I moved to USA.
“Damn it I didn’t mean that far” ~ mom
My sister lives with her boyfriend in his mom’s house. There is indeed a ridiculous amount of meddling even though they’re technically separate households.
Then my parents moved to Greece, we moved to London for career and bounced around the south east.
Eventually though we settled in Cheshire, and the parents followed - one is a 10 minute walk away, the other is 20 minute drive. It’s amazing what having grandchildren does.
Trouble is we’d feel guilty about moving to New Zealand now.
If you live a simple life without too much stress then it's not really meddling.
My sister aligns politically with my mom and she moved to MONGOLIA to get away from her. I'm glad for people who truly like their families, but not all of us won that particular genetic lottery.
The Red Tribe still has Christianity, so they don't need another one.
One thing I've learned in my 30s is its not a genetic lottery. There are definitely very irrevocable dynamics but many can be molded with a level of concern, effort and boundary setting that we usually associate with work added with a dash of true sincerity and deep care.
I think this largely depends on factors outside our individual control—specifically, the other person. Sometimes setting boundaries, doing the work, can help the other person see the way their behavior is impacting you. Other times, it won't, so if you want the relationship to continue you have to be willing to always and repeatedly do all the work to maintain the relationship. Without the other person being capable and willing to recognize their own issues (and maybe get some therapy), no amount of your own effort can effect a permanent change.
I don't know the solution other than everyone agreeing not to talk politics, ever. And even better, actually deciding that politics is pretty insignificant and only something to think about on election day.
My influence on politics is insignificant vs my influence on other things that will impact my quality of life and those around me. In fact, politics and political news are a huge time suck for lots of people. Might as well be playing video games or watching sports.
That depends on the definition being used [1]. IMO, using this definition of governing [2], governing is taking responsibility, we do it all the time, and it is tough at times.
An example of governing is deciding when to change your baby's diaper. You take responsibility to put in the time and effort (which boils down to money) to keep the baby healthy, proper, and happy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics#Extensive_and_limited
The point that we are all governing in one way or another, like Greek Gods, still stands.
Unless you think civil liberties are at stake. The Supreme Court will be tilted to a way I believe is harmful for my children’s future, and personal health, and so I consider politics to be very significant.
Did I imagine growing up without dental care or healthcare because my immigrant small business owner parents could not access affordable healthcare? I personally know small business owners that are open about supporting politicians because they don't want the minimum salary for exempt workers to be raised, so that they can continue to exploit immigrant "managers" to run their businesses and pay them $32k per year to work 60+ hours a week.
These are real matters that have affected me and many others in the country. To say politics isn’t significant is ridiculous.
No matter who wins the election, we are likely to see half of the USA saying "not my president".
We need the families to be stronger.
We need more patience for things we disagree with.
We need to love and enjoy those who we disagree with. To have deep conversations that help others better understand different points of view. That's how real change could actually happen, instead of tribalism and every four years a new political party removes all the progress from the previous four years - so that nothing truly changes
My best friend lived upstairs from her parents for years. It was her own apartment but the arrangement was hell on earth. Multiple times a day every day her mom would come barging in (and I do mean barging) to insert herself into whatever was going on in my friend's apartment, make nasty comments, or borrow/take something. Her mom eventually just stopped buying her own stuff because she just would take whatever my friend had if she needed it, plus it gave her more reason to bother my friend more often, which seemed to be her favorite activity in the world. Her mom even stopped driving her own car and just took my friend's whenever she wanted to go somewhere. The constant stress of the situation was so bad for my friend, it legitimately was ruining her health.
Distance and cutting off contact (restraining order if necessary) are profoundly effective boundaries.
Psychological and emotional boundaries are required. Cutting off contact by itself is not enough. You have to communicate that you are cutting off contact. That's what establishes the boundary. In many cases you won't get a restraining order if you haven't established that boundary. The restraining order is a tool for physically enforcing an established psychological and emotional boundary.
Downright psychological abuse.
You can't solve a boundary issue by not dealing with the boundary issue. At best, you can avoid it and hope it's no longer a problem. The underlying issue still remains.
Slaughtering the cows would be like... selling her car so her mom can’t use it. Her mom can’t hurt the cow anymore, sure, but there’s still no fence there.
In contrast, telling her mom “No, you can’t use my car” would be setting a boundary. But telling her mom “I don’t want you in my life” would also be setting a boundary. These are just two different fences. In both cases, the cow/car are just fine.
It's easy enough to tell someone to never contact you again. But if you see them daily as you prepare to commute because you live next door, a lifetime of social pressure to not be so rude as to ignore people is likely to get them to slip up and at least say "good morning!", even if they want to respect your boundaries (and definitely if they don't, and are looking for an excuse to trample all over them while perhaps pretending otherwise!) If you share a common living space or other "shared business" it's even worse, as there's also the completely understandable pressure, if not outright need, to resolve problems involving that shared business.
Moving is an action that can help disentangle you from shared business - be it common living spaces, shared fences, shared neighborhood issues, etc. - and help dismantle habits that would undermine your boundaries.
