Different times, different norms. When it was more typical for mothers to stay home with kids, it was also more typical for children to play with other neighborhood kids independently. Teenagers babysat for $1-2/per hr. Now kids are in organized/scheduled activities & have to be driven & supervised.
We were latchkey kids in the late fifties and sixties. My mom was always out playing bridge, attending meetings of the drama club, leading girl scouts, etc.
I am 83, a southern gal. We played outside from daylight to dark. Showed up for lunch, supper, and bedtime. We played cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, Tarzan. I was the only girl in the gang and refused to be Jane. I was Tarzan’s friend. We built treehouses. Loved those cap pistols.
and yet it isn't. i was lucky to see my mother any time between breakfast and dinner barring a quick stop-in at lunch. the rest of the time we were in school or playing outside. i didn't see my dad at ALL during the week - he left for work before we got up and came home after we were in bed.
"But the longer people wait to try to form a family, the less likely they are to have one."
The cost of parental investment, that women have been relied upon to provide free of charge, is untenable. Shulamith Firestone presciently wrote about this 50 years ago.
My paternal grandfather was the only adult with time for me in my preschool years up to 1952. My stay at home mother, with graduate degree in library science, was constantly cleaning, cooking, ironing etc and didn't want me underfoot. Neighborhood children played outside in mixed age&gender packs
Something needs to be done about this tendency to demand parents watch their kids 24/7 or otherwise the authorities are called. Kids need some alone time. Gen Xers keep going on and on about how great the lack of supervision was for a good reason.
Gen X here. Playing outside when your parent is home is good. Being left home alone for hours after school every day is dangerous. Kids will go to their parent when they sense danger. A parent needs to be nearby, but parents don’t need to micromanage play. Limit screen time.
Yeah, dangerous is dangerous. We all know. What does that have to do with demanding that parents be on top of their kids constantly and the developmental effects that have on a child? Guess what, negative developmental effects are also dangerous.
And that is why I don’t have grandchildren. I have three adult children32-40 yrs old with degrees. No kids. Not enough support. They all work full time but can’t afford the luxury of children.
Bullshit. They just don’t want kids. When will people stop buying this “there’s no time, and it’s too expensive.” No. It’s called priorities. that’s their choice. One they will likely look back on with great regret.
The Greatest Generation didn’t seem to worry about not having enough money. They started young having six kids and made do with very little. Moms stayed home then, so it was different. Maybe we overthink it. If you are married, just let nature take its course. It will work out.
What are your thoughts about the economics of that period versus today. It isn’t just about buying more stuff, though that is a part of it. What percentage of a family’s income was housing/food then vs now? How about job benefits? How about healthcare costs?
All I can offer is my observation that 2 parents and 6 kids lived in my grandparents’ 4 bedroom 2 bath house. The kids wore hand-me-downs. They had more love than money. They cooked at home. Restaurant food was a luxury. I would be interested to see an economic analysis.
I grew up in similar, but i also realize that my parents were able to get college degrees without crippling debt from the get go and people could have actual careers, not just jobs without benefits. It also helped that there were far less VCs, not just blowing up companies, but the stock market
Is this guy on crack?? Did this pinhead have a traumatic brain injury!! What stupid frikin thing to say, but then again, look who we're taking about!! His shoe size is higher than his IQ!!
This is why I don’t understand Elons stance on declining birth rates. The way to address that is to address the things people need to feel comfortable having kids - m/paternity leave, a living wage, paid sick leave, health care, and daycare and education for the kids.
That's not how things were 70 years ago, though. 70 years ago women had few options but to get married and have kids. We didn't have any of those things, we had women without other options
Ask any gen xer if their parents knew where they were, or quite frankly cared where they were. Most families had more than one kid so they figured they had a “spare”
That is a dumb statement! You are basically saying that the parents of gen xers did not care about their children or their well being…😡 because they had a spare? Frankly it’s a disgusting statement!
No one said you shouldn’t be? Lol it is true that you didn’t understand the point. There was no shade at people having kids and juggling careers today at all. If anything it was giving praise to current parents doing a better job than previous generations.
I love that you’re proud of them. Juggling is the key word: any disruption and balls drop.
Whereas I feel like my parents in the 80s had space for disruption; they could afford a home (1.5x annual income) their cars (.25 annual income) and the collectively the neighborhood parented us more.
