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Points well-taken, Ohio.... and while I'm not a historian, I suspect this notion that every adult must have his/her separate household is a "norm" limited mostly to post-WWII middle-class WASP America. A century ago, when a much bigger percent of the population lived on farms, it was probably common to find multiple generations in the same home.
I said this in this thread yesterday.
Multi-generational living is something we're planning on with my daughter and her husband.
The part about caring for elderly parents then vs now has a lot to do with the end of the single income family. A child usually can't afford to not be in the workforce for years. There was a study and iirc the lifetime cost of a child caring for a parent for 10 years instead of earning 50k at work was over a million dollars. If you're a single person it could ruin your whole life. It's sad but it's how it is nowadays.
The grandchildren are at the age to perform a lot of that service by the time the grandparents need it, the grandparents having provided the care of the grandchildren in earlier years while the parents worked.
Times today are not worse for Millennials than the Great Depression was for the War Generation, nor is it as hard as times had always been in previous human history.
The point is that the Boomer Generation enjoyed a historical peak of luxury previously unknown in human history, and the world is simply resetting to its norm.
Some people survived the Titanic disaster. That does not mean that the sinking was somehow a positive as a character-building thing.
I'll ask here what does it actually mean these days to be family? What is the purpose of it if not to be supportive of each other through good times and tough times? It sounds to me like some here are simply doing it wrong.
Some people survived the Titanic disaster. That does not mean that the sinking was somehow a positive as a character-building thing.
I'll ask here what does it actually mean these days to be family? What is the purpose of it if not to be supportive of each other through good times and tough times? It sounds to me like some here are simply doing it wrong.
Hey Pub, the rep is not for insulting people who don't agree with you.
Maybe that's why people become independent, so their ego is not so fragile that they can remain civil in a discussion. That's what they do in college.
Titanic? living independently is comparing to sinking? What a novel idea. Family doesn't mean a kid lives at home in their 30s, unless you are male Italian living in Italy. I've heard in Italy they go from mom's house to being married. Those mama boys.
T
That being said I think it is genuinely EVIL for society to exploit people who are doing what they are suppose to be doing with usury and out of control rent (and out of control asset prices for the rental units themselves). Only the govt can regulate that stuff though.
There is no such thing as exploitation. It does not exist.
I don't think this is an American culture alone. I think you are mistaken if you think this is.
Of course, it's not quintessentially and exclusively American; but there is, I think, something about Anglo Saxon (and by extension American-Canadian-Australian etc.) individualism that steers people towards a self-conceptualization of successful adulthood, where young adults move out of the parental hearth, and elderly adults desist from moving back in with their middle-aged children. The striving for independence applies to all generations. This sort of individualism is less acute in continental Europe, or in the places colonized by nations of continental Europe.
The broader question is, what's the "right" level of individualistic pursuit, for maximizing happiness? I do not mean propagandistic tropes about national strength or lilting fables of individuals making sacrifices for the "common good". Instead, I mean the amount of family interconnection vs. individual primacy, that is most optimal. Clearly the right answer is situationally dependent. There is no universal recipe. But it seems to me that especially in modern America, we have exaggerated the concept of Junior moving out at age 18, as being heroic and laudatory and foundational to attaining the good-life. I wonder if retreat from this extreme, towards something resembling more the 19th century than the 20th, would not in some ways be economically, socially and culturally more beneficial.
Hey Pub, the rep is not for insulting people who don't agree with you.
Suggesting that you need a hearing test over a claim that "It sounds like you didn't go to college?" does not fit that bill. And for the record, my CV would simply swamp yours.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewbieHere
Titanic? living independently is comparing to sinking? What a novel idea.
The point of course was that bad outcomes cannot be justified by collateral results that can somehow be stretched into a positive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewbieHere
Family doesn't mean a kid lives at home in their 30s, unless you are male Italian living in Italy. I've heard in Italy they go from mom's house to being married. Those mama boys.
Hmmm. It has not seemed to me that your hearing has been much of a reliable guide here. The thesis in any case has been with regard to US 18-year olds, not Italian 30-somethings. That and the notion that "family" is indeed expressed in a life-long bond of help and support for each other. It would be a weak claim indeed that those who had to run away from home or were kicked out of the house at age 18 actually came from successfully functioning families.
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