Do you feel sad for people born today?
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I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
"Nothing new under the sun" I suppose!
Yeah. It is like a kid being born in the 1930's.
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I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
"Nothing new under the sun" I suppose!
I think the whole “wrong generation” thing is a bit of a misconception, at least in terms of culture. Say you really love 60s culture, you can dress like you are in the 60s and listen to all the music from that time - including obscure stuff your local record store wouldn’t have had then but likely do now. Then additionally you can also listen to the odd song for the 70s and 80s if they take your fancy. The 60s are a part of pop culture and you can swim in that stream for as long as you want.
Socially as well, I think people underestimate how much latitude we are given to be individuals in modern society vs even like 30 years ago where social pressures to conform were stronger.
Economically I think there could be some cause for concern for the future but there were really tough economic times in the past too. Stagflation in the late 70s for example is worse than what we are experiencing at the moment. Having a kid could be something people treat like buying a property and waiting for the ideal time to do it; however, property prices are unpredictable and trying to judge it perfectly is like trying to catch a falling knife. The best advice is just to buy a property when you can afford it, and that probably holds true for having a kid too (assuming you want one… that’s another benefit of living in contemporary times!)
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I can't remember ever actually buying a microwave in the first place.
Then again, I'm not normal, I know how to diagnose, repair, overhaul and even Frankenstein microwave ovens, so if one ever goes out, I'll just keep an eye out by nearby dumpsters for scrap parts microwaves and rebuild whichever of the two is in better condition...
I hate living in such a wasteful society, I'm all about the right to repair!
I agree that living in a more repair-friendly society would be superior, but I’m very curious; just how often is your microwave failing that you’ve semi-consistently dumpster dived? Are microwaves a hobby for you?
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Yeah but I'm kind of a narcissist and I want to see more of myself is the thing lol
There's more to see of yourself in a child than physical features, just saying. Not that I can talk, I have 2 grown kids
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Toys are cooler, parenting competence and training has broadly improved, minecraft exists, and there is some really good childrens TV.
You've got a lot of good points, but I want to quibble about this one. I'm not an expert, but everything I've read about childhood development tells me toys like blocks, string, dirt/sand/water, and paper/pencils are the best toys. They are open-ended and drive critical thinking, exploration, and creativity. TV is the worst as it encourages passivity. Even when educational, TV encourages kids to sit and accept input rather than doing anything with that information. Yes, minecraft is akin to online blocks, and it does have some logic training, but it teaches in-game physics instead of letting toddlers discover real-world physics.
Seems like a good one to quibble about! I'd like to think through it more myself. I'm going off personal anecdote, so if you have data sources to add I am extremely interested.
I think the strongest 'yes, and' is to point out that TV and toys competing with blocks were both very much present in the 90s and 00s. In the childcare settings I see, Bluey and paw patrol are world's better than Clifford, teletubbies, or Barney. Hilde and SheRa are both excellent television. (I do not wish to disparage Mr Roger's or Sesame Street; note they are still available!)
For toys, I note the spread of 'Discovery Boxes' that make those physics lessons you highlight substantially more accessible. You don't need a mentor whose well educated to steer you towards the cool (and at least directionally correct) properties of nature. I saw only a handful of these before 2010, but they seem much more common now. Compare with the figurines, cheesy electronic noise makers, and furbies.
3D printers are also becoming more accessible (if you don't know someone who has one, your local library might provide! They're reaching that price-point), which has allowed kids (and me) to play with interesting mechanical devices, precise shapes, and have some say in the exact toy you enjoy. I know of one little girl who got special printed 'poop' emojis, which she helped customize and size for her intended play.
We also have much better board games starting to reach this cohort. Candyland, snakes-and-ladders, and sometimes uno are what I remember seeing 20 years ago. While they still make an appearance, I am also seeing Project L, Sushi Go, and unstable unicorns in playrooms. Classrooms now have Hex in addition to chess or checkers.
