[rev12]

Very well put.

Often when I hear about the older generation of my family, who immigrated and lived in Brooklyn for years before moving to the "burbs", I think they had good intentions but didn't do any favors for the subsequent generations.

My parents grew up and stones throw away from grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins - a lot even lived in multi family, multi generational homes. When my mom had kids she had a support system that included people from 3 different generations, all willing to lend a hand. Their social lives revolved around interacting with all different family members, and get together were happening almost daily just because of the inherent (lack of) distance between them all.

Now, we all live in the burbs, with long distances between each other. The grandparents see the kids a few times a year and we all have to make concrete plans to have get togethers. Interacting with most extended family is reserved for weddings or funerals and the lack of true support systems takes it toll on all of us.

I could possibly be romanticizing the past, but when compared to the current lifestyle, I truly believe it wasn't for the best.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

My parents lived around all of their siblings. They're close, they make a point of seeing each other regularly. My generation? We all live in different states. I worry once my parents are gone, that the fabric of my family will no longer exist, because nobody puts the work into keeping us all together. When we do see eachother, it's because we have a meeting point (parent's home) and a holiday (e.g., Christmas) or something.

[cylinder]

The hustler culture indicts us to a life of packing up and moving across the country just for a marginally better job offer or degree or cheaper mansions. You see this even on comment threads here discussing where to live in the US. People "shop" for the best city right now to move to because it has cheaper housing or taxes or whatever. Scan the entire thread and you don't see being close to family or community roots ever mentioned.

[volkl48]

I'll also mention that when much of the population is transient like that, it'll even affect the people who aren't.

Most everyone I knew growing up doesn't live where we grew up anymore. They're scattered everywhere. Much of my family that used to live there has moved on too.

I was one of the last to officially leave (around 25) and there wasn't much left in my "hometown" for me when I left, because few people I knew were still nearby anyway.

To be clear, I'm not talking about rural Kansas. That's a story from suburban New Jersey, about an hour outside of NYC.

[lotsofpulp]

It’s a consequence of our inability to predict the future and measure certain gains and losses. It’s easy to measure safety, comfort, convenience of single family detached homes with garages. It’s difficult to measure benefits of community and family, except perhaps the cost of babysitting versus leaving with grandparents. Not only is it hard to measure, but the trade offs are hard to compare and so we end up going with the easy, obvious choices.