Funny you bring up capitalism where the story is about parent-children relations.
We don't have a network for our (young) children. Because their aunt and grandmother live 1+ hour drive away. Things like that severely limit your freedom. If you can park the children at grandma's easily, or have grandma visit easily, it allows you to even get things done for which otherwise one would need to stay at home, or you'd have to take all children to the appt.
Luckily, we got really nice neighbors, but we try to not play that joker card until inevitable. Its not something to rely on on the long term. Family is reliable.
If you live near each other, you just need to make proper appointments. Something with scope & boundaries...
It is just feeling good about people who don't show their strugglers and their real themselves to you.
Speaking from experience here.
What I always heard was something like:
”Move far away enough that your parents can’t visit in their slippers, but not far enough that they have to packs their bags to visit"
I am not passing judgement here. The women woke up in the morning and cooked for everyone else.
> It was so nice to have that much support around all the time.
People have written about this in books that are now almost four decades old. Everywhere women entered the workforce in a highly compensated way, this arrangement came to an end, the number of children went down, etc.
Of course on Hacker News, where maybe 9% or less of the commenters are women, there are people fondly writing about these pastorals where the women do all this crappy work. It's completely bonkers. Or it's the men who come from immigrant backgrounds, looking at photo albums of grandmas and grandpas in school, not admitting how rare it was for the average person, in the 50s, to go to college - that your family isn't average, it was rich in all the ways that mattered, even if in some superficial sense it was a destitute or hardscrabble life.
It's easy to explain the rise in time spent alone among the oldest Americans. You're really observing a trend in reduced dependence.
My SO cooks like 65% of the time, but it’ nice for her being able to just rely on me when she is overwhelmed, or just doesnt feellike it.
I believe everyone should learn to cook to some degree.
You can save money and eat more healthy foods that way compared to takeouts / fastfood (which would be the alternative if your SO wont cook and you cant)
> I have a full time career
> despite that I still find cooking for my family
that's nice for you.
we were talking about people without that choice though.
so you are a man. you have a full time career. period.
this is the happy multi generational family living that was described.
Do men with full-time careers not qualify as people without a choice? ;)
(Of course, you meant the choice of cooking.)
I am another man with full-time work who cooks at home. Used to be 50% before corona, now it's maybe 80% because it is easier to do while working from home; as a bonus, I can now also eat with my family. I wouldn't mind sharing the cooking with someone, like one day I would cook for two families, the next day the other family would cook for me. (Cooking twice the amount is not twice as much work.) I am too shy to offer this deal to my neighbors, but if I had family members living close to me, I probably would have arranged something like this already.
I agree that multi-generational family living is unlikely to work well; with that much closeness, the temptation to interfere is just too high. I suppose the optimal distance would be on the same street, in a different building. So you can easily share child care or cooking, but having to put on your coat and shoes somewhat discourages unnecessary visits.
In theory, you could have a similar arrangement with your close friends. But that also requires them living close to you. My point is that this degree of cooperation, if it works well, can make your life significantly easier. Just imagine, if you have kids of similar age, you could have free babysitting 50% of time in return for having an extra kid or two in your house the rest of time. Again, twice many kids is not twice as much work; sometimes it's even less work, as the kids play with each other and leave you alone.
That's not to say we don't all deserve self-determination but the story we were sold, of ultimate freedom for everyone, is just a new wage-slavery for everyone. Lest you think I'm a deplorable, loveless man shaking his fast at the world from his parents' basement: I am loved by a wife of the bravado feminist ultra class who herself acknowledges this secret trap Capital sprung upon us.
Your life will be wrung from you, bit by bit, and you'll profess it was your dream the whole time.
Two people earn a lot more than one person used to by any material metric. People don’t feel any richer because any surplus gets eaten up by positional goods. It’s not enough to have a perfectly reasonable 1950s house. You must have one twice as big, like your friends. It’s not enough to go on a camping holiday, or road trip. You have to have a trip to the Caribbean twice a year. Most of all, the ultimate positional good, the real prestige markers, an Ivy League degree for your children and a house in a good school district, i.e. one with no poor people.
This is a global trend
... in the US maybe.
Other places are arguably way more progressive in their equality between men and women, and do not have this problem either.
(the lesson from this should be that the USA has multiple problems, not all of which stem from lack of equality, one of which is their cultural attitude wrt capitalism, in particular being nearly blind to its obvious shortcomings)
Do we, though?
It seems the past generation had a very nice thing going about 30-40 years ago. Fast forward and our societies are literally crumbling around us, what once took one man going to an average job to provide is now taking two full-time people on skilled labour to do the same. Happiness is down. Stress is up. Planet is rotting.
So do we really need to keep beating down a path that has, quite obviously, served us very fucking poorly?
The social approach is to change a culture so that we make deep friendships for life. Like having a new family, except by choice. Make it normal for friends to buy houses next to each other, so that in future they can help each other take care of kids, cook for each other, and other things family members could do for each other. This could help people live in a commune of their own choice.
