1. In the US, zoning laws discourage building things like the "mother in-law suite". These zoning laws were originally created as a way to get around federal laws prohibiting discrimination of race and sex by making it more difficult for people who can't afford housing to live within a certain neighborhood. Even if US residents wanted to add housing for some semblance of independence, zoning laws makes this difficult.
2. In the US, children are educated to become factory workers, and inegunity is deliberately suppressed. (See John Taylor Gotto's The Underground History of American Education).
3. When I look at Carol Sandford's work on regenerative business and regenerative life paradigms, I realized that people here in the US have been conditioned to think that being able to live independently is the mark of an adult. But that is an illusion. They are still largely treated like cogs, whether those are adults who are working full time jobs, or children in the compulsory school system.
4. In contrast, a regenerative business builds up the capability for each employee to figure out what they want to do that will make a meaningful contribution to the business and society in a way that aligns with the general direction the organization is going and the general strategy. Being able to do that gives a far greater sense of fulfillment, purpose, and agency to the people involved. It's as if every employee has the chance to be a mini startup within a larger organization, and the organization as a whole become more adaptive, resilient, without sacrificing being a responsible corporate citizen.
5. When I think about how that is applied to children, I am reminded by the NPR article about how indigenous families have children doing chores without resentment. (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...) ... and then I realized that, it isn't really about chores. It is a way that children from indigenous families are encouraged to make meaningful contributions to family and community from a young age.
6. If your sense of self-worth and purpose is derived from making meaningful contributions to the family, community, and society, you're no longer pidgeonholed into the role of being a child. As such, I think a lot of the tensions and inter-generational drama we expect from adult children living with their parents is no longer there.
This times ten to a very meaningful exponent.
A large number of factors in society have combined against children being able to gradually assume the mantle of adulthood, gradually assuming responsibility and making greater and greater contributions to society as they grow.
It is obvious that this is in no way culturally sustainable.
This isn't something that you try to change the whole world. It is something that an individual makes the choice for themselves. It's something I'm in the process of implementing with my own children. That is one of the things I came up with when I ask myself, what meaningful thing do I want to contribute to the world? Your answer for yourself might be different.
Education in other countries is far more strict and regimented than the US. Especially Asia.
I've always thought the main driver for leaving home is instinctive, basically teenage rebelliousness. If there's cultural "programming" going on, it is just as likely to be in the societies that overcome these drives and keep children subservient to their parents.
That's correct. It gives some semblance of independence. My point with that one is that even if US residents were inclined to "cheat", current zoning laws in most municipalities makes building additions, or expanding to duplexes and triplexes illegal. Other things like, requiring onsite parking, setbacks, not allowing mixed-use zones impacts the ability to have affordable housing.
These laws are changing. Portland recently expanded the zoning laws to allow many of those. The activists who got that through campaigned under the banner of "walkability", but it was a lot more than that. Other cities may follow as they see how well Portland does.
> Education in other countries is far more strict and regimented than the US. Especially Asia.
I was born in Taiwan and was raised mostly in the US, so I have had a taste of what that strictness is. A lot of the structure that the US compulsory school system is based on, took their playbook from the way the Indian caste system educate their children. That educational system was there before the industrialization took that method for its own use.
To be clear, when we're talking about "education", we're talking about "compulsory education" that is part of the predominant paradigm of the modern world. Prior to the compulsory educational laws, the US had a literacy rate of 99%, in a nation of farmers. Kids were taught at home or in one-room schools. It was understood that the main purpose of education was not to create factory workers, but to have critically-thinking and informed citizens in a republic. The contrast between that and our current generation of algorithm-driven conspiracy theories is stark.
What I just talked about and more is in John Taylor Gatto's book.
There are alternative models showing up here. Alaska does not put all the kids all in the same grade. There are too many kids in the bush. Instead, kids learn each subject at the competency level independently. A kid might be at 8th grade reading level for example, and still working through 3rd grade math. Carol Sandford's work on education is much more radical -- no cirriculum, no teachers, no grading. Instead, capabilities like critical thinking are developed, and the kids are taught a framework in which they evaluate their contributions and actions. The kids decide what they want to contribute, and then they figure out how they are going to do it.