Parents in the past, especially parents of GenX were much less hands on. Parents today are much more cognizant of better practices and it’s harder. I think young adults today are more likely to consider having kids more thoughtfully than me and my peers.
Many Gen X parents were juggling multiple jobs, particularly divorced moms.
Many of the newer parents today are too hands on imo, too much structure and little space for kids to figure things out on their own early in life. Not keeping score of every action is not neglect, it’s breathing space.
It’s a balancing act and part of the struggle are expectations of society at large about what appropriate supervision looks like. Everything about parenting gets harder when you have expectations of what basic care looks like that are constantly changing.
Parenting is always a balancing act, always has been. The sad thing is when parents start accepting out of touch with reality societal expectations that are not really as healthy for kids as claimed. There was also more supervision than realized by kids, the neighborhood watched too & not to shame.
Totally agree! I wasn’t a helicopter parent, I had to let them fall & watch them get back up. I did it: Married, worked full time; Resigned to raise all of my kids; Divorced and went back to work without ANY help. I’m old as dirt now but I don’t regret any of the way they were raised. No trophies.
My Xennial kids, all survived, grew up well. I was home when they were small & was on my own with multiple jobs at the same time for nearly 1/3 their childhoods. They have their own great achievements as adults that I don’t need to claim credit for but I must have done something right along the way
I grew up in the 70s, my kids were born in 2014. I want to be more freewheeling, but these days if I don’t, someone will call the cops and get me arrested for neglect. I let my kids climb a tree outside my building and the manger sent out a message that the trees are “decor” and not to touch them.
I’m so sorry your child can’t climb trees near home. The effort and victory of looking out from the branches was a joy in my life.
I believe kids need some time to just be kids. Society needs to get with the program.
I’ll never understand why neglectful parenting inspires nostalgia. There are worse things than “helicopter parenting” and that includes Don and Betty Draper parenting.
Ok, point taken. Again, I’m the parent of gen X and I had the luxury of staying home to raise my kids after years of working full time. It was tough but structure was important, I spent every waking minute spending time wisely / quality time to help make them solid, productive and happy kids.
I’m an Xer. My parents were more available than most but they were not providing opportunities or aware of all we were doing. In the summer my brothers and I would be gone all day only coming home in time for dinner. And that was common in my neighborhood. Which meant we did dumb things sometimes.
Thank you. Apparently I started a war over my experiences and learning about other gens. It certainly wasn’t intentional. So with that, I’ll go back to liking cat and dog pics
My mother stayed home until I was in sixth grade, but she was active politically and with volunteer work. She had an entirely separate existence from motherhood. The independence she demonstrated was valuable. When she returned to the workplace, I was fine.
The point is that your generation got to be lazy because you didn’t any better but now we have to raise our children without hours of neglect.
It sucks, so consider helping your kids out. You had it good.
Don’t put ANY blame on me. Like I said, we all do the best we can. That comment that we are lazy was totally offensive. If you’re attacking my generation, then, oh boy.
Another comment here was that my parents generation was lazy. My mother is now 93.
GenX is the latch key child generation that raised itself as both moms and dads had to work to maintain the same standard of living that were afforded to boomer children with predominantly dad working and mom at home.
Not having a choice sounds very disempowering. If my husband & I both had to work full time, we wouldn’t have had kids. It’s too much to ask. Neither of us work full time. We actually spend a lot of time with our kids and we get to take care of ourselves too and have lives outside of parenting.
I raised latch key children. There was very little allowance for a single mother with children to try to parent and work. Work paid the bills. After 5 was the time to parent. My children are much more involved with their children because their employers understand the need to parent.
When we do have children, we're judged relentlessly. You say every family resource is a handout or wasteful. You can't even guarantee living wages, lol.
How do they know that? I think the present ones would be easy to find out but older generations I don't know. I was born in 1954 my mom always worked ...
A lot of young women that we know do not want to get married to the scrubs they see around them. They are educated, have good jobs and don't really see a reason for the headache of taking on the Mama's boys raised by Gen X.
I'm mad ...at dem leaders too! Where are they? Yeah, you guys have the same ones on all the time but where are the rest of them? We need EVERY SINGLE DEM REP out there/here EVERY SINGLE DAY... EVERY WHERE!
Look at it from a kids point of view. They talk about marriage and children even when we're young. If you're raised religiously, it's even worse. It's mostly for the benefit of the American male.
