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>the times without insurance and pensions children where the ones who cared for you when you get old and so people depended on their kids and it logically makes

by bumby 2y ago

>the times without insurance and pensions children where the ones who cared for you when you get old and so people depended on their kids and it logically makes sense that they would show extreme care for them growing up This has been the case for most agrarian economies, including the US in the past so I’m not sure that’s a good discriminator.

em-bee 2y ago
that's a fair point. i haven't read anything about how children were treated in china in the past. i am more familiar with stories about treatment of children in historical europe. in short, in europe children were seen as a necessary nuisance (someone mentioned cattle) but from that i want to draw a few observations: i think attitude towards children in europe either has improved or it hasn't changed. if it hasn't changed, then why should it have changed in china? but even if it has improved, on one hand it is still way behind china by comparison, but on the other hand we stopped depending on direct children a few decades earlier than china, so if there was a parallel development then china would have to be a few decades behind europe with their changing attitude towards children. that being not the case suggests that there was no change in attitude at all, or at least not one prompted by a modern pension system and therefore the chinese attitude towards children could not be a new thing.
- bumby 2y ago
  Even if they have changed, I seriously doubt you can distill something complex like societal interactions and norms down to a simple one-variable model like the introduction of pensions.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    right. another reason why i am skeptical that any change happened.
    - bumby 2y ago
      Society norms definitely shift. My point is that that change is generally the result of a highly dynamic and complicated process, rather than pointing to a single cause.

by bumby 2y ago

em-bee 2y ago

that's a fair point. i haven't read anything about how children were treated in china in the past. i am more familiar with stories about treatment of children in historical europe. in short, in europe children were seen as a necessary nuisance (someone mentioned cattle) but from that i want to draw a few observations: i think attitude towards children in europe either has improved or it hasn't changed. if it hasn't changed, then why should it have changed in china? but even if it has improved, on one hand it is still way behind china by comparison, but on the other hand we stopped depending on direct children a few decades earlier than china, so if there was a parallel development then china would have to be a few decades behind europe with their changing attitude towards children. that being not the case suggests that there was no change in attitude at all, or at least not one prompted by a modern pension system and therefore the chinese attitude towards children could not be a new thing.

bumby 2y ago
Even if they have changed, I seriously doubt you can distill something complex like societal interactions and norms down to a simple one-variable model like the introduction of pensions.
- em-bee 2y ago
  right. another reason why i am skeptical that any change happened.
  - bumby 2y ago
    Society norms definitely shift. My point is that that change is generally the result of a highly dynamic and complicated process, rather than pointing to a single cause.