canceled / retired your student loans
I did not take out loans. They have so far offered $0 payments to my husband for having children in his household. We will be in bad shape if they rescind that, but it's not like we can take the kids back.
mortgage debt
Maybe! But that sounds like the sort of thing that wouldn't be long term sustainable, due to the market adjusting.
No income tax for the rest of your life?
I'm pretty sure I'm net negative in this respect already. And to the extent that in the future I make more money while having less children at home, this will not be good for them. If they're going to subsidize me later, it should be directly, not through the government.
The elderly giving up their seats for you on public transit
That sounds embarrassing and awful. But, also, my area doesn't have functional public transport.
boy scouts, police and other public servents saluting you?
Ugh, no, that sounds like a negative thing
You get the veterans and first responders discount at Lowe's?
Meh. I don't consider things to be on sale until they're at least 30% off, but also I don't think we've bought anything from Lowe's in years, and don't have any plans to do that. I bought a bag once with a Peace Corps discount of 40% off or something. Best bag I've ever bought, I still use it every day. Apparently there are already teacher discounts that I don't bother using.
Gaashk
8mo ago
That’s more succinct than what I was going to say, but yes. More than half of women are still having children.
It’s a bit odder in Korea, which still has mandatory conscription for men, but fewer than half of women are having babies. Seems related to almost their entire childhood being stressful, not just a year here or there.
Gaashk
8mo ago
But while women might have had the same legal rights for a while now, their social and economic power continues to increase.
That's one way to look at it.
Another way to look at it, however, is that as wages are equalized, the wife's income is more likely to be essential to the household budget, such that she is expected and needed to go back to work as soon as possible.
Also, the prenatal programs are pushing breastfeeding. So she's expected (not able, I mean expected) to work until she gives birth, then breastfeed for a month or two, then drop her infant off at daycare and pump at work, and still get up in the middle of the night to feed her infant, while also working a full day outside the home. Even elementary teachers are struggling with this, with a generally easy schedule/ They hide their children in windowless offices on "professional development" days, for instance, because they aren't allowed to organize childcare amongst themselves.
Gaashk
8mo ago
On the other hand, birth rates have been dropping especially fast over the past decade, when women have had choices for generations, and things like ultrasounds, epidurals, prenatal testing, formula, c-sections for the convenience of the doctors, and whatnot have been improving. Childbirth is less bad than before. Even feeding babies is less bad than before. Freedom of women is about the same, at least in the anglosphere. Yet birth rates continue to drop.
Gaashk
8mo ago
Yeah. I had a second partly because I wanted someone to eventually play with my older daughter. But I'm living in a 2500 sq ft mobile home on a half acre, with a wagon/SUV that fits three child car seats already, so have different costs/benefits than someone in a dense city with expensive housing.
Gaashk
8mo ago
It would be less weird, but much, much more expensive.
I'm not sure what the government could do at this point to get me to have another child. Maybe a year of maternity leave at my full salary and a vehicular upgrade. I absolutely did not like going back to work with a month old newborn, and having to hand deliver a check to pay back their side of my insurance for that time.
Gaashk
8mo ago
It's probably related to America not generally having many meaningful awards outside of the military, so it would kind of feel like it was coming out of left field. It would seem less weird to be part of some sort of ceremony involving the Georgian patriarch, even as an American, since he already belongs to an extremely ceremonial church (and culture more generally).
Gaashk
8mo ago
Oh yeah, that one is positive.
Along those lines, I guess a female boss or CEO sounds neutral to me, and like something I might say.
Since stay at home dad is even less a long term plan than stay at home mom, it comes across as non sequitur in the context of school. Kids know that by 9, even four old boys all say things like "firefighter" or "policeman" (the girls said "princess" at my child's pre-K). So they must be odd in some way, possibly effeminate or gay?
Gaashk
8mo ago
Most of my immediate family voted for Trump, but I'm still having trouble imagining anything he says or does increasing the social status of parents.
I guess if he actually succeeded at revitalizing jobs by which a man of modest ability can support a family of five. But even among the evangelicals and Christian homeschoolers of my youth that ship had already sailed, and the families with decent status needed the father to be an engineer at least, so that he could support his six children and still go on retreats that cost some amount of money, and send his wife and children likewise. Several of my friends also have at least three children and may have voted for Trump, and I still feel like if we got awards we would all laugh and think "that's so weird."
Gaashk
8mo ago
I imagine it in a Ferengi voice. Or with a similar vibe to "birthing parent."
Gaashk
8mo ago
especially given that no man I've ever heard of has had any problem with being called "a male."
I'm surprised to hear that, since in recent years "male" and especially the dreaded "cis het white male" seems like something of a slur, and I'm not sure in what other contexts people would call a specific man or boy "a male." Calling oneself "a male" comes across as an apology.
Gaashk
8mo ago
I've seen that article before. It's plausible, I suppose, but I don't think that in countries like the US, the government confers much status, so there's not much to do there. The Trump administration probably confers anti-status.