> I've always thought the main driver for leaving home is instinctive, basically teenage rebelliousness. If there's cultural "programming" going on, it is just as likely to be in the societies that overcome these drives and keep children subservient to their parents.
Adolescence is a distinct phase that is studied by psychologists during the modern era. It didn't really exist pre-industrialization, pre-compulsory schooling. It used to be, around the pre-teen age, kids were apprenticed and treated as inexperienced young adults. Some cultures had rites of passages that definitively marks when childhood ends, adulthood begins, in a way that the whole community acknowledged. I suppose in the modern era, the ability to be financially independent from the parents a sign of adulthood.
Compounding that is better nutrition, and perhaps, the way our food is grown (hormones), and artificial lighting all contributes towards an earlier age of pubescence. Modern kids' physical maturity are happening at a younger age at the same that the length of time before they are treated as a full adult gets extended.
That is complete bullshit. In 1870 there was a 20% illiteracy rate: https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/lit_history.asp
I suggest you seriously reconsider your views on how the current education system works vs how it used to be back when people were on farms and learning in one room schoolhouses. It smells to me like you’ve been fed a line of bullshit by someone who has a beef with the current system and just wants to paint the ignorance-filled past with rose-colored enlightenment glasses. This society of highly literate, critical thinking farmers did not exist.
"The more recent focus on illiteracy has centered on functional literacy, which addresses the issue of whether a person's educational level is sufficient to function in a modern society. The earlier surveys of illiteracy examined a very fundamental level of reading and writing. The percent of illiteracy, according to earlier measurement methods, was less than 1 percent of persons 14 years old and over in 1979."
I don't know where that 99% figure that John Gatto Taylor came from. He did talk about a significantly lower literacy rate in the 1970s. I think if one were to use functional literacy as the metric, there would still be a similar decrease literacy rate.
And no, Taylor was not trying to paint the past with rose-colored glasses. Whether or not the farming society did a good enough job as citizens, the frame in which education was viewed was much different. The things from the past is not necessarily better, but neither are the way we are doing things right now.
See my comment above :)
Lol. Read Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith... having children was for the purpose of making you rich!
Also, that’s if you even made it to the age of 14. In 1870, survival rate of reaching to the age of 14 was about 30%
How does the survival rate of someone who has reached the age of 14 have an effect on literacy and citizenship?
> It was understood that the main purpose of education was not to create factory workers, but to have critically-thinking and informed citizens in a republic
Are you saying the seminal book in economics documenting at the time of the Declaration of Independence that having children in the Western world was to help you get rich (opposite was going on in China) was incorrect?
> How does the survival rate of someone who has reached the age of 14 have an effect on literacy and citizenship?
It doesn't, but when your literal survival is against the odds and you're task every day is to maintain sustenance, I'm not sure your comment about a whopping 99% rate literacy hold water.
Leaving aside whether I agreed with that point about children being there to make you rich (I don't), or whether everyone in America agreed with that (I doubt it), and we're just looking at the various colonists (excluding the Natives) making up the 13 colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence, I don't know if that would be considered the seminal book to the point that it influenced how education is viewed. I see (at least according to Wikipedia), it had influenced Alexander Hamilton, but I also think Hamilton in many ways was ahead of his time. It is my understanding though, that those ideas become much more commonplace in the mid- and late 19th century.
> ... when your literal survival is against the odds and you're task every day is to maintain sustenance, I'm not sure your comment about a whopping 99% rate literacy hold water.
So I am to understand that you are saying, because conditions are so harsh, there is very little time to do things like studying or reading?
A curious thing happened in the Midwest in the early 1800s. Land was divided in a way where schools and colleges were deliberately set aside so that children would have access to it. For every N plots of land, there would be a school; for every M plots of land, there would be a college. I don't think any other region of the US was divided like this. The educated farmer, at least in the Midwest, is a thing.