"Christians get out and vote. Just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians."-
Trump: at "Believers Summit" in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 26, 2024
Throwaway line? Or Omen?
It’s because during the day we were in the woods running around exploring the world on around. Will you kids get out of the house and go play! I heard that every day.
I totally see this. I was raised by a stay-at-home mom in the 1970s & 1980s. We knew that we were not to disturb her while she read a book and drank a glass of wine every weekday afternoon. We were to entertain ourselves. That would not fly in today's version of mothering.
Oh, and by the way, I think my mother was an absolute badass for setting this kind of boundary with us. We were not babies - we could get our own snacks and do our own homework. I am grateful that she instilled so much independence in me - it made being an adult much, much easier.
I hate that ‘working mothers’ label. ‘Mothers/Parents who work outside the home’ is the correct description. Using ‘working mothers’ implies that mothers who don’t work outside the home - don’t work!!!
Not all work is paid work, but that doesn’t diminish the value of the that work.
Really??? Does Gideon Lewis-Kraus have any children of his own? As a mother, when I worked, not only did I have less time to spend with my kids, I had a whole lot less energy to do so! What is Gideon basing this statement on? Maybe, not only should he read with he writes, he should research first!
Can you help educate me & America, what is the long game with Musk & Trump? Is it just for the elimination of oversight on Musks companies? Is it just for the Trillion$$ tax reduction for the filthy rich?
What is the goal of tearing apart our Democratic Republic? Why side with Russia?
I support the survival of ALL LIVING SPECIES! If the human population keeps growing thousands of kinds of living beings will disappear. Reject the notion that humans were created in the image of god. Reject the notion that we have dominion over other living beings. Love children but enough already.
Is it that we live in a time when kids spend more time indoors rather than outside playing with friends, which means kids are around their moms more whether sahm or working moms
Its weird, vague phrasing. I take it to mean working moms spend more time doing the “work” of motherhood than SAH moms-taxi, laundry, feeding, etc. I’m not sure I even buy that premise.
Chris, ya es hora de que tomemos las calles. La gente no entiende que ya estamos en ese punto. EEUU nunca ha vivido un ataque tan horrible y transparente a nuestra democracia.
Vamos!!! Es hora de tomar las calles y de sacar el hijoeputa de la Casa Blanca.
They might all be getting fired from jobs now as many friends are having cross the board cuts with government and private organizations. Almost once a day, I get a message about a job loss.
My mom didn't work when we were kids, but we were free range kids for sure. No cell phones. The neighborhood Moms watched out for all of us. Just had to be home when the street lights came on. I'm talking from the time I could walk. Just running free around the 'hood. Lol
Even the 90s were like this. My issue with it now for my kids is people are less observant and reliable. There are also much fewer people home regularly with 2 working spouses. Also smartphones are the worst invention for childhood health in my mind.
Yes, I too raised myself. Bad idea. I want better for my offspring. I am a very different type of mom that my mom was. It is easier for me because I have the luxury of a good marriage. She did the best she could, and that’s how it was in the 80’s.
My mother used to send us out the door after breakfast and tell us not to come home until dinner. She was a stay at home mother but never spent much time in parenting. This was not unusual in the 50’s.
Love the highlighted bit, but this piece still frames having children as superior to choosing not to. I know I'm picking nits but it's still a little toxic to imply that a career might be optional (with enough privilege) but children are not.
"Previous generations" like the one when Mom fed the kids breakfast and then nudged them out the door, saying, "Here's your sweater, see you at dinner" before the Valium kicked in?
Every mother I work with is a tour de force of planning and providing for their families maybe they are not tending a sourdough starter cosplaying homesteading but I’d pick any of them first in an apocalypse.
My mom was a wonderful stay at home mom. I remember spending most of my days running around the neighborhood and being home for dinner. Maybe stopping in for lunch at my house or another. I am a working mom and this data matches my experience.
My life as a working mom was so stressful bc of my former partner. I’m regretful and angry when I think how often I wanted to be dead to finally get some rest. I suffered for 20 years. If anyone asks… if you love what you do and you want kids, just get a sperm donation. Partners are a gamble.
Interesting. Takes away some guilt from this working mom. I do remember my mother spent an awful lot of the time on the phone talking to her sisters who lived a few blocks away. (Never a walk to see them) For hours. Screen time?🤭
What is the deal about discrepancies showing up in the totals of the 2024 election. Is there a chance that the election was manipulated by musk who Trump says relates very well to the voter counting machines. I find Rowan Martin’s podcast very interesting. You should probably look it up.
