet do public executions and "civilized" justice systems do not?

I think we're talking past each other so I'm bowing out.

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/deterren...

Sounds good

There will never be a world without violence. The minute such a world existed, bad people would realize they could conquer it.. through violence. And as someone who was raised by parents who were kind and goodhearted and thought flower power and peaceful protest was how things changed I discovered the real world is, in fact, a good deal more cruel than the bubble they raised me in.

Spoken like someone who lives in the least violent era of human history.

Does the fact that you can't ride a unicorn to work compel you to settle for walking 7 miles barefoot? Or is the sensible thing to do to constantly chip away at sources of badness in the world, even if you can't achieve unicorns?

It cracks me up how you try to assert the "realist" position while holding an opinion that only makes sense in a university ethics course. Public hangings don't "prepare" a child for a world with non-zero levels of violence, obviously. Living 4 adults and 8 children to a single-room household doesn't "prepare" a child for anything you'd willingly sign them up to do.

Bad things are bad. They should be avoided. You actually think this too and will take action to avoid most bad things that you can. But alas, the Internet comment box is here for you to wisely consider: Maybe bad things are not bad. Very smart, lol.

> then exposing people to violence in their daily life is bad

Oh my god yes, and we’re doing such a great job of that aren’t we? We have gratuitous violence on demand now.

Public hangings are fine compared to what I see on TV/Netflix.

[flagged]

They don't care about people being desensitized to violence. Need a new generation of soldiers, after all.

But sex? Other people being able to see sexual depictions literally gets people's panties in a twist.

> but I suspect for the majority of human history: parents have being having sex in very close proximity to their children.

Putting aside how true such a claim is... just because something was a thing for most of human history doesn't mean it doesn't cause issues.

> just because something was a thing for most of human history doesn't mean it doesn't cause issues

I suspect they had far more important things to worry about - like getting enough food.

One can have more than one problem.

If children were traumatized by witnessing their parents having sex, I expect the human race would have failed millennia ago.

I'm not sure I follow your logic.

Do you think that rape and slavery is also not going to affect people? Because those were both pretty prevalent in most of human history too, yet here the human race is - alive, with different views on those things as we did in the past.

Are you really comparing rape and slavery to seeing your parents having sex?

Are you really comparing a living arrangement where adults regularly have sex in front of you due to overcrowding to "seeing your parents having sex?"

You can be traumatized and carry on with life. For example, your terrible arguments in this thread are traumatizing me, and I'm somehow soldiering on. Satan give me strength, oh dark lord.

I am well pleased that my arguments are traumatizing you!

Your boos mean nothing; I've seen what makes you cheer! :p

Everything is traumatizing to these people. Their mother told them to hold the bottle for their baby sister. Oh no, what is this? Is this Parentification, the Source of More Trauma? Despite the fact that the elder sibling would prefer to sleep, perchance to dream-- and there lies the rub! For in that sleep, what trauma comes!

Do you want your kids to grow up in a single-room household with 4 adults and 8 children?

If this were the only way they would exist, then it would not stop me from bringing them into being. My ancestors made the right choice. I will not deny my genetics their legacy.

If I choose other conditions, it’s not because of trauma but because comfort is good.

Right, you prefer other conditions because they're better.

We have decades of research to show that more space and privacy is not merely a matter of comfort. Or, if it is, that "comfort" affects more things than one would expect.

I've already linked to them above.

I grew up in conditions you would never countenance and I’m incredibly well adjusted. What value are your systems when they lead to your trauma. You are constantly traumatized and I am not, despite facing conditions you could not believe.

Either I am inherently an übermensch or my methods are better. You have your loneliness epidemics, your PTSD, and your therapy. I don’t.

Or to put it evocatively:

https://x.com/pjayevans/status/1612904509575139328?s=46

This would be an excellent rebuttal to the claim that everyone who experiences a specific type of hardship later has a specific outcome.

But for the claim you're responding to, this appears to mostly just be some cringey self-aggrandizement?

I was born in 1964 in the midwest US, the 7th out of 8 children. The house was a two story brick structure with five bedrooms and two bathrooms. The house was less than 2000 sq ft, but that included a moldy basement with seepage and jackposts all over the place helping support the sagging joists, so the real living space was closer to 2/3 of that, so 1350 sq ft or so.

The house had been built before 1920 when expectations were less grand; those rooms were much smaller than nearly any home I've been in built after 1980. When my grandpa came to visit each summer, it meant all five boys in one room, the two youngest in sleeping bags and occasionally getting stepped on in the middle of the night when one of my older brothers would get up and forget we were there.

There was also no air conditioning, nor ceiling fans. My parents had a box fan in their bedroom window during the summer. It was a big deal when the bedroom I shared with my next older brother got a box fan too; that was in high school.

I grew up in the 90s and I agree: I shared a room with my older brother until high school.

We shared EVERYTHING. And strangely, it didn't kill us! In fact: it just motivated us to go to sports and clubs and stay out of the house.

Obviously less extreme, but I do not understand this "every child must have their own room" thing. They don't! And I grew up in an incredibly poor rural area, imagine living in a city where there was actual shit to do.

If you grew up in the zero-interest (or close to it) rates era your parents were likely to have shown you an unrealistic financed lifestyle where everyone could have a big house, several cars and their own room.

The only thing I can say (having been born in 1988, sharing a slightly smaller house with 4 siblings), is that that sounds reasonable.

We all shared rooms and had less than a few square meters to ourselves. It was fine. People these days are too attached to the idea they need massive homes to live their lives.

bunkbeds is how I grew up

we had loft beds. three kids in one room. each one with a bed and a desk and a small wardrobe underneath. those 2m², or rather those 4m³ were my personal space. the whole room was no larger than 12m².

> In the 1800s, it was commonplace to have 8 children. Did they all lived in huge houses?

This is a bit of segue from where we were. To brings us more in line with the topic: In the early 20th century, large and extended families lived in commonly built row housing.

Their roomier accommodations were one piece of communities that were more affordable and an overall better fit for larger groups & families (than modern housing and communities).

A counter anecdote to all of the others: My father’s parents owned a 3 story house in Ohio, with 8 rooms and a basement. The second/third floor were intended to be rented out if you weren’t using them I guess.

I always found this extraordinary because they certainly weren’t rich. I grew up in a 1200sqft house fwiw lol

How about people who lived in igloos, tepees, and mud huts? Did they have separate bedrooms for the kids? I seriously doubt that was an issue for them.

There are, you might imagine, other factors involved. Infant and child mortality were super high, but kids were an important source of labor, so people worked to have lots. There was no real birth control or sex ed. Marital rape wasn't a concept. Cultural pressure to have children was stronger than it is now. Etc etc etc.

There are plenty of laws on the books that make it even harder, you can't have mixed genders of children sleeping in the same room, limits to how many can sleep in the same room, and many more.

Less than 1% of houses are accessible and that is a problem with aging boomers, SIL bought a home near parents to support them but when the stroke and dementia hit, the parents couldn't move in because no bedroom and only a powder room on the main floor, and they couldn't make it up/down the stairs anymore, and the parents house was too small to move into.

Lots of ways to get money from the table.

Reference please. I'm not aware of any state or federal law that prohibits mixed gender children from sharing a room in a private residence (foster care and other institutional situations do have regulations).

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