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Many posts raising objections to this obviously non-scientific article seem to be falling victim to motivated reasoning. Parents these days are stressed, two b

Many posts raising objections to this obviously non-scientific article seem to be falling victim to motivated reasoning. Parents these days are stressed, two breadwinner families are the norm, adding child rearing to this is asking two people to do the work of three. Overworked parents would rather shoot the messenger proclaiming that they could / should have put more thought and energy into their kids' upbringing. It's an uncomfortable idea that the thing that has been sacrificed to maintain our two car lifestyle lies somewhere between our child's ears.

kurthr 4y ago
True and that's seen in many societies. It's a huge cause of the falling birth rate. Many parents simply don't have the resources to raise multiple children.
- simonh 4y ago
  Are you seriously implying that the average family in the developed world nowadays is more impoverished than their grandparents? We have the resources, but we choose to devote them to other priorities. It's the two car lifestyle bit that's the issue. But frankly in past generations for the vast majority investment in the education and development of children was almost non-existent. treating children seriously and investing in their development was a luxury only a few could afford, and only a tiny few of them bothered to do so. Nowadays with universal public education the base level of education of most children is orders of magnitude better resourced, but of course still fairly generic. We just don't bother to add much on top of that, mostly.
  - mihaic 4y ago
    Better or worse than before is a useless debate. While abundance has increased, so have the burdens on the parent. Both of them have to get jobs, there's no longer a grandmother in the house to help with the cooking and cleaning, the community is more individualistic so you can't just have someone watch out for your child for a couple hours. And on top of that the constant app distractions that keep you from focusing on your children create a completely different set of challenges than what our grandparents had.
    - simonh 4y ago
      Those are all choices, not imposed limits.
      - mihaic 4y ago
        Why do you say they are choices? You can't choose to have other grandparents or choose that your society behaves in a certain way. At best you can move to another location, but that means losing your family's presence. These were the default previously and no choice was needed.
      - haswell 4y ago
        Setting aside that one does not choose the circumstances of their birth, the point is that these choices are more and more “expensive” with time. The tradeoffs involved look very little like the family dynamics prevalent not very long ago. Reducing this to “choices” ignores the cultural reality surrounding those choices, and obscures that while they may not be bounded by hard imposed limits, they’re still effectively limits for many people.
      - nhchris 4y ago
        We can talk about "choice" for an individual. But when it's hundreds of millions of people in a society overwhelmingly "choosing" the same thing, it becomes more useful to talk about causes, about how society is structured to reward some choices and punish others. For example, do you think the US has an obesity problem and Japan doesn't because, by pure chance, there are far more people who "choose" to eat unhealthy in the US?
        simonh 4y ago
        > how society is structured to reward some choices and punish others Who is gong to punish you for spending more time with your kids, introducing them to interesting people, maybe hiring tutors, even home schooling? People in our society today do all of those things. Nobody punishes them. The discourse around this is veering into the fantastical. We’re human beings in free societies. We get to choose. It’s as though a lot of the commenters here, members of some of freest and most prosperous societies that have ever existed, have somehow managed to completely abandon the concept of individual responsibility.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    Clearly, things are vastly improved according to measures like deaths in childbirth, number of flatscreen TVs, and availability of internet access! On the other hand - a lot of the benefits of increased productivity from more women entering the workforce have gone to skyrocketing costs in the housing, healthcare and higher education sectors. Imagine a game where every adult earns the same wage, there are 10 homes for rent and 11 families bidding on them. The equilibrium would be all adults in all families working, as they couldn't make rent without it.
