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Having gone through this recently with grandparents in their late 60s and 70s, it is absolutely a problem for new parents now. Both my dad and I had our first k

by qwerpy 2y ago

Having gone through this recently with grandparents in their late 60s and 70s, it is absolutely a problem for new parents now. Both my dad and I had our first kids in our late 30s, and now he really struggles to do much of anything helpful for child care, despite wanting to. He has no energy, his poor eyesight and attention to detail make him untrustworthy for anything but "keep the kid in the playpen and let us know if anything happens". Similarly, my wife's parents struggled to take care of one relatively easy 1 year old between the two of them. Meanwhile some of our friends with late 50s/low 60s parents are able to fully entrust their kid to one of the grandparents and go out for date nights/weekends. My wife and I are able to somewhat compensate for the lack of family help by throwing vast sums of money at the problem, but not many parents can do what we do. Society messed up big time by allowing late parenthood to become the norm. It's really going to hurt future generations, but it's already making my generation shy away from having kids.

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resonious 2y ago
> My wife and I are able to somewhat compensate for the lack of family help by throwing vast sums of money at the problem, but not many parents can do what we do. We also do this, but in our case the reason is further complicated by the fact that both of our mothers passed away some time ago, and so the kid has no grandmother. She just has two grandfathers, one still working and the other retired but incompetent at child rearing (never really did it with his own kids). I wonder if cases like ours would have been easier (without money) in a tighter community. We live in a large apartment building in a big city. We live super close to our neighbors, and yet people barely even know each other. I imagine if this was a small village, people might know about our situation and be eager to pitch in (and of course we would do the same for others).
- qwerpy 2y ago
  I do think a tighter community would be a much better, universal part of a solution to the difficulties of being a parent in the modern day. Maybe another part of the solution is to have some "buffer" of humans in a community instead of economically pressuring everyone to be a part of the economy. Combine those two and you'll have a more fungible pool of labor that is willing to pitch in for whatever the collective needs. And being tightly integrated into your community probably has beneficial effects on mental health, crime, social harmony, etc.

by qwerpy 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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resonious 2y ago

> My wife and I are able to somewhat compensate for the lack of family help by throwing vast sums of money at the problem, but not many parents can do what we do. We also do this, but in our case the reason is further complicated by the fact that both of our mothers passed away some time ago, and so the kid has no grandmother. She just has two grandfathers, one still working and the other retired but incompetent at child rearing (never really did it with his own kids). I wonder if cases like ours would have been easier (without money) in a tighter community. We live in a large apartment building in a big city. We live super close to our neighbors, and yet people barely even know each other. I imagine if this was a small village, people might know about our situation and be eager to pitch in (and of course we would do the same for others).

qwerpy 2y ago
I do think a tighter community would be a much better, universal part of a solution to the difficulties of being a parent in the modern day. Maybe another part of the solution is to have some "buffer" of humans in a community instead of economically pressuring everyone to be a part of the economy. Combine those two and you'll have a more fungible pool of labor that is willing to pitch in for whatever the collective needs. And being tightly integrated into your community probably has beneficial effects on mental health, crime, social harmony, etc.