[hateful]

I've always had this weird thought - that doesn't really pass the ethics test, but here it is anyway.

I was raised by my grandmother - let's just say my parents were not ready. And I know a lot of parents that want their kids to have kids but the kids aren't ready. What if it would become the norm for Grandparents to raise the children? That way the second generation can focus on their careers, etc and the first generation could raise the third. That wouldn't mean the second generation wouldn't have a role and be a part of the process. Of course, there would have to be consent on each level - and if it was part of the culture maybe there would be. Also, technology may have a role in this also - if no one has to actually carry the children, the second generation could be more willing.

The whole point is that this happens all the time, but it's always seen as a break from the norm, not the norm. What if we just embraced it?

The next generation would happen earlier, the first generation would have their grand kids and the second generation would have time to "wait" for whatever reason.

Again, I know this doesn't really work out, but it's a thought I've always had.

[latexr]

> The whole point is that this happens all the time

What happens all the time is an adult raising their our children and then later on raising their grandchildren. But what you’re suggesting is having old people with zero experience raising anyone taking care of their grandchildren. I don’t quite see that as a clearcut case of success.

[91bananas]

Wait the people that raised the kids that then had kids have no experience raising kids?

[latexr]

No, you misunderstood completely. Under the OP’s proposal, you have people raising their grandkids, not their kids.

[jzb]

So if I understand: Starting today, a pair of 20-somethings has kids, hands them off to their parents to raise - OK, their parents had experience now they are doing double-duty, but they know what they're doing raising kids.

Now... 20 years later, those children have kids and hand them off to their biological parents who ... have no experience raising children. Also, which grandparents? Mom's or dad's?

[latexr]

Ask the OP, I wasn’t the one who suggested the idea.

[elcomet]

What does it change from parents with zero experience taking care of their children ?

[lbourdages]

Parents can ask their own parents for guidance. In the proposed scenario, the grandparents would have no one to ask because the previous generation is most likely dead already.

[britzkopf]

Zero? Doesn't seem a very good faith assessment of the concept proposed.

[frankbreetz]

yeah, obviously they were adults when their biological kids were raised and even if the weren't the primary, they surely would be hands on most of the time.

[jader201]

I think you’re missing the point (but possible I am).

My understanding is that OP is proposing that since the grandparents would be raising the kids, this would incentivize people to have kids much younger, e.g. in their early 20s, or even teens.

So the “grandparents” would be in their early/mid 40s, or even late 30s.

Definitely not “old people”.

And zero experience parenting, yes (just like any new parent today), but definitely more life experience, and likely more mature.

Not saying I’d advocate for this — I think there are still some flaws with this — but an interesting hypothetical that’s fun to discuss.

[johnkpaul]

Anthropologically, I think that this isn't super far from what has already happened for humans. Grandmothers specifically had a lot of repsonsibilities and importance and I believe that's why they generally live longer than grandfathers.

Instead of being about career development, it's been about specializing in hunter/gatherer stuff while still able bodied.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/grandmothers-a...

[user_7832]

> I believe that's why they generally live longer than grandfathers.

Iirc that's at least partly due to estrogen & other female hormones. They have I think anti-infection or anti-cancer properties. (Though if your comment was from an evolutionary perspective that would make sense.)

[makeitdouble]

IMHO the part about the kids not being ready is crucial.

If they're just not well off financially I'd see your idea happen (but then, we already see grand parents giving a hand financially in these kind of circumstances)

But if they're not ready mentally, there would be mountains of issues with their relationship with their child. For instance, do they even fully understand it's their child under their responsibility ? Can they continue raising their child when the grand parents can't anymore ? How well will they take it if suddenly they have to give up important things to completely focus on the kid(s) ? On the other hand will they be able to step in if the grand parents aren't fit for that ? etc.

I think it would work better if parents give it a fair try, but end up being inept and have the grandparents step in. Giving up from the start would be a worse path IMHO.

[bitcoin_anon]

My life was a mess until we unexpectedly had our first child. I don’t think I ever would have considered myself mentally ready. The child came first, then I started growing into a suitable person.

[makeitdouble]

TBF, I don't think any of us really understood what it would take or were well prepared to become parents, even when getting into it on our terms.

I don't know if I'm a suitable person, but having a kid sure pushed me out of my boundaries pretty far, in every possible direction.

[CWJeff]

I've always had an even worse idea, ethically speaking, that I think would combine well with yours : the first generation would raise the third, as you said, but that third generation would be born out of the frozen gametes of the now deceased zero generation.

That way, embryos would only be created after the death of both biological parents, which would give you whole lives to look at to decide if you wanted these persons to reproduce.

That would open the way to some interesting possibilities in directing human evolution while opening a whole new world of horrific abuse and creative eugenics.

[ghosty141]

This is eh very common in many parts of the world. I myself have probably spent more time with my grandparents than my parents at certain times of my life. Often this happens if grandparents and parents live closeby and children cant go to daycare for whatever reason.

[jzb]

Even leaving aside the ethics (which...yikes) I think this kind of falls down, logically.