There's a lot about this on the message boards this week, including a link to a fairly interesting article on the Reddit (by CanIHaveaSong, who sometimes used to post here). DSL is going on about nannies and au pairs, because they're upstanding citizens like that.
Clearly, the transition to a post industrial economy has been bad for birthrates everywhere. But, also, the population of many of these places doubled in living memory, while the political entities, "good jobs," and "good colleges" did not double. At least agricultural output more than doubled, so we don't have famine, but if we really want to sustain the current population level, we should probably have more top tier institutions, more cities, more high quality corporate jobs -- twice as much of the things people aspire to and work for. Apparently Georgia's population sank by a million from 1993, and is about the same as 1960. Mongolia's rose, but the country still has fewer people than the Phoenix metro area.
Yes, in my case it’s before glow, first row of Browse. Glow and Frequency are half way down the full genera list.
Gaashk
9mo ago
Interesting.
My husband tended to be 99 F when he was younger, and also attracted way more static electricity than I do. He eats things like an entire pound of bacon, then just paces a lot, or walks around barefoot in the snow or something. My daughter seems to have inherited his metabolism, and actually was sent home from pre-K a couple of times for "low grade fever," but then she got home and didn't have a fever.
My body temperature is a bit below average (I don't check it very often, because I almost never run a fever), and I'm lower energy, but also have fewer random health problems -- things like almost never getting headaches or nausea, even when we eat something a bit off, getting over colds and flus faster, stuff like that. This has been good for pregnancy, which went smoothly all three times.
There seem to be trade offs involved.
Was it Handwaving Freakoutery? (https://hwfo.substack.com/s/egregores/archive?sort=new)
Gaashk
9mo ago
I don't know, and am starting to understand how my older working class relatives ended up giving each other lame things like jeans, socks, and toothpaste. Anything desirable enough to be excited about must be discussed at length (we're currently considering a three day trip to a nearby city). We're low enough SES that this includes things like an $80 espresso machine. We're both picky about personal items, and it's very obvious when someone isn't using the thing you got them. I will be missed if I leave or get home early/late by even 10 minutes.
At least 5 year olds are fun to buy gifts for. They are the best gift recipients. We got ours pajamas, after previously not having any, and she was so happy about it, and wondered out loud if Santa had placed the pajamas on the store rack for us to see, since it's so great having princess pajamas.
Gaashk
9mo ago
I think this happens anyway. If you need a complex surgery in New Mexico, they will send you to Phoenix or Texas, even if it’s fairly urgent.
Gaashk
9mo ago
I don't necessarily feel disgusted. If I were forced by Society or the State to interact with a (certain kind of) trans woman in a female only space, I would probably feel threatened. The new trans woman in Congress who was making video threats about bashing their female colleagues head in the bathroom seemed very threatening. Trans women in contact sports or women's shelters seems potential threatening, on a case by case basis. I am basically fine with people using their intuition/gut/systems that are below the threshold of rationality to make decisions about things like "does this person feel threatening?" I think that we are wrong to try to squash that in the name of disparate impact.
Sex segregated spaces are usually a good thing. To the extent that we, as a society, have gotten rid of male spaces, that was mostly a bad idea and we should bring most of them back. To the extent that we are now in the process of getting rid of certain female only spaces by admitting trans women who the other women don't necessarily accept without coercion, that is also a bad thing. I think it is very reasonable to admit some trans women to some female spaces on the basis of vibes with the women, and not other trans women to other spaces, on the basis of things like large, strong, and has a penis. We've gone crazy and extra on marginal equity lately, which is a bad thing.
Gaashk
9mo ago
Scott also has a good essay about BPD https://lorienpsych.com/2021/01/16/borderline/
Gaashk
9mo ago
I don’t think hate is necessarily the word, either. Maybe contempt or disregard. But probably not better than nothing in terms of romantic interest, even if he’s rich and hot.
Gaashk
9mo ago
Maybe there is something to that.
I liked my grandmother better, because she stayed and raised my mom and siblings while my grandfather moved to another state and didn't communicate with or visit them. My grandmother had everyone over for all the holidays, and it was nice. But she never babysat us, even for an hour, and that was probably stressful for my parents. I think she inherited money and didn't work, other than raising children. My other grandfather died when I was a baby, and we visited my other grandmother and stayed at her house, which was at least nice. I don't think she ever worked while I knew her, and she was fine, but I got the impression she mostly watched game shows and walked around the neighborhood once a day. The TV was never off at her house. I suppose my family made me feel neutral toward having children.
A couple of people in the thread brought up Korean mothers in law specifically, as being demanding and expecting their daughters in law to serve them, which seems interesting in a context where marriage and childbirth are very low. I would guess that they had to work for their husband's family when they were younger, and expect it to be paid back, but were less likely to work an 8 - 5 kind of job outside the home? I don't know what the actual facts are, not being very familiar with Korean culture.
Before 1890s, probably. It sounded like everyone was reading Dickens for water cooler chit chat reasons.
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