As it happens, I’m currently assisting my baby brother- 10 years younger - in navigating his release from a hospital, and in managing living at home with chronic disabilities.
It’s meant time staying at his place, planning the decluttering of his house, and ongoing assistance in monitoring a complicated medication regime.
Not easy, as I’ll be 72 in a few weeks. Technology does help, but we are nowhere near full on robotic helpers. Both my brothers were without wives or children. My sister is managing the care of a considerably older husband, while dealing with her own cancer issues, and recovery from a bad fall.
My brother and I have been working together with an elder-care company to help our 96-year-old mom and I know she worries about what will happen to us with no children of our own (we're both childless 50-somethings) to do the same in turn. Unfortunately I have no answers beyond robots and hired help.
I suspect Virginia would still be a writer and professor even if she had children. That's the lie of feminism.. That you can be a mother or have a career... Not true. With our longer lifespan, we can do both, just not at the same time, though I have friends who have managed to have families and still write and teach at the same time.
You can certainly be a writer and have children. Many people are and some of them are even female. But if you want to be a good mother, you cannot spend your 30s working 60 hours a week editing an resource-deprived but ambitious magazine and doing difficult intellectual writing. That's why you've heard of me. It's like the difference between having a typical corporate job and working at a startup.
It is not "demeaning" to anyone. I'm not prescribing for other people. There are women with more stamina than me. There are women who are much smarter than me. There are also women more devoted to their children or their work and less devoted to their husbands. There are lots and lots of women happy to work as copy editors or publicists.
If I'd had children, I would have had to make different choices, not least of which would be for my husband and me to Follow the Money rather than to live in L.A. and pursue our intellectual interests. I'm not a victim or an advocate, just clear-eyed about tradeoffs.
The reaction that the tradeoffs aren't real reminds me of my sister-in-law's question to her med school profs who wanted her to be a surgeon. She asked them to give her the names of successful women surgeons who had children and happy marriages. The answer was, "I think there's one in Texas." She became an anesthesiologist. Tradeoffs exist.
You did not understand what I wrote. I stayed home with my child (would have been four had I not had three miscarriages) until he was 9. Then I started my career in IT, and I did very well until I retired from that career at 56 and bought a farm. Women don't have to do everything at the same time. I was able to rise in my field much faster than people in their 20s because I was mature and had a great work ethic.
I have friends who are writers who did the same.... Raise kids then work on a career. I will be 70 in a few days, and I am pursuing another career, my farm... raising angora goats and working with their fiber. I feel for you, because your choices were unnecessary and you have missed out on having a family. You could have done it, just not all at the same time.
I did understand what you wrote, and I appreciate the point you made (not so much Josh Scandlen, was being a jerk and didn't even use the opportunity to promote his mom's writing). I'm glad it worked for you and your friends. But my career was very different from that of the typical writer/mother, and there's a reason most of my peers are male. There are lots of female journalists and female editors but there are very, very few in whatever you want to call my bizarre niche. I would not be where I am today if I'd raised kids instead of editing Reason and writing books. For that matter, I probably wouldn't be where I am today if I'd gone to graduate school, even though I regret that lack more than the lack of kids. I'm happy with what I've done, and the choices it required. I was making a comment about *my* life, not about *everybody's* life.
One of the many benefits of having children is that it can help keep you grounded in reality and remind you of what is actually important in life, especially in weird times like these. Children really are a civilizational investment and it seems large segments of our society have forgotten this fact. Frankly, I worry about the growing number of childless adults who, especially in government, will be making policies that disproportionally affect families.
My mother died in 2021 at age 100. Fortunately she had five children who were able in different ways to ensure that she died at home in comfort with appropriate caregiving and much attention, since she was increasingly helpless. The elder of my two younger brothers, a CPA, took care of her finances and since he lived nearby, was the family stalwart in managing her affairs. Her body simply gave out on her after so many years, but her mind, although it was not what it once was, remained alert to the end.
I myself expect to be exterminated sometime within the next 20 years. Our culture now regards "medical assistance in dying" as the appropriate way for old people, whether they like it or not, to relieve their relatives and everyone else of the continued burden of their presence on earth. Those who don't go along with that program will be nudged, and those who resist nudging will be pushed. The methodology is morphine plus some sort of benzo plus starvation and dehydration. It's the "Liverpool Pathway" that was adopted enthusiastically by Britain's National Health Service a decade ago, then dropped after too many horror stories from relatives of the deceased emerged--but it now seems to have returned in a more subtle form, according to a recent parliamentary report. It is certainly being routinely practiced in U.S. hospices; the mother of one of my friends was dispatched in exactly that fashion just a few months ago.