  - Dudeman112 4y ago
    >the average family in the developed world nowadays is more impoverished than their grandparents? The "resource" for raising multiple children in their grandparents' world was a stay-at-home mother The resource for raising multiple children now is tons of cash
    - jojobas 4y ago
      Both my grandmothers worked and/or studied while bringing up my parents. So did my wifes' and pretty much everyone in that generation that I know of. They didn't travel or party much that's for sure.
      - anthlax 4y ago
        Good to hear about your family! Is this supported by macro trends?
        jojobas 4y ago
        It was USSR, there was no concept of a housewife. Labour participation was about equal for men and women (i.e. excluded students and pensioners).
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- jojobas 4y ago
  > Many parents choose to travel, party, buy a Mustang or a fancy bag. FTFY People with least resources breed most. At least among the middle class income range, extra money don't cause extra children. People choose "better life" in lieu of procreation.
komali2 4y ago
It can be a lot easier if resources are more pooled. Society has decided as a whole to adopt isolating philosophies and lifestyles but small groups can reject this and form communes. I know many people raising children in groups like this, and their quality of life is so much higher than friends who chose the "traditional" American lifestyle of a nuclear family I struggle to understand how the nuclear family idea wasn't laughed out of the room the first time someone tried it (it's definitely a new idea, even in my white bread swedish Midwest heritage. I hear stories from my grandparents about how larger families used to live together to raise kids, working with neighbors and etc). The hard part is of course finding people with roughly the same child raising values as you and your partner, but then again, is that that much harder than finding a life romantic partner with roughly the same child raising values as you? I think most people don't even do that, in my experience a lot of people and couples are totally winging it and marriages occur out of convenience or necessity.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Small groups sticking around for generations is what you find in rural areas, because the surrounding environment is conducive to it. Urban environments have always been population sinks throughout history, and the modern age has only made this even more apparent.
wainstead 4y ago
Had to look up “motivated reasoning”… https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199756223/obo-9780199756223-0237.xml https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-97...
civilized 4y ago
What's a two car lifestyle? Seems like it's important to your argument but I don't know what it is.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > What's a two car lifestyle? A pretty decent example of motivated reasoning by someone complaining about someone else's motivated reasoning.
  - HlessClaudesman 4y ago
    It's motivated reasoning all the way down.
- HlessClaudesman 4y ago
  I'm referring to a family needing two cars to get to their two jobs. The second income may be significantly less than the primary, but full time hours are the same. Based on my own back of the envelope not at all scientific or Bayesian adjusted maths, that second income gets largely swallowed up in things like car repayments and child care. When you also factor in possible detrimental effects on a child's development, this way we have constructed society seems to me like a fool's bargain.
  - civilized 4y ago
    Okay, that's what I was guessing, but it's confusing because even in a traditional family with a breadwinner and a stay-at-home spouse, you often need two cars to get the breadwinner to work and the spouse to... well, anywhere outside the home, kids' activities etc. The two car lifestyle in America is about sprawl and bad urban planning. All that aside, my family is doing something like you're describing. We do come out ahead but not by much. Some women genuinely want to work outside the home, and the kids are at school anyway.