World population is growing, it’s not crash… ooooh. They mean WHITE population. Ah, well there it is huh
Also, why is all the talk about mothers doing everything? Working, birthing, taking care of EVERYONE. Maybe that’s part of the problem… fathers doing not much of anything. Work 8 hours? Boohoo
Ever have a conversation with women who have tried to get sterilized under the age of 50 for the purposes of contraception? Good luck finding someone who will do it? Even with severe illness (e.g , endometriosis).
What if your hypothetical husband wants to have kids?????? 🙄
I know a lot of men who have vasectomie, no problem. They may be asked are you sure? But that's about it.
I'm in Canada which may be be different but it is infinititely easier for aman to be sterilized than a woman. Providing you are not Black or Indigenous and it was done to you without consent
Yeah, my uncle got a vasectomy in his 20s with no problem. A tubal litigation should be given with no questions asked, and it’s reversible if they change their mind in the future (with success rates about that of a vasectomy- I guess. I’m too lazy to look it up tbf)
You think he hasn’t already delivered intel? Why do you think he stole all the classified documents? There was public reporting that he had phone calls with Putin between 2020 and 2024. Impeach the traitor and get the classified docs case to trial!
Yep I was in my early 30s when he was elected the first time and I thought "maybe once he's out of office." Now - nope, not happening. A shame; I would've loved to have had kids. But I can't risk it now.
I had a little girl in 2021 and my god the terror of being a parent—especially a parent of a girl—right now. Still would not give it up for the world, but I do miss having the luxury of anger without the fear.
I understand what you are saying, truly I do, but it makes me sad knowing that this generation of parents will have to forever live with the fact they let Trump be the reason they did not have a child or their child/children did not get a sibling. 1/2
My husband and I accepted that we would be childless 25 years ago. Every year, we have been made gladder of our decision. Who would do that to a child?
Same for me. I was already 99% sure I never wanted kids but was 100% sure after the election. I refuse to get pregnant in a society where fetuses have more rights than a pregnant woman. Not to mention society going downhill in general.
My mother apologized for bringing me and my brother into the world where we'd have to live with the consequences of this administration for the rest of our lives.
I’m kinda salty about this. I went 36 years as not-mom. I was pregnant and homeless when he got elected in ‘16, they wouldn’t let me vote because I didn’t have an address. I was a homeowner with 2 kids by ‘20. I’m fucking pissed.
I love my child more than anything in the world but truly the anxiety of what’s happening today is incredibly compounded by the responsibility. I’ve stopped telling friends “you gotta do it” because while it’s the most amazing thing, it’s also a fear like nothing else.
Men are more likely to have fertility issues after 35, but there is a societal myth that men can have healthy babies into their old age, and that the issue is just women.
💯 Yes. All sorts of defects - physical, physiological, and psychological - are correlated with the age of the father. Many don’t appear until later in life.
Which is a nonprofit needing donations/grants. The point is not that a "Fahrenheit 451" scenario can preserve these sites; the point is it's publicly funded research, and the Trump-Musk admin has already "disappeared" info it doesn't like: maybe "old sperm is risky" upsets old guys, so take it down.
Now imagine how much time “stay at home” mothers need to put in to our WORK taking care of children. It’s work. We just don’t get paid. We volunteer in “working” mom’s kids classrooms, we drive them around, we provide all that early childhood education, we clean and cook and do all the nanny things
And then it’s really really hard to rejoin the paid workforce. Skills are not up to date and we are exhausted. Physically- and it’s tiring being treated as worthless because your work isn’t monetized.
The Trump administration doesn't want women to work. They want them at home taking care of kids and listening to their husbands. And they certainly don't want women to be educated.
Yup. Living this truth. It’s because there’s no social safety nets anymore. Families live far away, kids can’t walk and ride bikes safely here and there, club sports, too expensive to hire sitters for an afternoon or evening.
Dems (ordered by their wealthy donors) gave up campaigning on basic work/life benefits such as national paid family leave, paid vacation, subsidized childcare, U pre-k, school meals, child tax credits & free instate tuition.
Instead they had a celebrity pony show & Obama rapped with Eminem.