I was already in my late 30s when I finally met a man I could stand to spend the rest of my life with, and by then it was too late for me for motherhood (although not for want of trying!). Demographics tell me that I will outlive my husband, and although I have nieces, nephews, great-nieces, and great-nephews of whom I am fond, they are not the same as one's own children, and I can't count on any of them. Although I have a good friend whom I've named as my medical representative in my living will, I may outlive her as well--and we are long past the day when religious charities were the primary institutional caretakers of the elderly and infused their care with their religious ethics. The vast majority of nursing homes and hospices are now in the for-profit sector, and for-profit means efficiency. So, when I am unable to take care of myself, I expect to be carted to a pastel-painted facility and attached to a morphine drip.
But I won't be much different from all those elderly nursing-home patients in 2020 who had to die alone by the thousands because of stupid and heartless covid-19 policies. Like them, and like so many, many others throughout history, I will be a witness to the horrors that human beings are willing to inflict on other human beings in the name of whatever policy or ideology or sheer malice drives them. Most of them will have suffered far worse than I'll ever suffer in the comfortable life I've lived so far. As Dylan Thomas wrote: "Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; / Though lovers be lost love shall not."
It's a bit of a long shot, but we probably should be putting a lot more research effort into longevity/anti-aging stuff. Here's hoping at least robotics down the line helps.
I think A.I. might help. A lot of the stuff you have to negotiate as the child of an aged parent could theoretically be managed by machines. Just automating my mother's bill paying, which requires much less tech, makes things much easier.
I doubt Japan’s problems are the result of whatever laws the government passed after 1945. China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore all have rock bottom fertility, worse than Japan. And they don’t have many out of wedlock births either, despite this article attributing that to policy too! Something about East Asians and modernity, needs to be explored.
South Korea didn't cross Japan in fertility until 1985, so it's more analogous to the U.S. in terms of the current problem I was discussing as opposed to the general long-term trend. (I didn't look up Taiwan and Singapore but suspect they're similar.)
When women have greater economic and legal freedom, cultures that traditionally demand greater sacrifices from women who marry or have children seem to experience greater drops in fertility. It's not just East Asia but also, say, Italy.
This problem is not new to the western world. European countries, for example, have had incentive per child payments to support their aging populations and social programs for decades. The current German Kindergelt payment is 250 euros per month per child. It is not enough as Germany's birthrate is below replacement at 1.53.
All of Europe is below 2.0. In a few generations the populations of Greece and Italy will be reduced by half, and a high percentage will be over 75.
The only countries with above 2.0 are in Africa and the middle east. Most Islamic countries are well over 2.0.
The only saving statistic for the US is in immigration, as long as the immigrants pay social security taxes. Otherwise, we will face the same problem of too few young people to cover the cost of our aging population.
BTW I notice some netsuke in the attached pictures. I tried to collect these, but they got too expensive. During a trip to Japan, I found very few and also noted that the younger generation didn't know what they were.
I seem to recall you positing caregiver robots awhile back - struck me (as a 53 y/o GenXer with an 86 y/o father with worsening cognitive loss) as a great idea/solution to the horrible dilemma of elder care now done by appallingly underpaid people doing very intimate and messy jobs...
My hope is for more assisting technologies like a "smart cane" to help prevent accidental falls. Plus better mentoring and alerting tech. I think a full-fledged elder care robot is still rather far into the future.
You're getting a preview of the future right now, which is sustained inflation. Old people have more wealth, because they've had a lifetime to accumulate savings. Young people have labor. When there is more savings and less labor, then necessarily the value of savings relative to labor decreases -- so, inflation in labor costs, especially labor performed by the young and unskilled, and low to zero (or even negative) real returns on savings.
There will of course be a variety of nostrums offered up by the usual crowd of hucksters and politicians, promising to make water flow uphill, reverse the Second Law, shovel the tide back, et cetera, and to the extent we waste time and effort pursuing them we will make the long-term trends a bit worse.
As it happens, I’m currently assisting my baby brother- 10 years younger - in navigating his release from a hospital, and in managing living at home with chronic disabilities.
It’s meant time staying at his place, planning the decluttering of his house, and ongoing assistance in monitoring a complicated medication regime.
Not easy, as I’ll be 72 in a few weeks. Technology does help, but we are nowhere near full on robotic helpers. Both my brothers were without wives or children. My sister is managing the care of a considerably older husband, while dealing with her own cancer issues, and recovery from a bad fall.
