Thursday, July 4, 2019

America versus the rest of the world

This is Joseph.

All of the points in this piece are good.  But I am particularly struck by:
Of course Americans love their own children as much as any parents anywhere. But raising kids is seen as a private decision, freighted with hardship and annoyances that are to be entirely borne by the parents themselves. Enter many places in America with a preschooler and the unspoken message feels more like, "Please move quietly to the suburbs to suffer in silence. Don't bother the rest of us with your uncool offspring."
But the idea of making children an entirely private concern is culturally unusual.  We have a lot of laws and regulations around children, but a fear of having to contribute to making children viable.  Just look at the daycare expenses that some area have

I don't think that this attitude is necessarily wrong -- everyone has to make some trade-offs but it is odd to see this in any culture that frames itself as pro-family. 

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