My parents raised me on an acre in a house that my parents built with them both having reasonable salaries.
I mean, if your parents built a whole house by themselves, that’s incredible. My parents just bought a new home way out in the Houston 'burbs, which forced my dad to spend hours commuting every day when he wasn’t overseas on contract.
I’m in a smaller house inside the loop and I’m paying maybe 2-3x as much for a postage stamp of space, but my commute is 15 minutes. If I’m feeling crazy, I can even bike to work. That gives me far more time to spend with my son.
That’s not even to say there aren’t expenses and struggles. Daycare is looking like it’ll run me a full second mortgage payment. If we weren’t both professionals, it likely wouldn’t be worth the cost of care to keep up two incomes.
But you don’t need a acre to raise a child. My mom grew up in a smaller house than I own, and she had four sisters.
These are, fundamentally, decisions we’re making driven by cultural expectations.
You absolutely don’t need an acre to raise a kid, but I don’t think people can raise kids as well today as they could 40 years ago because the world is falling apart from capitalist greed.
I don’t think people can raise kids as well today as they could 40 years ago because the world is falling apart
I mean, I can’t imagine telling a survivor of the Great Depression “Yeah, sure, have six kids. Now’s the time. Because in a century we’re going to have cheap energy and enormous food surpluses and highly advanced industrial machinery and we won’t be book-ended between World Wars or have a smallpox or syphillus or polio epidemic.”
Like, sure, fuck capitalism. But we’ve had capitalism for 400 years.
I mean, if your parents built a whole house by themselves, that’s incredible. My parents just bought a new home way out in the Houston 'burbs, which forced my dad to spend hours commuting every day when he wasn’t overseas on contract.
I’m in a smaller house inside the loop and I’m paying maybe 2-3x as much for a postage stamp of space, but my commute is 15 minutes. If I’m feeling crazy, I can even bike to work. That gives me far more time to spend with my son.
That’s not even to say there aren’t expenses and struggles. Daycare is looking like it’ll run me a full second mortgage payment. If we weren’t both professionals, it likely wouldn’t be worth the cost of care to keep up two incomes.
But you don’t need a acre to raise a child. My mom grew up in a smaller house than I own, and she had four sisters.
These are, fundamentally, decisions we’re making driven by cultural expectations.
You absolutely don’t need an acre to raise a kid, but I don’t think people can raise kids as well today as they could 40 years ago because the world is falling apart from capitalist greed.
I mean, I can’t imagine telling a survivor of the Great Depression “Yeah, sure, have six kids. Now’s the time. Because in a century we’re going to have cheap energy and enormous food surpluses and highly advanced industrial machinery and we won’t be book-ended between World Wars or have a smallpox or syphillus or polio epidemic.”
Like, sure, fuck capitalism. But we’ve had capitalism for 400 years.