That bit came from an article by someone observing that the Midwest seems prototypically boring, without characteristic. They were trying to explore just what makes the Midwest the "Midwest". The essay was not written as a criticism of the education system.
I'm not from the US but I'm just not sure I'm reading this right, you say these zoning laws are literally racist? And they're still around??
https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=14/34.021/-...
Note the description under population.
"Shifting or Infiltration: Negroes and Japanese increasingly numerous"
If a neighborhood had a couple of Black, Asian, or Mexican families banks weren't allowed to issue mortgages or other types of real estate loans. The US built a lot of suburbs post WWII those were restricted to white families only. Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics weren't allowed to buy and also were banned from receiving FHA Loans.
The current battle in the US politically is over whether to return to this state of affairs.
I have feeling you could make an argument that getting your own place is either an indirect or possible direct consequence of marketing. Lots of companies stand to make more money if they promote you moving out on your own. Ikea has at least one famous ad telling you to move out of your parent's house
Had the US not participated the suburban American dream, the excess WWII capacity would be wasted instead of being redirected to home construction, auto manufacturing, and all manner of new industry. And we would’ve plunged into yet another depression.
No one makes compromises unless they have to, and unless you have a big soundproof house, two or more couples living together are going to bump into each other.
I see older parents moving back in with kids due to declining health, but otherwise the consensus seems to be that having grandparents nearby in a separate home is ideal.
However, children of immigrants are especially keen to assimilate into the receiving culture, so much so that they often go beyond what natives do. For immigrants and their children, a clash of cultural values may be a larger driving factor than what's the natural for people in general.
The above might not apply if you have a large enough space with sufficient sound proofing and multiple kitchens, but that's not the reality for most people. There are positives, but my observations suggest that the biggest factor in determining if you live in an intergenerational household is whether or not children and the parents can both afford to live in different houses.
On the first point, from what I've seen, there is certainly a lot of conflict if intergenerational couples stay together under the same roof for prolonged periods of time, whether it's the parents living with the kids or the other way around. For short periods of time, it definitely works out positively.
I would argue that it's less because of wealth or even expenses, and moreso because of cultural norms, that children tend to stay with their parents for longer in Europe. I don't know if this comes across as anecdotal, but my SO's parents often requested her to choose a medical university closer to home, and even suggested we stay with them, even though they are extremely affluent and comfortable. Even now, after living separately in another city, her parents and relatives often stop by to check up and stay for a couple of days very often. Of course, the young will always prefer to move apart to retain some privacy, especially once the kids arrive. Obviously there's the shadow of European expenses hanging over everyone's heads.
Personally I have healthy 6000km between myself and the parents. To be honest something like the 300km we had a some point is nicer and for taking care if the kids from time to time something like a few kilometers is best but same houseld is just stupid and I have yet to meet someone (even Asians) that will willingly do that for longer than necessary if they can help it. If they do it, it's for one of the reasons stated above like a Vietnamese colleague who did move back in with her mum for like a half year while trying to find a new place. They're close but same household is just way too close.
In the context of the "housing affordability crisis", it makes that part of the context that much more interesting.
That's really depressing. I'm sorry your social circle has such poor family dynamics. The majority of inter-generational families I know quite like the arrangement. Grandparents love having grand kids around, parents enjoy the extra help of the grandparents, meals are a lot more fun, etc.
In my experience (talking to people from a variety of countries), most couples in their 20s/30s want their own place (even in the countries where it's not common). It seems it can even lead to happier intergenerational relationships when the roomate-type fights don't need to happen.
It would seem to me that it's most common in the US to move out because they can afford to... The US is just an incredibly rich place, even compared to much of western Europe (ex. the US has 40% more GDP per capita than France[1])
There are of course also family/social pressures in some places, but I really don't think it's the primary factor in the differences between many countries.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...