I don't believe population decline is a problem. It's a non-issue. People will have more children when we have universal childcare, universal healthcare, and they feel economically able to do so. I'm a young teacher, I should want kids now, but I don't because the nation & world at large is in decay
I couldn't afford the hospital bills, I couldn't dependably afford my child's medicine, and I don't trust the local hospital not to about kill me, because my family has history of problems. When our material needs are addressed, we will have more children.
Also I'd like to add that the banning of abortion is why I don't want to have kids. I don't want to be forced to carry a headless baby, I don't want to bleed out in the hospital because it technically still has a heartbeat. There are real and common complications that they've left us to die over.
But the ruling class realizes this and they've chosen to try to force us down a different route by banning contraception, abortion, and removing the options of family planning. Forced birth is their goal, because the last thing they want to do is the simple thing, which is HELP US.
Previous generations the husband was able to provide for the whole family; the wife didn't have to work. They had 1 car; the middle class had 2 cars, & some didn't have any cars but had a family (the poor). Now women pull the weight more than men plus us women have to put up with their shit too.
Why do we think it's so vital for us to continue? Species go extinct all the time. The world will be better off without us. Seriously, if there were some universal judge looking at human impact on the earth and on each other, we'd be found guilty of high crimes and exiled anyway.
This is what happens when kids can't bike to school or sports or anywhere. You can't base a society on helicopter mothering alongside two income households.
Hey, chris, how about you and your network devote more time to point out the lies and the misinformation that the trump administration is doing. Tell your morning new show joe and mika to stop going down to kiss the ring of Trump. spend more time taking care of the people instead of lying to them.
I was a SAHM for several years and then a working mother, and there is NO way this tracks. Unless you are only comparing “parenting time” for kids old enough to be in school all day followed by organized activities.
Wife and I both work full time and have two kids. We live in an HCOL area and most of the other mothers we know work part time or don’t work, and also have grandparents nearby. My kids have one living grandparent who is six hours away. I can tell you from experience, this shit sucks
The fact that during the pandemic their was not a Civil Corps to provide childcare to parents with young kids was one of the greatest travesties of the modern era.
Honest question, how do you stomach your job. You seem like a nice enough fella, but let's face it, your industry has never been trashier. This media environment is making yellow journalism look like Pulitzer level stuff.
I can mainly only judge by my 23 year-old niece with a 4 and 7 year-old who mainly looks at her phone while the kids are on their iPads. Is that active?
Great point. We were free range kids, leave after breakfast and show up for lunch and dinner unless you took a PBJ with you. To be fair, it was safer times, but mom was not arranging play dates for us and my MIL used to say "don't bother me unless there's blood" to her crew of 6.
I'm sure. I remember reading that urban rates were much higher in the past while things have pretty much evened out now. That said, there seem to be regular revelations about abuse from then. And I remember some weird shit that definitely wouldn't fly now.
Not sure what period you're talking about, but crime has generally trended down over time -- particularly against children. It used to be hushed up instead of prosecuted.
Correct. Look up Albert Fish. And the way parents just let their kids go with him because they didn’t know about the dangers. They didn’t know people like him even existed, but they always have.
This fact keeps popping up recently. Please, dear Lord, see it for what it is. Liberal men, please, please stamp this down. Sort out housing, and sort out child care. There are no quick fixes.
My 10 hours at work is my "rest" from my 4-year-old who wants nothing else but cling to me. I've only hand like 10 proper baths and bathroom breaks since she was born. I love her so much but I'm also so tired but I still have to go to my job because she'd starve if I don't.
Republicans want women to have more children but they vote against any opportunity to support motherhood. Once upon a time long ago women could stay at home until their children were in school before joining the workforce.
Be cautious about that highlighted section. That was a claim about US moms back in 80s/90s & was critiqued as an iffy stat. Which, if you’ve been a mom (at-home or working out-of-home) makes sense. Because constant multi-tasking makes measuring time wi kids tricky.
A lot of ppl here missed the “in previous generations” part. This isn’t about sahm vs working moms. Growing up, I barely saw my parents during the day bc I was outside all day. Today, most kids spend more time inside near their parents than outside.
And they spend 95% of that time doing literally anything other than interacting with them. If you think sitting in the house near your kid while their earbuds are in and playing Roblox, is active parenting, then… sure this checks out. 😂
Working mothers everywhere are rolling their eyes because they already knew. When someone actually pays attention and changes things, that might be an article worth reading.
If people choose to have children and working parents can now spend more time with their children than previous generations it's because both parents now tend to share work, domestic and child care responsibilities. There's that & there's dishwashers, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, microwaves...
