[IgorPartola]

No. The reason why is because we have opportunities to move up and down the social ladder.

Basically it’s not really like the whole village raised your kid before, that’s more of a romanticized version. What happened was that your extended family helped because you lived with them for your entire life. So you have a kid, your sister in law watches them along with your mother while you work. Where do you work? Well that’s wherever your family works. If you are born into a farm, you are a farmer. If your family is blacksmiths, you’ll be a smith. Or a dung sifter, etc. If you can’t do it, maybe your farmer family sends you to apprentice with the local smith. But you rarely get a choice in what you do, where you live, etc.

Moreover, if you don’t like your family/they don’t like you: tough. You might hate your sister in law but who else will watch your kid while you sift dung?

What has changed is that we have the free market. Your can move out, have your own career and hire someone to care for your kids while you work. You no longer have access to “free” childcare but you have access to the job market instead. Want to leave the farm and move to the big city to become a jewelry maker? Go for it. But you won’t have much support to start a family. You are paying for free choice.

[llm_nerd]

"The village" isn't limited to some pioneer dung sifter living seven generations to a hovel. Also absolutely bizarre how so many people so desperately want to make this an economic thing.

The village referred to the notion that children were viewed as important to the whole. The whole country, the whole province, the whole village, the whole neighbourhood, the whole family. Everyone cared about and contributed to the raising of children. In my childhood -- and at this point the village was already declining -- I had a number of friend families that were like second, third and fourth families where I could stayover for dinner whenever I wanted, they watched out for me, etc. There were many times where I spent nights at aunts with my cousins, or at grandparents.

Culturally this is far less common. We all move hundreds of kilometers apart. Sometimes for careers, more often because you're a loser if you stay near where you grew up. Many/most younger people have little relation with cousins or aunts or uncles. Grandparents now move to Arizona and ask for pictures occasionally. People have an antagonistic attitude towards other people's kids as a selfish trifle that are just a nuisance for everyone else.

No, hiring a nanny isn't equivalent and doesn't invalidate this.

[jajko]

Yes these were things we lost, but 'we' as in anytime in past 500 years. You just experienced it yourself for your line.

What was gained is meaningless to some, and next to everything to others. I don't fucking ever have to deal with anybody's crap I don't want to. It feels amazing, simple yet right way to live a life. How shitty my life would be if I had to accept and constantly tolerate people in family circle that for example aren't good people, moral ones or just an emotional vampire. Or brutally incompatible with me in any other way. I see it in peers sucking it up over and over, oh boy do they hate relative X from their or spouse's family tree, yet since they live nearby frequent meetings are unavoidable. For some blood is sacred and above else, I don't see it that way if relationships are not at least a bit mutually beneficial.

Freedom, man, to do what you want with your life, that's a wonderful thing. Freedom to form new bonds with literally anybody in this world, as you please. Great friendships trump most of blood relationships, all if you want. Also, people change over time and common ground is getting usually smaller and smaller every year. I'd gladly give it to my kids over some tighter knit family ties with people of variable quality with highly questionable views on life, who raised their own kids only so-so and it shows later on.

Just to be clear - I've experienced most if not all you wrote. It was good. All non-good easily trumps it so thus my opinion on the matters. My kids are growing in very different world than I grew up in, that one is long gone. I look at it as a package with + and -, liking current package more.

[anon291]

Simply not true. My grandparents moved from India to watch us. They didn't have to. They did live with us for a while but in my parents house

In no way did we live with them. They lived with us.

Ultimately this is cultural. JD Vance talks about this when it comes to his mother in law who did the same thing.

Cultures that value kids will have more. My parents did the same for us

[BirdieNZ]

> Cultures that value kids will have more. My parents did the same for us

Last I checked, cultures that have access to contraception and female education have fewer kids, independent of religion or tradition or practice of valuing kids.

Indian culture is no exception; total fertility rate has declined in the last ~50 years from ~6 children per woman to ~2, and continues to decline.

[adolph]

> No. The reason why is because we have opportunities to move up and down the social ladder.

Wait until people realize the ladder is a treadmill and any movement is an illusion of entropy.

Every wave of humanity is like an ocean's endless beating against a beach.

[lproven]

> Every wave of humanity is like an ocean's endless beating against a beach.

"Man hands on misery to man

It deepens like the coastal shelf

Get out as early as you can

And don't have any kids yourself."

(Philip Larkin.)