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I don't think it's about happiness (scare quotes or otherwise), I think it's about avoiding ruin. In a society where you have to run as fast as you can to keep

I don't think it's about happiness (scare quotes or otherwise), I think it's about avoiding ruin. In a society where you have to run as fast as you can to keep up, children will slow you down and you might end up consumed by the predators that surround you. That's why the line from the abstract "Conceptualizing parenting as a stressor buffered by institutional support" rings so true to me. The response to the above tends to be something like, it's not so bad, kids don't really need that much anyway. Which always leaves me with the question - how much money do you make? Could it be expressed as "several times the median US household income"?

rayiner 2y ago
Sure—but that just means I get to indulge my kids with private school and trips to Japan. By contrast our neighbors are probably right around the median, and had kids in their 20s like we did, and their kids are just as happy. (At the end of the day—both sets of kids value the fact that the respective grandparents live nearby more than anything money can buy.) The point you’re trying to make is contradicted by the demographics of who is having kids. My friends from law school are the ones who disproportionally aren’t having kids. Meanwhile my wife’s step mom’s rural Idaho family is bursting at the seams with kids.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  It doesn't actually seem contradictory; not that I know much about law (hell, I think I lost my belief in it sometime in the last decade or so), but my impression is that it's a fairly all-consuming profession between school and a very grinding early career and very competitive; taking time out to raise children could be very costly. And I bet a lot are coupled with other lawyers so there's not much likelihood of one being a homemaker. For those without good career prospects, ruin is not such a big deal. I looked it up, and no surprise that medicaid pays for a huge share of births in rural Idaho; if anything, 48% is lower than I'd expect. > Medicaid coverage is even higher for births in rural Idaho. For instance, 48% of births in Lemhi County involved mothers covered by Medicaid. [0] [0]https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2023/11/28/idahos-infant-mother-death-rate-is-rising-new-report-finds/ https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2023/11/28/idahos-infant...
  - rayiner 2y ago
    But that’s the selfishness I’m talking about. If a professional career is even in the cards for someone, then they started with a huge (and unearned) cognitive advantage over others. But they’re not going to have kids because they might have to compromise their lifestyle? (Or regard living like a normal person equivalent to “ruin?”) That’s what I’m calling selfish. These people could have kids. They just choose to prioritize their lifestyle, and the pursuit of their individual career. They forgo the fundamental pillar of the human experience for marginally better odds at a career that makes some giant corporation marginally more money.
    - silverquiet 2y ago
      What is living like a "normal" person? Paying exorbitant premiums for health insurance for the family? Worrying about making your rent that increases 10% every year? Being one car breakdown from losing your job and the above? Have you considered that people are not selfish but perhaps anxious? That we've built a system to extract labor from people via precarity and they are responding as stressed people will? And if people live in such a state, they might see it as selfless to spare children from such an existence? That "Conceptualizing parenting as a stressor" might be a useful model to explain peoples' behavior? It's just weird to me to think that after a few hundred thousand years of being human and reproducing, we have in the span of a century become (evolved) to be too "selfish" to do so; to me it makes more sense to think in terms of environment.

rayiner 2y ago

Sure—but that just means I get to indulge my kids with private school and trips to Japan. By contrast our neighbors are probably right around the median, and had kids in their 20s like we did, and their kids are just as happy. (At the end of the day—both sets of kids value the fact that the respective grandparents live nearby more than anything money can buy.) The point you’re trying to make is contradicted by the demographics of who is having kids. My friends from law school are the ones who disproportionally aren’t having kids. Meanwhile my wife’s step mom’s rural Idaho family is bursting at the seams with kids.

silverquiet 2y ago
It doesn't actually seem contradictory; not that I know much about law (hell, I think I lost my belief in it sometime in the last decade or so), but my impression is that it's a fairly all-consuming profession between school and a very grinding early career and very competitive; taking time out to raise children could be very costly. And I bet a lot are coupled with other lawyers so there's not much likelihood of one being a homemaker. For those without good career prospects, ruin is not such a big deal. I looked it up, and no surprise that medicaid pays for a huge share of births in rural Idaho; if anything, 48% is lower than I'd expect. > Medicaid coverage is even higher for births in rural Idaho. For instance, 48% of births in Lemhi County involved mothers covered by Medicaid. [0] [0]https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2023/11/28/idahos-infant-mother-death-rate-is-rising-new-report-finds/ https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2023/11/28/idahos-infant...
- rayiner 2y ago
  But that’s the selfishness I’m talking about. If a professional career is even in the cards for someone, then they started with a huge (and unearned) cognitive advantage over others. But they’re not going to have kids because they might have to compromise their lifestyle? (Or regard living like a normal person equivalent to “ruin?”) That’s what I’m calling selfish. These people could have kids. They just choose to prioritize their lifestyle, and the pursuit of their individual career. They forgo the fundamental pillar of the human experience for marginally better odds at a career that makes some giant corporation marginally more money.
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    What is living like a "normal" person? Paying exorbitant premiums for health insurance for the family? Worrying about making your rent that increases 10% every year? Being one car breakdown from losing your job and the above? Have you considered that people are not selfish but perhaps anxious? That we've built a system to extract labor from people via precarity and they are responding as stressed people will? And if people live in such a state, they might see it as selfless to spare children from such an existence? That "Conceptualizing parenting as a stressor" might be a useful model to explain peoples' behavior? It's just weird to me to think that after a few hundred thousand years of being human and reproducing, we have in the span of a century become (evolved) to be too "selfish" to do so; to me it makes more sense to think in terms of environment.