We can move the range we're looking at to earlier, so that we aren't comparing with the 90s low point (TV still present, mass produced toys still common). However I think as we slide back further, we find substantially more abusive parenting practices, and I think these wash out the benefits of more creative toys. I suspect this is partially causal; parents can manage their children without snapping psychologically partially because we do have quality entertainment for the kids. It's hard work being entertainment all day. Someone could argue (but I am not confident) that entertainment time is replacing pointless labor/waiting/punishment time, and kids are still spending similar hours running around, playing in dirt, and stacking blocks.
My second argument would be to challenge the premise a bit. I know people who are living partially (or even mostly) for the next big cool movie/book/game/show/toy in their life. Silksong has a release date and I certainly feel better about this next week. I think it's an objective improvement that the film nerds get to enjoy quality shows from age 3, and I don't think it would be fair to begrudge them the opportunity (or that so many people take the opportunity). This is a reason to be happy for the kids.
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I agree that living in a more repair-friendly society would be superior, but I’m very curious; just how often is your microwave failing that you’ve semi-consistently dumpster dived? Are microwaves a hobby for you?
wrote last edited by [email protected]It's not even often to be honest, maybe once every 5 years or so, and that's counting more than just us, I've fixed/rebuilt microwaves for friends and neighbors as well, but definitely not often.
My late father taught me the basics of electronics repair starting at age 10, and once the internet became a semi-common thing (dialup days), I found https://repairfaq.org/ which expanded my knowledge and understanding quite a bit.
My late father was also a bit of a junk hoarder, so back in the day I had plenty of scrap electronics and appliances to practice on..
These days I don't have to use those skills as often as daddy thought I might, but they're still handy skills.
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I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
"Nothing new under the sun" I suppose!
Very much so. I honestly think it's at least a little cruel and selfish to have a child in a dying world.
That said, I remain supportive of the parents in my life and I try to keep that feeling to myself--unless the parent brings it up (my cousin has two very young children whom he adores, but he also worries for their futures due to climate change and political instability, and he'll talk pretty openly with me about it).
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I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
"Nothing new under the sun" I suppose!
No. I think that things have pretty steadily gotten better over time, and that a great deal of people being upset about now for any given now comes from a tendency to focus on negatives. Could be social media or news media tending to bring negatives to the surface because it drives engagement, political activists aiming to drive or leverage upset, or so forth.
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Obviously my answer to OP's question is "Yes". Now can we have a conversation with more nuance?
I tried but you couldn't wrap.your head around it
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Housing prices? That's your argument? That's your bleak outlook? Dude, up until relatively recently you couldn't have a baby without it dying or dying yourself. Common cold? Deceased. There are people alive today who are being murdered because their existence maddens someone and your argument is that your housing costs have gone up.
Get some perspective. Your life isn't that bad.
Housing prices? That's your argument? That's your bleak outlook?
Can't afford a home? That means you're homeless. That's a crime now. To the prison work camp you go, chop chop.
Dude, up until relatively recently you couldn't have a baby without it dying or dying yourself.
Still can't in a lot of places. Not to mention, in America, assuming you both survive you're now $50k in medical debt for the privelege of reproducing.
Common cold? Deceased.
People still die from pneumonia daily.
There are people alive today who are being murdered because their existence maddens someone and your argument is that your housing costs have gone up.
Two problems can exist at once.
Get some perspective. Your life isn't that bad.
My friends and family and coworkers are the ones being threatened with murder because their existence maddens someone. Get some perspective.
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I tried but you couldn't wrap.your head around it
wrote last edited by [email protected]But you just gave the same reasons people have been giving forever. That's not very nuanced. Things are measurably different now
If you're using the same perspective thinking about this that our parents did, then we're truly getting nowhereEdit: Or maybe what you're saying is we need to have kids so they can be raised to be some kind of revolutionary super soldiers?
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I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
"Nothing new under the sun" I suppose!
Not in the least.
You should look at people born in the past.