I am an EXHAUSTED Mother with NO 'village'. A COVID Mom at that. It has been a mentally, physically and emotionally draining experience. I gave up my career as daycare is $450/wk for ONE child in my area. I lost who I was fully, but have found a new me. America CAN do better to help families.
Oh so this- yes, love my kid- but I am reading to them for an hour leading to bed while my husband sleeps in the other room- continually backfilling to ensure they’re being intellectually stimulated as I jiujitsu the addictive effects of tv. I am exhausted
It would be LOVELY if that were still possible, but today there are so few 3rd spaces for kids to be unsupervised, exploring. It sucks. Everything is monetized. Karens call the cops if they see kids assembled in public. We seriously suck as a society.
Sucks we've built a world outside your front door completely hostile to human existence.
'Have fun kids'.
Meanwhile, in pedestrian-friendly Paris I got on the subway and talked toa kid from a group of ~11-year-olds speaking English who were by themselves & attend an international school there
What free market? Taking a market controlled by an oligarchy and labeling it free doesn't make it free. Free markets require fair competition and can't survive without regulation. Nordic countries have free markets that don't require a poverty class to function, unlike the US oligarchy markets.
The US got ‘spoiled’ with slavery & immigrant indentured servants which led to a normalisation of exploitation. Europe had its revolutions justified because the wealthy (aristocracy) didn’t earn the money while the US has created the myth of ‘self made’ and ‘American dream’ to perpetuate inequality
half of this I think is due to the environment that kids are being raised in anymore. People over 40 we all remember just... going out, spending half our day around the neighborhood. Now every parent is tethered to their kids, and it seems like every kid is in 40 extracurriculars.
It’s interesting that the leaders of your society are pro forced-birth, but work diligently to take away a safe place to live, quality free -healthcare, -childcare, -education incl university, clean water, air and food. But most of all; removing the possibility to a prosperous and safe future.
well they want forced birth to continue the serf-class to exploit, but they don't care about how those people live. same calculation that US slavery made at some point, as plantations got bigger it became cheaper to work slaves to death than to preserve the investment in them by like, feeding them
🎯 When your family’s healthcare, your kids education, food etc are dependent on you having a job, you are trapped. You can’t take the chance to quit, no matter how dangerous or unhealthy it is. When you can get fired without explanation and security, you are not a free person.
Can confirm. I had my baby a year ago.
I'm incredibly grateful for my & my husband's remote jobs, but we don't live close enough to family or friends to ask for child care help.
We couldn't afford childcare costs in our area even if I was comfortable taking her to a daycare. It's tough sometimes.
The amount of pressure we put on ourselves is mind boggling. My kid is in every activity, has traveled to half the states, been to more museums and zoos, I drive him to school every day, help with homework, lessons, drills, over the top holidays and still feel guilty.
the right and the church and popular media tried to guilt trip us into "quality time" from the 90s on. one of many stupid platitudes that led to some serious over parenting and kept many women from using skills and having agency. the only ones who scored were men, who got housewives.
I don’t think it matters. Parents… oh excuse MOTHERS… who want to spend quality time with their kids, will. Those who don’t, won’t. But don’t worry, the dads can “babysit”. 🙄 (Don’t you just hate when people say that? Dads don’t babysit their own children 🤬).
You kind of have to start having a family when you are not really ready. It is what we have always done. It is why we have a declining birth rate and why the objective of the war on women is to get them back in the bedroom making babies.
That strategy is failing. You can’t take rights away and treat women like shit and wonder why they’re choosing not to reproduce. And saying “have kids when you’re not really ready” doesn’t work in a society that doesn’t take care of its citizens at all. If you have kids, you’re on your own.
When it is OK to fire women as DEIs, not hire them because they might get pregnant (take away birth control and abortion), not support child care. Not hired our of college, and so on.This leaves women with few resources. It is the way it used to be. No options but to get married. Back to the 1950s.
And even if population decline was such a terrible problem, you’d think the administration would actively promote programs designed to increase and maintain, not this slash and burn hell they’ve launched
But how are you going to grow your business if people don't have babies? (I'm joking, but there are people who actually think that way, and they make policy)
It’s not happening too fast, the decline has been happening for decades. We have too many people for resources in many parts of the world already.