(The obvious problem: two people get married, each of them has a different group of friends. In some sense this is a nice problem to have, because it assumes that many people already have communes. Still a problem.)
The technical approach is to make houses like Lego bricks, with standardized dimensions, that can be picked up from one place and placed to another place. To make relocation easier and cheaper than it is now. So again, you have a group of friends, and you agree to live together. Except, if you find new friends, you move to live close to them.
In places where most homes are rented, this is a potential product for a very rich company: make a few buildings in different parts of town, with identically shaped flats (or maybe two or three types of flats of different size, each type existing in each building) and provide a furniture that is easy to disassemble and reassemble. Part of your offer would be the possibility of cheap and simple relocation: if someone chooses a different bulding where a flat of the same type is available, you could disassemble the furniture, move it, and reassemble in the same shape in a week. You could also provide some related services, such as redirecting mail coming to the old address.
I think at a social level, we'd generally get happier, healthier, more well adjusted young adults in exchange.
Also something I was thinking about lately: in every other human endeavour there has been increasing specialisation and humanity has benefited from greater productivity. Why is domestic duties (cooking, cleaning, looking after kids) something where we cannot have specialisation? I don't really care if the man or woman does it but would we not benefit from one partner doing most of it efficiently rather than both doing it badly in between stressful jobs?
For various reasons, many families don't even have the choice anymore. They need both parents to work fulltime to make ends meet.
> I would love to spend a lot more time cooking
> I do all the cooking on weekends and holidays/vacations because it is so much fun. I love it when I have my six week sabbaticals since I can cook everyday.
This is exactly the kind of choice that we were talking about which does NOT exist in the "happy multi generational example" that we were talking about.
OP was talking about Vietnam, my experience is in rural Italy and matches the idea of people helping each other, not of the exploitation of the women.
And not in an idealised way either, I could make countless examples that I experienced first hand, growing up with 18 cousins and spending together every easter, Christmas and summer holiday for large part of our lives. Especially summer holidays that last three months in Italy.
They are my sisters and brothers, even though I only have one "real" sister, my 8 aunts are my moms, my 8 uncles are my dads, when I was a kid I probably spent more time with them than with my parents that were working 12 hour shifts in hospital (they did the exact same job and shared 50/50 parenting) and sent me and my sister to our grandparents when schools were closed, so we didn't have to be alone at home or with a baby sitter.
I feel lucky to have a family where no one is left behind or alone.
I never felt we were dependent, on the contrary, they let me develop my independence and I have been a kid who spent long moments alone and still do as an adult.
What you call pastoral I call it sense of community.
Yes, women had it bad in the past, but what you're seeing is not reduced dependence, it's solitude.
Maybe the fact that I grew up in a socialist family makes my perspective different, but I can't imagine old people wanting to be alone, away from their family and loved ones, unless they are forced to.
And the worst thing is that even if you were right and old people are simply fulfilling their desire of independence, women have it worse all the same: stats say that in USA 75% of the elderly living alone are women and to make things even worse widowers have more chances of remarriage than widows.
Considering that old people living alone have more chances of falling into poverty, that poverty increases the chances of being alone even more, that eating it's a social activity for many people, so living alone increases the risk of malnutrition and that in the presence of health issues loneliness increases the chances of the symptoms getting worse, I wouldn't consider more time alone a blessing, not for men nor for women.
Or, to reitate once more, a family that accepts you for who you are.
I'm glad for you that it's been so happy and all, but really get it into your head, this situation is not, CANNOT, be for everyone.
You're excluding people without a family and/or who chose not to breed.
Are you saying that most elderly have no family or kids?
And why people with no family or kids should live in solitude?
I have no kids, for example.
Family is not built on blood alone.
A good chunk of what I call family is formed by people who had no family, lost everything during the ww2 and are not my blood relatives.
I simply said that a community that cares about its members is not a pastoral, there are place where it's still the way they live.
The community can be a group of houses in the Italian country in the middle of nowhere.
As a woman, as well as being in STEM, I see how tenuous my position still is. On my team I’m still the only female in an engineering role. I can’t imagine what life would have been like if I had been born 100 years ago.
The one place where they historically had the shorter end of the stick is the high risk of dying in childbirth. Things have improved much with regard to that, though.
This is very disrespectful to the many women, and a growing number of men that are making a conscious choice to prioritize raising children and caring for a family over salary work.
The problem is forced labor here, i.e. not having a choice to enter the work force. Not that the work is inherently "crappy" - it is not.
Cooking is not "crappy work". Risking your life in coal mines, fixing broken pipes of shit, garbage disposal, being shot to death in useless wars, those things are crappy work (although apparently many miners like their jobs).
You can perhaps argue about having a choice, but even that works both ways. Men rarely have the choice to stay at home to do the crappy work, rather than risk their lives in the outside world. But that is for another discussion. I just wanted to point out your obvious misguided bias about cooking here.
It doesn't seem impossible to stay living close together and still give people more options. Most freedoms were won by the invention of the washing machine and other modern appliances, making household chores less time consuming.
Not sure when I first heard that quote.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuc...
Fuck, can't even eat breakfast in peace!