How to deal with your kid leaving | Hacker News Reader

How to deal with your kid leaving

buttondown.com

23 pointsTomte10 comments

It feels sad because it goes against human instinct. In hunter gatherer groups people generally didn’t leave, and when they did leave (because the band got too big) I think they generally fractured voluntarily along bilateral sentiment lines (because why wouldn’t they, what are such sentiments for after all).

Which isn’t to say that we should prevent it in our own lives today, because we do live in a society. But I think it’s worth reflecting on how the structure of today’s society prevents the formation of larger kin groups.

To the child it feels less sad because the parent is basically a sort of captor, who is implicitly forced to mold the child to the behaviors required by society and the child generally holds some level of grudge, often subconscious, against the parent for the actions that are taken to do this to them (such as forcing them to live inside a box and suppress a large variety of natural instincts from early childhood on, among other things).

I might be wrong, but IIRC in other animal species as well as in humans, individuals generally do leave when pairing—either females joining the male's tribe (many hunter-gatherer societies) or vice versa (e.g., baboons).

That’s fair. I have read that also, but I have some skepticism that what we’ve seen in extant hunter gatherers there represents a universal instinctive practice in hunter gatherer humans.

As the mating pool grows and includes more genetic variation, the propagation penalty for non-obvious genetic defects decreases because feature breakages are mitigated by reinforcement from the pool.

In a small and relatively homogenous mating pool (let’s say a band cluster with some non-zero interband genetic flow velocity), a genetic feature breakage that does not get filtered out by sexual selection or consistent early death will be extremely harmful to the group and could kill it or cause it to be outcompeted by neighbor clusters. However, in a large scale society, a breakage in an individual is likely not also in the mate, so the breakage can persist as a recessive without causing consistent damage.

So, if an extant hunter gatherer group has any substantial mixture with or heritage from any group that was ever living in a large scale society with a large mating pool, we would expect them to face a problem of recessive diseases from this source and an appropriate response would be intermarriage.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t other potential sources of recessive diseases, but I do believe the observations of extant hunter gatherer groups is likely corrupted by this vis a vis true ancestral human behavior.

There are also other reasons why interband mating could be advantageous as a social cooperation strategy within the band network, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect that to be so universal that it would be baked into instinct, and it seems like it isn’t based on how people feel in similar situations today.

Beyond this, even if that was universal (which it could be), that would be like half your children moving in with your cousin’s family in the next neighborhood over, in exchange for a similar number of your cousin’s children coming to you. Not really much like what happens today.

Man, this hurts to read. I feel like I had the exact same situations with my parents that the author had with their parents and I just wish that mine had acted like the author does with their own children. I don't know if I'll ever have my own children to be a better parent than my own were and it seems increasingly unlikely each year. Oh well, world's going to hell in a handbasket anyways. Probably for the better.

My honest answer is pray for them twice a day and do call them everyday just to tell them you are there for them and in you they will have a constant friend, and supporter. Because young people go through a lot of sadness too when they are all alone in the world. I personally converse to my parents like I am / or they are writing a diary. It has worked well. We haven't lost touch and we pick up right away when we meet. But physical loss is really hurting. Prayer will definitely mellow down the mourning and will give positivity to the whole situation.

>do call them everyday just to tell them you are there for them

You need to also respect their space. They are becoming their own person and don't necessarily want to hear from their parents every day. Be available if they want to call, but not pushy if they don't.

Yeah no kidding. When I moved out I would have lost my mind if my parents had called me every day. I would have been screening their calls like crazy

I love my parents and I call them fairly often, but holy crap. Every day would be way too much

> Because young people go through a lot of sadness too when they are all alone in the world.

They aren't alone in the world. They are building and living their own lives with their own friends and eventually creating their own family.

> in you they will have a constant friend

Parents need to be parents, not friends.

I'm 45, and my parents have been 2 of my best friends for about 15 years now. Probably not a coincidence that this corresponds to when I started having my own kids. I call and check in several times per week, even if it is just "hey, what did you guys have for dinner?". I hope my own kids, the oldest of whom is a year away from college, eventually feel like they can and want to do this too.

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