We all do worry.
My brother and I have been working together with an elder-care company to help our 96-year-old mom and I know she worries about what will happen to us with no children of our own (we're both childless 50-somethings) to do the same in turn. Unfortunately I have no answers beyond robots and hired help.
I suspect Virginia would still be a writer and professor even if she had children. That's the lie of feminism.. That you can be a mother or have a career... Not true. With our longer lifespan, we can do both, just not at the same time, though I have friends who have managed to have families and still write and teach at the same time.
Could not agree more. Very demeaning to insinuate a mom raising kids couldn’t write.
Obviously it’s a defense mechanism.
Sad what feminists have done to women. Even sadder is what men did to women to make feminism seem legit to begin with
Wow, patronizing much?????
You can certainly be a writer and have children. Many people are and some of them are even female. But if you want to be a good mother, you cannot spend your 30s working 60 hours a week editing an resource-deprived but ambitious magazine and doing difficult intellectual writing. That's why you've heard of me. It's like the difference between having a typical corporate job and working at a startup.
It is not "demeaning" to anyone. I'm not prescribing for other people. There are women with more stamina than me. There are women who are much smarter than me. There are also women more devoted to their children or their work and less devoted to their husbands. There are lots and lots of women happy to work as copy editors or publicists.
If I'd had children, I would have had to make different choices, not least of which would be for my husband and me to Follow the Money rather than to live in L.A. and pursue our intellectual interests. I'm not a victim or an advocate, just clear-eyed about tradeoffs.
The reaction that the tradeoffs aren't real reminds me of my sister-in-law's question to her med school profs who wanted her to be a surgeon. She asked them to give her the names of successful women surgeons who had children and happy marriages. The answer was, "I think there's one in Texas." She became an anesthesiologist. Tradeoffs exist.
You did not understand what I wrote. I stayed home with my child (would have been four had I not had three miscarriages) until he was 9. Then I started my career in IT, and I did very well until I retired from that career at 56 and bought a farm. Women don't have to do everything at the same time. I was able to rise in my field much faster than people in their 20s because I was mature and had a great work ethic.
I have friends who are writers who did the same.... Raise kids then work on a career. I will be 70 in a few days, and I am pursuing another career, my farm... raising angora goats and working with their fiber. I feel for you, because your choices were unnecessary and you have missed out on having a family. You could have done it, just not all at the same time.
I did understand what you wrote, and I appreciate the point you made (not so much Josh Scandlen, was being a jerk and didn't even use the opportunity to promote his mom's writing). I'm glad it worked for you and your friends. But my career was very different from that of the typical writer/mother, and there's a reason most of my peers are male. There are lots of female journalists and female editors but there are very, very few in whatever you want to call my bizarre niche. I would not be where I am today if I'd raised kids instead of editing Reason and writing books. For that matter, I probably wouldn't be where I am today if I'd gone to graduate school, even though I regret that lack more than the lack of kids. I'm happy with what I've done, and the choices it required. I was making a comment about *my* life, not about *everybody's* life.
Also, I suspect you'll like today's post, which features a woman who has had multiple careers over the course of her life.
One of the many benefits of having children is that it can help keep you grounded in reality and remind you of what is actually important in life, especially in weird times like these. Children really are a civilizational investment and it seems large segments of our society have forgotten this fact. Frankly, I worry about the growing number of childless adults who, especially in government, will be making policies that disproportionally affect families.
My mother died in 2021 at age 100. Fortunately she had five children who were able in different ways to ensure that she died at home in comfort with appropriate caregiving and much attention, since she was increasingly helpless. The elder of my two younger brothers, a CPA, took care of her finances and since he lived nearby, was the family stalwart in managing her affairs. Her body simply gave out on her after so many years, but her mind, although it was not what it once was, remained alert to the end.
I myself expect to be exterminated sometime within the next 20 years. Our culture now regards "medical assistance in dying" as the appropriate way for old people, whether they like it or not, to relieve their relatives and everyone else of the continued burden of their presence on earth. Those who don't go along with that program will be nudged, and those who resist nudging will be pushed. The methodology is morphine plus some sort of benzo plus starvation and dehydration. It's the "Liverpool Pathway" that was adopted enthusiastically by Britain's National Health Service a decade ago, then dropped after too many horror stories from relatives of the deceased emerged--but it now seems to have returned in a more subtle form, according to a recent parliamentary report. It is certainly being routinely practiced in U.S. hospices; the mother of one of my friends was dispatched in exactly that fashion just a few months ago.