This is a thinly veiled promotion of white people should have more children & look, it’s better if she works so she can afford them. It ignores anti DEI
While adaptable, most humans won't make major adjustments to their lifestyles unless they are forced to do so. Good luck with that. And I'm not going to be the one to tell folks in developing countries that they can't have what people in Western countries have.
https://bsky.app/profile/tiffanyisded.bsky.social/post/3ljfuyf4nu22m I left this thread above, but I'd like to add another thing to the idea that it poses some risks. It's kinda white supremacist, there are no declining birth rates in the global south. Immigration would keep our population growing, but they specifically want WHITE babies.
I'm childless by choice, but I still recognize the need to support children and families. We can work around any issues related to population decline. The biggest hindrances are big money interests and politicians that still operate on the erroneous principle of infinite growth.
And it's not happening too fast. It will take about 80 years for the population to stagnate. People will still increase in numbers until 2100 to 12 billions - 50% more than today, and then slowly fall.
OTOH a lot of the problems from declining populations will appear locally, while other areas are still growing, so it's more complex than the top line numbers show.
OTGH most of those problems are distribution problems, not hard resource limits.
It seems that people most concerned with this are trying to solve the problem by controlling women’s basic human rights, ignoring the benefits of immigration, and not providing a world that people care to bring children into.
Oh it is not a misconception for the vast majority of kids, especially post elementary school. These kids have no fucking idea what “free time” even means.
Umm... Ok. My kids are this age range now. The kids are driving this multiple extra curriculars activity thing a majority of the time and parents are running themselves ragged trying to keep up.
My kids as well as my friends' kids are only signed up for things they choose. I learned I have a limit of 2 at a time so with 2 kids that means 1 per kid. They are often the ones mad at me for not letting them sign up for more. Y'all really think parents are trying to play taxi 24/7?
This on top of working full time jobs? We are just doing our best to get our kids to the things they want to be at. They have a lot more options these days. We want to let them take part. How horrible.
With actual mother - child contact, I'd agree, but in the old days (I'm 76), mothers didn't have many of the labor-saving devices that they have now, so many hours were spent on ironing, washing and putting clothes away, on cleaning the house and cooking the food ...
... so, it may be about equal!
Doing dishes, huge gardens, canning, making sauces, freezing. Making meals from scratch. None of the appliances we have today. Baking. Cleaning. My mom didn’t have time for clubs and wine. And everyone got together as families.
I think the fertility panic is largely about putting women back in traditional roles, but yeah, my generation had a lot more unsupervised time than modern kids do.
The way I put this is that my mom let us watch a lot of TV while she cooked, her mom just sent the kids outside, but now we basically expect children to be off screens but also not outside on their own.
I feel like this is true in terms of structure and how it impacts attention, but in terms of content, my thirteen year old knows more about the minutiae of American political history than I ever did, whereas all I got from 1990s long form tv was an eating disorder.
Many parents curate their kids’ entertainment. My kids only watch episodic shows and movies, no scrolling of any kind, and only from a list of things I have watched and approved.
But we still get judged. At dinner after a 24-hour journey to my dad’s funeral I heard comments about my son’s iPad.
Why would anyone be so cruel as to bring a child into this world? It’s full of hate, the country is run by fascist businessmen supported by people brainwashed to do nothing but hate. The planet is being destroyed; nobody even blinks at mass shootings anymore. It’s time for this species to end
I'm edging more and more closely to anti-natalism until it is enforced that EVERY child is born equally. They say the fetus has a right to be born, but that implies they also have a right not to be born.
I think they are talking mostly about white people. For many races birth rates are on the rise due to more equality around healthcare for minorities and their median age is alot younger on top of that they rely more on the village raising the child than just mum and dad
This makes me think : With the government firing people, companies laying off people, government reducing benefits for people - how are people supposed to survive?
Women: you will be treated as your husbands property if these Bible thumping cherry pickers have their way, just say no to all marriage proposals,
Don’t get married (also men shouldn’t want the wife to be property, and should also say no to something that was really a contract back in the day
Comments
The cost of parental investment, that women have been relied upon to provide free of charge, is untenable. Shulamith Firestone presciently wrote about this 50 years ago.
We never truly get a day off. Unfortunately not that many family members live close to us and those that do are 70+ yrs old.
We haven't had a single vacation since my first one was born 6 yrs ago.
It’s not difficult to understand his stance, once you accept that he’s a white supremacist.
He’s a misogynistic white supremacist.
He also thinks poor people are a burden on society.
