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I think this is a surface level explanation but there must be deeper reasons why people aren’t having children. Maybe our lives are so comfortable we just don’

by zpeti 3y ago

I think this is a surface level explanation but there must be deeper reasons why people aren’t having children. Maybe our lives are so comfortable we just don’t want the inconvenience of children. Maybe we’re so obsessed with momentary hedonism that doing something extremely hard for 18 years doesn’t seem worth it. Maybe there are so many generational traumas built up over thousands of years that now that we have some awareness of mental health issues it’s really putting people off children before they are resolved. I don’t know what it is. But I definitely feel like we don’t know the answer as a society deep down. Edit: and the topic is so controversial I don’t know how we can find out. This whole issue might be about women in the workforce, or contraception, but touching these topics is insanely risky. Which is really bad, because we really need to understand in the next few decades.

orangepurple 3y ago
I suspect many more are blisfully unaware of what will happen to them when they inevitably end up in a nursing home. I'm not sure what you mean by generational traumas but if you mean what I think you mean they can be overcome. My grandparents vehemently hated certain specific ethnicities till the end because their brothers and sisters and parents were executed ("disappeared") by their soldiers and secret police. My parents are a product of being raised in their post-war hellhole. I was able to see past all that and grew up normally with friends local to my country. I suppose if my parents spoon fed me hate and persecution stories constantly I would develop some sort of PTSD.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- teg4n_ 3y ago
  I don’t think having children is protection against ending up in a nursing home.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    There is a friend of our family who had his father die of Alzheimer's disease. For a long time lived with his wife: she was of sound mind, he was of sound body, and together they did very well. She died recently and he got a lot of help from him adult children. He was fortunate in that he had worked as an English professor for a lifetime and had a lot of retirement funds and had bought long-term care insurance. He moved into a long-term care facility once his wife died and had all sorts of misadventures in the COVID-19 period (went to the hospital, the care home wouldn't take him back, he moved back in with his son who was driven nuts by his father getting up in the night to pee, getting lost and urinating in the waste basket, eventually ended up at another care home, ...) His son was able to get him a lot of extra help, hire a bunch of aides like my wife who would come around and make sure he still got some socialization. It really helped that he was not anxious at all and never got belligerent despite being confused all the time. So far as getting support this is about the best case you can image: having the financial resources to pay for care, and having family members that supplement it and make the most of it. He spent his last few months in a real nursing home and in a place like that the staff is always making mistakes (sometimes serious, often not so serious) and if you have family members watching out for you you will get much better care than someone who isn't.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    In some jurisdictions, the adult children of elderly people are absolutely on the hook for their care. At least this is from a financial standpoint. They could put them in a facility, or care for them at home, but they cannot abandon the parents or leave them to their own devices. I believe that this sort of regulation lay dormant for a long time, but is now being more actively enforced, because of abuses and problems that arise when children don't care at all.
  - xyzzy4747 3y ago
    It depends which culture you live in. In the American ultra-individualistic culture, you may be right.
- net_up_down 3y ago
  [flagged]

by zpeti 3y ago

orangepurple 3y ago

I suspect many more are blisfully unaware of what will happen to them when they inevitably end up in a nursing home. I'm not sure what you mean by generational traumas but if you mean what I think you mean they can be overcome. My grandparents vehemently hated certain specific ethnicities till the end because their brothers and sisters and parents were executed ("disappeared") by their soldiers and secret police. My parents are a product of being raised in their post-war hellhole. I was able to see past all that and grew up normally with friends local to my country. I suppose if my parents spoon fed me hate and persecution stories constantly I would develop some sort of PTSD.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
teg4n_ 3y ago
I don’t think having children is protection against ending up in a nursing home.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  There is a friend of our family who had his father die of Alzheimer's disease. For a long time lived with his wife: she was of sound mind, he was of sound body, and together they did very well. She died recently and he got a lot of help from him adult children. He was fortunate in that he had worked as an English professor for a lifetime and had a lot of retirement funds and had bought long-term care insurance. He moved into a long-term care facility once his wife died and had all sorts of misadventures in the COVID-19 period (went to the hospital, the care home wouldn't take him back, he moved back in with his son who was driven nuts by his father getting up in the night to pee, getting lost and urinating in the waste basket, eventually ended up at another care home, ...) His son was able to get him a lot of extra help, hire a bunch of aides like my wife who would come around and make sure he still got some socialization. It really helped that he was not anxious at all and never got belligerent despite being confused all the time. So far as getting support this is about the best case you can image: having the financial resources to pay for care, and having family members that supplement it and make the most of it. He spent his last few months in a real nursing home and in a place like that the staff is always making mistakes (sometimes serious, often not so serious) and if you have family members watching out for you you will get much better care than someone who isn't.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  In some jurisdictions, the adult children of elderly people are absolutely on the hook for their care. At least this is from a financial standpoint. They could put them in a facility, or care for them at home, but they cannot abandon the parents or leave them to their own devices. I believe that this sort of regulation lay dormant for a long time, but is now being more actively enforced, because of abuses and problems that arise when children don't care at all.
- xyzzy4747 3y ago
  It depends which culture you live in. In the American ultra-individualistic culture, you may be right.
net_up_down 3y ago
[flagged]