Parents want to become grandparents after having the experience of being parents. If you cut the "being parents" out of that cycle, why would you even want grand kids? And having been parents prepares grandparents to step in if needed. If you skip the parenting step, why would they be any better at it just because they're 20 years older?

Also, frankly, infants are hard. They're great when you can give them back. But the loss of sleep and everything is something that does not go well with being in your 40s and beyond. It's hard at any age, but doubly so later in life.

All that said, it'd be great if society placed more emphasis on extended family involvement and if we start to really embrace remote work that might be more possible. (e.g., stop making people move thousands of miles away from their families just for jobs...) But accelerating child-having just for the sake of great-grandparents... bad idea, even leaving aside the ethics.

[imacomputer]

> Also, frankly, infants are hard.

Honestly, they are as difficult as you want them to be. Some parents stress way to much about them hurting themselves in the process.

If you take everything in moderation, they are not that bad at all. There will be a few bad days ofc, but at large my kids are the best thing that happened to me, and I have two at the same age.

[jobs_throwaway]

what are your ethical qualms?

[unsupp0rted]

Child-rearing approaches that weren't used where/when I grew up are unethical

[unsupp0rted]

This is the norm in countries like South Korea, and much of Eastern Europe

[SystemOut]

From my limited vantage point (in-laws) this is normal in the Filipino culture. My wife and I moved away from her parents so we didn't do this but her sister's kids were probably a 70/30 split in being at the grandparents' house. Her cousin's kids were the same. In fact, many of them would send the kids to the Philippines for months at a time where the grandparents lived to be raised by them. It felt really odd to me at first but that's more because it wasn't how I was raised plus I didn't have any grandparents that were still alive when I grew up.

[ToucanLoucan]

> And I know a lot of parents that want their kids to have kids but the kids aren't ready. ... The next generation would happen earlier, the first generation would have their grand kids and the second generation would have time to "wait" for whatever reason.

I mean, putting aside the other good comments this has received, why are the kids not ready? Because if I look around at myself and my peers, I see a lot of people who absolutely want kids but feel they can't have them, for a number of reasons, but not unimportant reasons:

- A lot of people are delaying because they don't feel financially stable enough, because of the increasing costs of lifes essentials, not the least of which is housing, and/or student loan debt which was foisted on them by the selfish decisions of the aforementioned grandparents.

- Tons of people are avoiding kids because they don't want to bring them into a world as unstable as ours, that instability expressed as some combination of: our ever worsening biosphere and the long-term threats of climate change, the aforementioned everything-getting-more-expensive-all-the-time while wages continue stagnating, the political instability with micro-wars playing out all over the place, the economic precarity as our system continues enabling bad actors, the social instability caused by deepening political divides and extremisms literally everywhere over what would otherwise be such benign things, and for flavor, a few things that absolutely deserve extremist responses...

Like, one of the first things that goes away when an animal population is stressed on a macro-scale is reproduction. It seems to me if we want to promote reproduction again, we need to make our world less... awful? Like by and large, my life is great, but I'm child-free and that decision was informed partly by the fact that I have to meter my intake of global news lest I become so depressed I can't function, and aside of that, I started making six figures 2 years ago which is legitimately a thing I never thought would happen, and yet in those subsequent 2 years I have never felt poorer because every last thing costs more now than it ever has, even asking my mother.

I think it's impossible to divorce a discussion like this from the fact that there are absolutely pages upon pages of good, rational, logical reasons one can write to not have children and commensurate with that fact, we see birth rates plummeting all over the place.

[antifa]

> micro-wars

That's an interesting choice of worlds, I'd just call them wars, maybe proxy wars. Some of them look like candidates for what future historians might call the early conflicts of WW3. There's also lot of noise about declaring war on China too, which honestly sounds like a bad idea, and the grievances I've seen range from fake to you're-doing-the-same-thing and what's left is not really worth fighting a war over.

From what I've seen, the loudest proponents demanding everyone have more kids are also the worst offenders in making the world a worse place to be a new kid or a new parent.

[ToucanLoucan]

Yeah I couldn't really settle on the term. The Ukraine-Russia conflict is kind of half-proxy war, since one of the entities is Russia itself but then the other side is basically NATO plus or minus, but (to my knowledge) no NATO nations have been in direct conflict with Russia yet, they're just supplying the Ukraine. And then you have the Israel Palestine shit which isn't really a proxy war at all so much as a regular war that happens to be small in scale (compared to the world, not compared to it's combatants of course).

But yeah, this feels distinctly like the period of history right before maps get covered in flags and arrows and it's not a good vibe.

[jffhn]

>I see a lot of people who absolutely want kids but feel they can't have them, for a number of reasons

I remember thinking about that in the street, and then be overtaken by a rom family, the father pushing the kids in a shopping cart and the mother walking alongside.

[dochtman]

Here in NL it is quite common for grandparents to help parents out with day care on their workdays. School pickup is rife with grandparents…

[nirav72]

yeah this is also fairly common in many East and South-Asian countries. In countries like China, many people leave their children behind in the village with the grandparents, while they go work in the cities.

[mplewis]

Visit any WIC clinic. Grandmas are always the ones picking up the societal slack.

[jrochkind1]

I would like to read the SF story fleshing this out!