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Gf and I talk about this a lot. Both want kids but I don't know how to feel about this world anymore. I come from generational wealth so could just buy the kids houses but I feel like it's still going to be super shitty overall
wrote last edited by [email protected]You really shouldn't let the state of the world breed you out of the gene pool.
Also, consider how humans in the past lived. Most of them had way, way worse lives than what the average person experiences today.
It's not even close. Take a look at what life was like before we eradicated Smallpox, for example.
Right now is unironically the safest, most prosperous time in human history to have children.
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Climate change is the number one thing. The past had fascism, tools, slavery - but it didn't have an Extinction level event looming just cresting over the horizon. I'm not having any kids until there is actual meaningful progress towards fixing that... So it looks like I'm not having kids.
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Tell it to the young American men who were drafted into the Vietnam War, and were dead 3 months after receiving their notices to report.
I am quite certain they would be happy to hear that their friends and family back home continued to live on past them.
Climate change is the sort of existential threat that will literally kill every single person you've ever met. It is not the same. If I could volunteer to give my own life to reverse catastrophic climate change it wouldn't even be a question. But no matter how many of us go and die about it we are now past the point where we can make a difference. The ice caps are in runaway melt loops. This is now a self perpetuating problem that cannot be solved without some new major scientific breakthrough. Habitable portions of the earth are going to shrink to single digit percentages of what we have right now, over the next couple hundred years. We can no longer stop this from happening, and it all happened because some of the very worst parts of humanity decided they needed a few extra thousand dollars every year.
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No I find that line of thinking cringe and a terminally online position
Ill bet i touch more grass than the average lemming-i just enjoy conversation with others with differing views.
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Children born today will have to kill other human beings to obtain clean water within their lifetime.
It really comes down to if you think that's an acceptable world to have kids in.
I weep for the youth personally.
Maybe their children. I dont think its quite that bad yet.
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There's more to see of yourself in a child than physical features, just saying. Not that I can talk, I have 2 grown kids
Yeah i know that, i selfishly want to try to spawn a new guitar hero lol
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Climate change is the number one thing. The past had fascism, tools, slavery - but it didn't have an Extinction level event looming just cresting over the horizon. I'm not having any kids until there is actual meaningful progress towards fixing that... So it looks like I'm not having kids.
Of course it did.
If not for the courage and conviction of Vasily Arkhipov, civilization, and potentially humanity, may have ended in 1964. People had kids for 30 years under the very real threat of nuclear extermination. In the end it turned out pretty well.
People had kids during the black plague.
While a climate crisis is more than just a threat, we don't know what's going to happen. We have ideas, and models, and educated guesses... But not knowledge.
I wouldn't tell anyone to have kids if they don't want to. But no one should plan their life around sparing a hypothetical person from the hypothetical struggles of a slow moving crisis we don't fully understand.
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You are born in the very very very best stretch the human race has ever known.
We have solutions for almost every problem which exists today.
Wars are at an historical low point.
Chances are good you've never been even experienced war first hand.
Housing is expensive, yes. But chances are you're reading this on a couch or bed in a home, heated (or cooled), with a working stove, light at night and a fridge with edibles in it. And lets not talk about your immediate almost unrestricted access to all of human knowledge.
That would be unbelievable, impossible even during 99.9% of human history. (Or somewhere near this figure)
You should stop doomscrolling and start reading the real human history.
All of human knowledge at your fingertips. And this is what you chose to distill from it.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I get what you are saying but everyone is ignoring the human condition. We feel things based on how they are around us in a relative sense.
It doesn't matter if it is statistically better. Modern times are getting worse for people. Health, privacy, freedom are all declining in America. That is what people see and feel. I'm tired of people acting like we have life horizons that can see centuries.
Chronic health is a real current issue and it absolutely destroys quality of life too.
So yeah, great, best time to be alive. But since I was a kid many things have gotten worse. From health (cost, accessibility) and education to privacy. Maybe we will be much farther ahead in 20 years, but the next 10 are looking grim.
