This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
You're not a fish, so you don't notice the water you're not swimming in. Once again, that water is community, and that community gives you values.
When Shakespeare says "there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so", he is echoing everyone from the Stoics to the Buddha.
Your sister says that without kids gets she gets to travel, but with kids she'd be stuck at home with a family, and that's sad.. In every non-WEIRD culture, they would say that if she has kids she gets to spend time with a family, and without kids she'd just be some sad woman alone on an airplane.
You say that now that your brother has kids, he's isolated because he has to bring his family everywhere. In a culture where having families and having families young is the norm, your (many) brothers would say that you've isolated yourself from them by being the one weird childless uncle.
Your niece runs around needing adult attention. In the culture of merely fifty years ago, she would be playing with all the other kids, and told not to bother the adult's table. We don't even have kids tables anymore, because we don't have enough kids to fill one.
We're having less kids, because thinking made it so in the last ten years. The values of the childless replaced the values of the family, and the things childless people do are now seen as valuable instead of childish.
We can dismiss the motivated reasoning of the feminists (childcare is hard) and the incels (women are only going out with six foot three billionaires), because childcare and dating were just as hard in the old days of 2015. We can dismiss the locally-based ones (US abortion laws, Korean hagwons, European economic stagnation), because the entire world minus sub-Saharan Africa suddenly had a huge fertility drop between 2015 and now.
So let's ask that question: Why 2015, and why not SSA? To quote Jonathan Haidt, "It's the phones, stupid".
2015 is when social media on phones came out, and they couldn't afford smartphones with front-facing cameras in SSA.
I think it's almost impossible for a forum full of autistic men to understand just how mimetic young women are. Young women naturally connect, imitate and seek acceptance from each other. Social media amplifies this normal mammalian instinct to an unimaginable level. Every action taken by a socially-deprived young woman is motivated by one thing: "will it look good on Instagram". Young women don't actually want to "travel" to Machu Eiffel, they just want to have pictures taken there.
I keep running across articles about how hard modern motherhood is, and how high the expectations are. They're not about how the kids turn out though, because who cares about that. They're about mom influencers. Every article is the same - modern motherhood is hard because it's impossible to look presentable while having kids. Kids won't stand still for pictures. It's hard to keep a house artfully messy, let alone keep a house clean. Instagram mom influencers are harming your mental health.
It's not the childcare or the average man's wages or anything so pedestrian. The popularity of momfluencers shows that motherhood is still incredibly aspirational. All the celebrities flaunt their enormous families, nannies just a couple pixels out of frame.
It's Instagram. Having kids and an Insta-perfect life is impossible, and Instagram is reality so Instagram wins.
This sounds like a just so story. Have you observed it? The 30 year old women of my acquaintance who seem like maybe they should be settling down but are instead running 5ks, climbing mountains, and drinking fancy cocktails do not necessarily have strong Instagram presences. Also, engagements, marriages, babies, and cute little kids get a lot of positive attention on social media. More than anything other than running social media as an actual business. The mom influencers are generally pro-natal -- they make having children look more aesthetic than it really is.
I don't buy into this story that social media is to blame for the drop in fertility. (In the US, most of the dip happened before the 21st century.)
But I will say that I've seen a tendency for moms I know to almost "brag" about how tough their kid is to take care of, and to make things more difficult for themselves than it needs to be.
In the hospital, they made us watch some educational videos after my first daughter was born. There was a video called something like "Don't Shake the Baby" where the real thesis of the video is that it's okay to ignore the baby for a bit. If she's being annoying and you need a break, put her somewhere safe and then walk away for a few minutes. She'll be fine. But walking away is something new mothers struggle with.
Now don't get me wrong - kids are tough. It takes a ton of work to make one. But it's the pregnancy, the birth (oof), and those first months where you have to wake up multiple times during the night to feed them that are the tough part. Beyond that, the difficulty should be about on par with taking care of a dog. And if it's a lot tougher, you have to give yourself permission to put in less effort. The kids will be fine.
Yeah, I could see that.
I will say that mothers of infants have a bunch of hormones going off, oriented towards getting them to treat a crying baby as an emergency. Breastfeeding mothers, especially, won't necessarily benefit from putting the baby off, they get dripping hurting breasts, a baby who's flailing around in all directions, and general mayhem. Many babies like to cluster feed, and will cry until they get to, and it's awful. Baby #3 is getting 6 oz formula a day during evening cluster feed before bed time (out of ~24 oz total), and it is making a noticeable improvement in quality of life.
Currently the three week old is lying on the floor crying about tummy time while I'm commenting here. Various articles suggest that I could "play" with him, or lay next to him and cheer him on. But I don't want to do that, and attempts to try with his older sister suggest that the crying lasts about as long either way. He would probably not even exist if I really thought following all the interactive suggestions from various articles was mandatory.
On the other hand, I have found our older child legitimately very difficult as a baby and toddler, for reasons that seem to come down to energy level. She was born in a one room apartment without an enclosed yard or playground within walking distance. I do have some sympathy for why many people would prefer not to do that, because it was kind of terrible. If she got woken up in the evening, she would proceed to scream for the next two hours, and nothing we could do would stop her. My husband had to take care of her for several months, and she would refuse a bottle, then proceed to scream at him for hours about how he didn't have any milky breasts. She learned to speak at 2, and has been chattering nonstop ever since. Now she's 5, we have an expansive yard with different whole areas in it, and I have a lot of sympathy for the kind of parent that locks their kid out of the house for outside play time.
I have no intention of ever owning the kind of high strung dog that wants to be taken for walks twice a day and keeps jumping the fence. We don't have a dog, actually, because they're too much effort, in some ways more than children. At least if we go on a trip we can take the children with us, and if they step on thorns we can tell them to wear shoes. The children would like a dog, but we don't have anyone to look after it if we're away, and we are away at least several weeks a year.
Well that all sounds immensely fun. No honestly, I mostly think it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself in for. But maybe it’s best not to know. Reading that does not make me want to have children, even though I very much do. I think that’s the thing, if everyone has children and it’s inevitable and it just happens after you get married (which you do between 19 and 23 because everyone does) and then you get pregnant and then you have to deal with it and suffer through it and then it’s fine then you just do it. If you have to think about it, like I’m doing now, then you doubt.
I realize this is an old comment- I make a point of reading comments under AAQC's from the past month- but observed reality is that women familiar with the reality of taking care of a baby/infant are more likely to have kids.
More options
Context Copy link
Baby and small child problems might not be a very productive line of conversation.
The current status quo of everyone having quite effective birth control all the time is probably not a good idea. I was newly married and on contraceptive pills that I didn't manage to renew quite on time when first baby was conceived. Maybe subconsciously I wasn't trying very hard to keep on top of the birth control, but was still surprised, because it was only for a couple of days and I was past 30. The other two children I had to go to a doctor and remove an implant, so more intentional (and I was clearly not put off having more children), and then I was pregnant two months later. If I were more conscientious, I would probably have waited another couple of years and only ended up with only two, confirming society is probably selecting for not very conscientious mothers who conceive quickly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link