I live with my adult sons. None of us are dating; it's not on the horizon. For my sons, here are the reasons I see.
Financial. A 4 income economy makes pairing off impossible.
Familyhood is ruined:
Parenting time is up 20 fold from 1950s because kids req 24/7
adulting. Stress++ Joy--
Children lost free range area and fully live in adult
curated, adult populated boxes. S++ J--
cont. Trespassing & crime cultures severely limit risk taking.
Bureaucratic obedience++ Ambition--
cont. Dearth of adult-free peer time denies interpersonal relationship skill
development. Connection--
cont. Growing up in the childhood apocalypse discourages making more
children.
A 4 income economy is even harder on families than it is on couples.
Speaking broadly, growing up in a post-childhood world shaped the men in the article. The qualities that the author mourns as absent, intimacy — slowness, curiosity, accountability, they sound a whole lot like the qualities that once developed in the childhood environments we've erased.
And for the qualities she sees emerging Avoidance. Exhaustion. Disrepair., they seem like predictable products of an increasingly punitive society and an over-burdensome economy.
I live with my adult sons. None of us are dating; it's not on the horizon. For my sons, here are the reasons I see.
Speaking broadly, growing up in a post-childhood world shaped the men in the article. The qualities that the author mourns as absent, intimacy — slowness, curiosity, accountability, they sound a whole lot like the qualities that once developed in the childhood environments we've erased.And for the qualities she sees emerging Avoidance. Exhaustion. Disrepair., they seem like predictable products of an increasingly punitive society and an over-burdensome economy.
Archive link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250620061054/https://www.nytim...
7 points and 10 comments (mostly off-subject) yesterday:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44329057
Right, so we can have a proper discussion this time