kurthr 4y ago

True and that's seen in many societies. It's a huge cause of the falling birth rate. Many parents simply don't have the resources to raise multiple children.

simonh 4y ago
Are you seriously implying that the average family in the developed world nowadays is more impoverished than their grandparents? We have the resources, but we choose to devote them to other priorities. It's the two car lifestyle bit that's the issue. But frankly in past generations for the vast majority investment in the education and development of children was almost non-existent. treating children seriously and investing in their development was a luxury only a few could afford, and only a tiny few of them bothered to do so. Nowadays with universal public education the base level of education of most children is orders of magnitude better resourced, but of course still fairly generic. We just don't bother to add much on top of that, mostly.
- mihaic 4y ago
  Better or worse than before is a useless debate. While abundance has increased, so have the burdens on the parent. Both of them have to get jobs, there's no longer a grandmother in the house to help with the cooking and cleaning, the community is more individualistic so you can't just have someone watch out for your child for a couple hours. And on top of that the constant app distractions that keep you from focusing on your children create a completely different set of challenges than what our grandparents had.
  - simonh 4y ago
    Those are all choices, not imposed limits.
    - mihaic 4y ago
      Why do you say they are choices? You can't choose to have other grandparents or choose that your society behaves in a certain way. At best you can move to another location, but that means losing your family's presence. These were the default previously and no choice was needed.
    - haswell 4y ago
      Setting aside that one does not choose the circumstances of their birth, the point is that these choices are more and more “expensive” with time. The tradeoffs involved look very little like the family dynamics prevalent not very long ago. Reducing this to “choices” ignores the cultural reality surrounding those choices, and obscures that while they may not be bounded by hard imposed limits, they’re still effectively limits for many people.
    - nhchris 4y ago
      We can talk about "choice" for an individual. But when it's hundreds of millions of people in a society overwhelmingly "choosing" the same thing, it becomes more useful to talk about causes, about how society is structured to reward some choices and punish others. For example, do you think the US has an obesity problem and Japan doesn't because, by pure chance, there are far more people who "choose" to eat unhealthy in the US?
      - simonh 4y ago
        > how society is structured to reward some choices and punish others Who is gong to punish you for spending more time with your kids, introducing them to interesting people, maybe hiring tutors, even home schooling? People in our society today do all of those things. Nobody punishes them. The discourse around this is veering into the fantastical. We’re human beings in free societies. We get to choose. It’s as though a lot of the commenters here, members of some of freest and most prosperous societies that have ever existed, have somehow managed to completely abandon the concept of individual responsibility.
- michaelt 4y ago
  Clearly, things are vastly improved according to measures like deaths in childbirth, number of flatscreen TVs, and availability of internet access! On the other hand - a lot of the benefits of increased productivity from more women entering the workforce have gone to skyrocketing costs in the housing, healthcare and higher education sectors. Imagine a game where every adult earns the same wage, there are 10 homes for rent and 11 families bidding on them. The equilibrium would be all adults in all families working, as they couldn't make rent without it.
- Dudeman112 4y ago
  >the average family in the developed world nowadays is more impoverished than their grandparents? The "resource" for raising multiple children in their grandparents' world was a stay-at-home mother The resource for raising multiple children now is tons of cash
  - jojobas 4y ago
    Both my grandmothers worked and/or studied while bringing up my parents. So did my wifes' and pretty much everyone in that generation that I know of. They didn't travel or party much that's for sure.
    - anthlax 4y ago
      Good to hear about your family! Is this supported by macro trends?
      - jojobas 4y ago
        It was USSR, there was no concept of a housewife. Labour participation was about equal for men and women (i.e. excluded students and pensioners).
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
jojobas 4y ago
> Many parents choose to travel, party, buy a Mustang or a fancy bag. FTFY People with least resources breed most. At least among the middle class income range, extra money don't cause extra children. People choose "better life" in lieu of procreation.

komali2 4y ago

It can be a lot easier if resources are more pooled. Society has decided as a whole to adopt isolating philosophies and lifestyles but small groups can reject this and form communes. I know many people raising children in groups like this, and their quality of life is so much higher than friends who chose the "traditional" American lifestyle of a nuclear family I struggle to understand how the nuclear family idea wasn't laughed out of the room the first time someone tried it (it's definitely a new idea, even in my white bread swedish Midwest heritage. I hear stories from my grandparents about how larger families used to live together to raise kids, working with neighbors and etc). The hard part is of course finding people with roughly the same child raising values as you and your partner, but then again, is that that much harder than finding a life romantic partner with roughly the same child raising values as you? I think most people don't even do that, in my experience a lot of people and couples are totally winging it and marriages occur out of convenience or necessity.

zozbot234 4y ago
Small groups sticking around for generations is what you find in rural areas, because the surrounding environment is conducive to it. Urban environments have always been population sinks throughout history, and the modern age has only made this even more apparent.

wainstead 4y ago

Had to look up “motivated reasoning”… https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199756223/obo-9780199756223-0237.xml https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-97...

civilized 4y ago

What's a two car lifestyle? Seems like it's important to your argument but I don't know what it is.

rootusrootus 4y ago
> What's a two car lifestyle? A pretty decent example of motivated reasoning by someone complaining about someone else's motivated reasoning.
- HlessClaudesman 4y ago
  It's motivated reasoning all the way down.
HlessClaudesman 4y ago
I'm referring to a family needing two cars to get to their two jobs. The second income may be significantly less than the primary, but full time hours are the same. Based on my own back of the envelope not at all scientific or Bayesian adjusted maths, that second income gets largely swallowed up in things like car repayments and child care. When you also factor in possible detrimental effects on a child's development, this way we have constructed society seems to me like a fool's bargain.
- civilized 4y ago
  Okay, that's what I was guessing, but it's confusing because even in a traditional family with a breadwinner and a stay-at-home spouse, you often need two cars to get the breadwinner to work and the spouse to... well, anywhere outside the home, kids' activities etc. The two car lifestyle in America is about sprawl and bad urban planning. All that aside, my family is doing something like you're describing. We do come out ahead but not by much. Some women genuinely want to work outside the home, and the kids are at school anyway.