Spending long chunks of time with no adults, in a large mixed-age group, is a less and less common experience.

I spent some time in a remote fishing village in Madagascar and that was one of the things that surprised me the most - kids would spend all day together in an unsupervised mob roaming around the village, from the youngest ones who were just old enough to walk independently to age 8-10 or so (older than that and you had things to do).

I also enjoyed this essay on the topic: https://unpublishablepapers.substack.com/p/where-do-the-chil...

I'm very curious how much time you spend talking about parenting and consuming either social media or professional content about parenting, because those topics are so deeply embedded in parenting today that it's like saying "nobody seems to have noticed the internet".

Millennial dads were (mostly) a distant mess who for whatever reason saw the expression of feelings as "weak".

So its not a matter of “killing yourself to get more time” … its a matter of not abandoning your kids and wife to make time for your hobbies or whatever

Thanks to anyone reading this if you’re trying to be a good dad. You’re making the world a better place in ways you don’t even see

All my millennial dad friends clean, change diapers, cook, whatever. And make no mistake all the moms are incredibly hard-working and involved with the kids.

If I happened to meet socially a dad who wasn't doing those things I would literally make fun of them. "You're a grown man who can't change a diaper or clean a bathroom?"

Here's my routine.

5am: wake up/coffee

5:30ish: gym

6:30ish: back, clean kitchen, take out trash, make lunch for 2 kids

7:30: nanny arrives, and I sit down at desk, and kids are now awake

8:30: walk older kid to school

9-5:30: work or whatever else. I run my own business so some days feel very busy, some the opposite. I just try to be intentional with my time.

5:30 p: start dinner

6:30 p: dinner (or earlier depending on demands)

7:30 p: kid bed time

8:15-8:30: done w/kids. time for a bit of TV or wind-down, catch up with my wife about her day for as long as I can manage to stay awake

9:30-10: bed time (ideal day)

I stopped working at night unless it is critical for a next-morning thing. That leaves me absent from some opportunities that I might otherwise get spending more time on work, but I also have more time to focus on me/marriage/non-work-life

My point in sharing is that I make space on purpose for me. Your schedule sounds (and I am presuming) like you don't have much time for you. Is that right?

Also worth not forgetting that in most cases the fathers of millennials were a hell of a lot more present and emotionally available than their fathers etc. I'm sure we'll make plenty of our own mistakes that our children will try to avoid when their turn comes.

There is a solid explanation.

First, before the adoption of mass spec, studies used a less accurate method of measuring testosterone that overstated testosterone levels.

Also, the studies showing the population level decline in testosterone generally controlled for obesity (which naturally lowers testosterone) using BMI. But BMI is a very crude measure.

When studies control with better methods like BMI + waist circumference, and only compare samples using the mass spec measurement method, the unexplained population level decline goes away. After fixing the measurement method, what remains of the decline can be explained by BMI + waist circumference. In other words, modern men are more prone to obesity and metabolic syndrome, which naturally reduces testosterone. Case closed.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22150314/

While that can be true, I wonder how much of it is true. It's pretty common in therapy to hear partners saying the other one doesn't contribute, but further investigation can often turn up observation biases.

But the aggregate trend is quite clear.

Screw the economy, love your kid (or kids).

Now everyone's screaming about a declining population.

We should embrace and prepare for degrowth for a better chance at a wonderful future, not shout at the sky hoping people will make more babies for the economy.

And guess what, if we prepare for degrowth, where a generation or two or three of the entire planet never goes hungry, never goes to war, and has the freedom of movement, creativity, innovation, interaction... Those people will want to have many many babies, and we can once again start worrying about overpopulation.

As it turns out, I don't enjoy extended time with children. My bad, but I power through it for the sake of the child. In older times that would be no problem, my wife would deal with that. Instead I stopped at 1 when I realized I am not the kind of person who enjoys being equally involved with children.

> How about we start paying market price to the parent who takes care of the kids irrespective of mothers or fathers ? Investing in next generation is way more important than making useless widgets faster.

Considering that the current political majority in the US wants people to have more kids, this would be a really reasonable thing to do if they were serious about that.

my wife doesn't work. and she didn't work before we had a baby. because one of our salaries was enough, so instead we work less. and again due to remote work, work has barely been top 5 in my life focus areas for the last decade.

In the 1950s, fathers worked and paid for everything. Mothers raised the kids. This was taught in schools, girls were steered into marriage, motherhood, and housekeeping and men into vocations or college.

Let's not pretend that many women didn't go to work so they could have more, and feel like they were a more complete person. Many people just don't want to be pigeonholed into roles defined by tradition, and the 1960s were a huge rebellion against this. This wasn't some grand capitalist scheme.

It's still possible to raise a family on one professional income, if you live like most people did in the 1960s. Can you do it on minimum wage? No, but you couldn't do it then either.

You may not like it, but women benefited a lot. And fought a lot to get those benefits.

Not just in terms of money. They are beaten less. When they are beaten or constantly insulted, they can leave and feed themselves.

Tired old socialist rhetoric.

The real benefiter of this is the state which can now have many times the tax base at the price of none. Where women used to take care of the children and do the housekeeping those tasks are now often done by paid day care, taxed by the state and paid help, again taxed by the state. From a single tax payer a family - father, mother, two children - now supplies two tax payers and several 'downstream' tax payers.

At the risk is stating the obvious, crops do not have the ability to notice whether or not the farmer spends time with them. If you think that a child won't notice that one of their parents doesn't spend time with them and will be affected by it, I don't know what to tell you.

If you don't believe me, fold a load of laundry the next time you visit a friend with little kids. Or play with their kid for half an hour so the parent can let their guard down for a bit. It has an incredible impact.

Of course, 50+ years ago diaper changing was often skilled labor (as was cooking) - it’s much easier to change a modern diaper and cook a modern ready-to-make meal.

An example anecdote: my friend works construction. Lots of long hours of hard labor. His wife is unhappy because he doesn't do more childcare, but left unanswered is how he could do more. He can't work fewer hours or move to a new job without a giant income hit. His wife can't earn enough to offset daycare costs. They already live on a fairly thin budget. From the outside, I can see how he'd feel unappreciated.

That said though there are definitely also men who aren't doing childcare OR working hard, and they're happy to have their wife do everything.

When I read from article:

> The fact that richer and better-educated parents are freely choosing to pour more of their valuable time into childcare makes raising children sound practically like a “luxury good,” akin to buying a Rolex watch or a fragile Fabergé egg.

It kind of reflected an unawareness to me. Unless one crosses the threshold of wealth where they can afford full-time 24/7 nanny, the richer parents spending more time in childcare seems obvious and non-counterintuitive. It is more likely jobs that pay well also provide flexible working hours and locations so these parents can really afford to spend more time in childcare. And this would much more prevalent category then families who could afford hired help for child care.

On the other hand poorer parent with much stringent job conditions would be mentally and physically exhausted to provide much childcare.

> I think some modern opinions of parenting come from a very individualistic, transactional and reciprocal mindset. ..

I think family unit like almost every other thing in modern economy has fallen victim to financialization of society.

I’ve also now watched many friends divorce, and I have to say, the wives who stayed at home seem to struggle a LOT more with the transition of now having to parent AND have a job, and the husbands mostly seem to be fine. And that’s despite them now paying a big chunk of their ex’s bills!

You can see this in how people respond to complaints of lazy spouses. If a woman complains, everyone is by default on her side. If a man complains, even if it's obviously true his wife is not doing enough, he is still the one blamed because maybe he wasn't nice to his wife or something.