I was already in my late 30s when I finally met a man I could stand to spend the rest of my life with, and by then it was too late for me for motherhood (although not for want of trying!). Demographics tell me that I will outlive my husband, and although I have nieces, nephews, great-nieces, and great-nephews of whom I am fond, they are not the same as one's own children, and I can't count on any of them. Although I have a good friend whom I've named as my medical representative in my living will, I may outlive her as well--and we are long past the day when religious charities were the primary institutional caretakers of the elderly and infused their care with their religious ethics. The vast majority of nursing homes and hospices are now in the for-profit sector, and for-profit means efficiency. So, when I am unable to take care of myself, I expect to be carted to a pastel-painted facility and attached to a morphine drip.
But I won't be much different from all those elderly nursing-home patients in 2020 who had to die alone by the thousands because of stupid and heartless covid-19 policies. Like them, and like so many, many others throughout history, I will be a witness to the horrors that human beings are willing to inflict on other human beings in the name of whatever policy or ideology or sheer malice drives them. Most of them will have suffered far worse than I'll ever suffer in the comfortable life I've lived so far. As Dylan Thomas wrote: "Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; / Though lovers be lost love shall not."
It's a bit of a long shot, but we probably should be putting a lot more research effort into longevity/anti-aging stuff. Here's hoping at least robotics down the line helps.
I think A.I. might help. A lot of the stuff you have to negotiate as the child of an aged parent could theoretically be managed by machines. Just automating my mother's bill paying, which requires much less tech, makes things much easier.
I doubt Japan’s problems are the result of whatever laws the government passed after 1945. China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore all have rock bottom fertility, worse than Japan. And they don’t have many out of wedlock births either, despite this article attributing that to policy too! Something about East Asians and modernity, needs to be explored.
South Korea didn't cross Japan in fertility until 1985, so it's more analogous to the U.S. in terms of the current problem I was discussing as opposed to the general long-term trend. (I didn't look up Taiwan and Singapore but suspect they're similar.)
When women have greater economic and legal freedom, cultures that traditionally demand greater sacrifices from women who marry or have children seem to experience greater drops in fertility. It's not just East Asia but also, say, Italy.
So if you had kids we wouldn’t be able to read yoir work? Interesting… I’m sure my mom would not agree, given that, well, I’m alive .
This problem is not new to the western world. European countries, for example, have had incentive per child payments to support their aging populations and social programs for decades. The current German Kindergelt payment is 250 euros per month per child. It is not enough as Germany's birthrate is below replacement at 1.53.
All of Europe is below 2.0. In a few generations the populations of Greece and Italy will be reduced by half, and a high percentage will be over 75.
The only countries with above 2.0 are in Africa and the middle east. Most Islamic countries are well over 2.0.
The only saving statistic for the US is in immigration, as long as the immigrants pay social security taxes. Otherwise, we will face the same problem of too few young people to cover the cost of our aging population.
BTW I notice some netsuke in the attached pictures. I tried to collect these, but they got too expensive. During a trip to Japan, I found very few and also noted that the younger generation didn't know what they were.
I seem to recall you positing caregiver robots awhile back - struck me (as a 53 y/o GenXer with an 86 y/o father with worsening cognitive loss) as a great idea/solution to the horrible dilemma of elder care now done by appallingly underpaid people doing very intimate and messy jobs...
There is this, also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4y8YAMPFhk
Seems like if any society should be able to figure this out, it would be the Japanese...
Here's the post you remember: https://vpostrel.substack.com/p/who-would-want-a-robot-caregiver
My hope is for more assisting technologies like a "smart cane" to help prevent accidental falls. Plus better mentoring and alerting tech. I think a full-fledged elder care robot is still rather far into the future.
I want smart shoes. It even made it into an earlier post (featuring some really bad AI-generated art): https://vpostrel.substack.com/p/envisioning-a-hopeful-future-we-have
Peter Zeihan talks about demographics and politics
You're getting a preview of the future right now, which is sustained inflation. Old people have more wealth, because they've had a lifetime to accumulate savings. Young people have labor. When there is more savings and less labor, then necessarily the value of savings relative to labor decreases -- so, inflation in labor costs, especially labor performed by the young and unskilled, and low to zero (or even negative) real returns on savings.
There will of course be a variety of nostrums offered up by the usual crowd of hucksters and politicians, promising to make water flow uphill, reverse the Second Law, shovel the tide back, et cetera, and to the extent we waste time and effort pursuing them we will make the long-term trends a bit worse.