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This is going to be even worse if/when Musk and trump dismantle Social Security. The adult middle class will collapse entirely when their seniors will lose their homes and food, and their children are still at home because they can't afford to live on their own.
Couple this with smaller family sizes, this could mean two single child adults might have to support four living senior citizens (both sets of parents) while also raising children of their own.
Kt looks like they have no other option that legalize euthanasia
If we're euthenizing the ultra rich then I'm probably on board
This is called the sandwich generation (when you have to take care of both adults and kids on your own). It's a thing!
Yeah, my mom grew up in a house with her parents and a grandparent of two. And her cousin. That was the 60s and 70s. Guess we're bringing it back!
to be fair, multigenerational homes are more common than not in a lot of places and it has little to do with monetary status. America has stigmatized this because it's more lucrative to make everyone pay for things independently
Back to when things were great!
Kinda like how The Great War was great, right?
Or the Great Depression
It really was the Great(est) Plague though.
I fucking feel this.
I'm in a situation where in my family I'm the one who's going to be taking care of my parents as they get older because my only sibling (older) is entirely unreliable and financially unstable.
Then my fiance is ALSO being expected to take up that responsibility because all her siblings went and had 2-4 kids and "can't afford" or "won't have time" to help take care of her mother who is already aging.
So we're having to plan ahead as 25 and 30 year olds to be able to help and support 3 elders. This basically defaults us to not being able to have kids.
Just don't help them. It's their fault for not planning ahead. You already paid them with your love
My girlfriend is taking care of her parents with her father having a couple of weeks to live and her mother being so anxious that she can't be trusted to take care of him (give him morphine, start preparing a second dose thinking she didn't give him his dose yet, change his fentanyl patch and doesn't remove the old one)... Her sisters are pretty much nowhere to be found, as if their boyfriends were unable to take care of the kids for one fucking evening.
They'll let their father die a painful death without seeing him, but at least they will have enjoyed the last few days of the ski season!
Fuck thats grim. I assume home nursing is not a financial possibility? I'm really sorry to hear about yours and hers situation.
Then my fiance is ALSO being expected to take up that responsibility because all her siblings went and had 2-4 kids and “can’t afford” or “won’t have time” to help take care of her mother who is already aging.
Your fiance's siblings are stupid for turning down the free live-in childcare.
An elderly person verging on disabled and one day probably will be, also with what looks like developing early onset dementia probably doesn't make for good childcare
Someone with dimensia is great for occupying a toddler/young child though! When I visited some family my at the time 3 year old and my grandmother and her sister in law spent 2 hours setting the table because they kept having to re-count how many people they have, how many places they have set, and kept confusing each other and having to get it all straight again. They all seemed to enjoy the time together and it was fun to watch it all unfold
I appreciate you trying to find the silver lining but holy fuck that's very late stage capitalism and grim on its own. "Just let your dementia-afflicted elders care for your children, they have pretty much the same cognitive function!"
Or like, you could just have kids. Don't Darwin yourself over the stupidity of others
you don't understand how fucking expensive children are i guess.
You don't understand with how little kids can get by. Yep, it's not ideal, but it's mostly a mindset issue, of course you want the best of the best for your children, and not some suboptimal situation. It's also fine to let your parents survive on their own, you never have an obligation to take care of them.
All he (and I) is saying that everything is a choice. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to get new clothes for your children, toys, etc etc. You don't have to make sure your parents live comfortably.
Yes, it's not easy to think another way, but it's possible.
That IS NOT HOW STOICISM WORKS.
Stoicism is a philosophy of empathy and helping others, NOT the rejection of it.
You are very optimist people will still have kids in this situation.
pregnancy prevention is expensive and abortions are becoming illegal i think we'll see more kids
birth rates might go up because times get harder and abortion is illegal... but childhood/infant deaths, deaths from preventable communicable disease, and deaths from exposure to occupational hazards and accidents will all go up
deregulation, dismantling EPA, FDA, NIOSH, medical and scientific research, education. and most importantly, reducing the federal workforce by a couple hundred thousand people who work directly on keeping Americans healthy and safe... is going to have consequences.
I suspect life is going to get much more brutal and short for the next couple generations, assuming we survive that long amidst climate multi crises and wars for resources that are increasingly more expensive to find and extract. so while some people might have a few more kids to work in the slave pits, the life expectancy declines among the 99% is going more than counter act it.
besides, the population growth in America is expected to go net negative by 2033 without sustained immigration, and is rapidly decelerating globally.
Yeah but the, upside is, I won't have to worry about being the homeless old guy. Because the world won't exist by then 🤷♂️
We had a blanket ban on abortion/contraception in the 60s in Romania and while initially there was a boom in newborns, it eventually reverted to the norm even if the ban wasn't lifted. So I'm not so sure about that.
Romania tried that already. Decree 770. There was a bump in number if children. After that, pregnant women and childbed mortality went up, kids were neglected or dumped in orphanages. In the end birth rate dropped anyway.
Also a lot of people who are against taking away choice from society don't consider abortion an option for themselves personally. There will always be accidental pregnancies that result in children that people struggle to afford to feed, house and care for.