Are you seriously not getting this dude?
Whereas I feel like my parents in the 80s had space for disruption; they could afford a home (1.5x annual income) their cars (.25 annual income) and the collectively the neighborhood parented us more.
Many of the newer parents today are too hands on imo, too much structure and little space for kids to figure things out on their own early in life. Not keeping score of every action is not neglect, it’s breathing space.
There is no hands off. The demands placed on young people are different, and they require far more from parents.
These are different times, or they were.
I believe kids need some time to just be kids. Society needs to get with the program.
It sucks, so consider helping your kids out. You had it good.
Another comment here was that my parents generation was lazy. My mother is now 93.
Just be cautious when throwing out insults
😆
“Don’t blame me.”
I’m sure a more fitting example of why “Ok, Boomer” exists on the intents today but … you’re doing a great job at illustrating it for us all.
It didn’t air between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm.
STAND UP
FIGHT
THE
SOB
BE
A
ZELENSKY
STAND
WITH
UKRAINE
AND
AMERICA
Against PUTIN
AND
his stupid puppet
FOOL DICTATOR DONNY
That's it... Stop trying to give their ideas logic.
“Well, you see working moms are more actively engaged with their children than SAHMs of years past.”
“What’s “active,” mean?”
“Whatever the fuck we want. These idiots will believe anything.”😂
Trump: at "Believers Summit" in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 26, 2024
Throwaway line? Or Omen?
Not all work is paid work, but that doesn’t diminish the value of the that work.
What is the goal of tearing apart our Democratic Republic? Why side with Russia?
Vamos!!! Es hora de tomar las calles y de sacar el hijoeputa de la Casa Blanca.
If I'm wrong, convince me.
Also, why is all the talk about mothers doing everything? Working, birthing, taking care of EVERYONE. Maybe that’s part of the problem… fathers doing not much of anything. Work 8 hours? Boohoo
What if your hypothetical husband wants to have kids?????? 🙄
I'm in Canada which may be be different but it is infinititely easier for aman to be sterilized than a woman. Providing you are not Black or Indigenous and it was done to you without consent
#Traitor
I’d always secretly feared bringing a child into a crazy world. I held my breath & did it anyway (no regrets)
I did have all those same thoughts/ideas/fears though
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3253726/
Instead they had a celebrity pony show & Obama rapped with Eminem.
Hypocrites.
"4 hours more per week" is comparing mothers with and without a college degree, not between working mother and stay at home mothers.
We just didn’t know about the dangers.
Stay at home mom has little sense to take her attention away from her kids
Working mom has at least 8 hours a day away from her kids
Somehow the working mom supposedly spends more time with the kids
'Have fun kids'.
Meanwhile, in pedestrian-friendly Paris I got on the subway and talked toa kid from a group of ~11-year-olds speaking English who were by themselves & attend an international school there
Ridiculous. Been there. Saw it.
I'm incredibly grateful for my & my husband's remote jobs, but we don't live close enough to family or friends to ask for child care help.
We couldn't afford childcare costs in our area even if I was comfortable taking her to a daycare. It's tough sometimes.
At least, add the full text visible at the end in ALT-Text.
Thank you.
Still, we should work to provide things like subsidized child care and such because it’s nice for people
This is a thinly veiled promotion of white people should have more children & look, it’s better if she works so she can afford them. It ignores anti DEI
There's time, but there isn't public policies.
Besides climate change, there's too many people
OTGH most of those problems are distribution problems, not hard resource limits.
We were free range kids from a very early age.
This is probably the biggest issue…Proximity to extended family.
I grew up within walking/bicycle distance of both sets of grandparents and aunts and uncles.
7 hours of kids play at max.
Stay at home moms: 16 hours of potential playtime.
P.S.
Besides labelling mother by Working mothers is kind of weird and meaningless.
... so, it may be about equal!
RICH DON'T PAY TAXES!!! SHOULD WE? REVALUATION 2025.
CAN'T JAIL US ALL!!! TRUMPS LAYING OFF IRS(7000).
WE THE PEOPLE WILL WIN 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🌎☮️ 🙏
But we still get judged. At dinner after a 24-hour journey to my dad’s funeral I heard comments about my son’s iPad.
we're doing perfectly fine up here in Canada.
Meanwhile this other dudes, "edging."
Don’t get married (also men shouldn’t want the wife to be property, and should also say no to something that was really a contract back in the day