Parenting stuff

[celticdragonfly]

I'm going to share some links selenite gave me

Firstly, The Parent Trap:

We've taken a lot of the fun out of parenting. Or to echo Longman, the "social costs" of parenting continue to rise, and, more significantly, perhaps, the "social returns" continue to decline.

Parenting was always hard work, of course. But aside from the economic payoffs, parents used to get a lot of social benefits, too. But in recent decades, a collection of parenting "experts" and safety-fascist types have extinguished some of the benefits while raising the costs, to the point where what's amazing isn't that people are having fewer kids, but that people are having kids at all.
...
There's also the decline in parental prestige over generations. My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she was married in 1959) you weren't seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids. Nowadays to have kids means something closer to an expulsion from the adult world.

This one makes me laugh. Anyone who knows us know that we're still sticking with the Then option. But the scary thing is not just the number of parents who want to use the Now answer - but how much pressure you get against you for being a parent sticking with the Then answer.

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[filkferengi]

Buy lots of compasses in bulk, in preparation for telling the Nosies to Take a Hike.