<story><title>The New 30-Something</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/style/financial-independence-30s.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>floatrock</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Then there are the free services. Ms. Palmer, who is 39 and lives near Washington, D.C., said that the free 20 to 25 hours of child care she receives every month from her parents contributed to her family’s decision to have a third child. If she were to pay a babysitter, Ms. Palmer estimates it would add up to around $6,000 a year.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This kinda bugs me, not only because inter-generational child rearing has been the norm for most of history rather than something unique that deadbeat millenials are relying on, but also because it propagates the belief that anything you don&amp;#x27;t pay for with money is considered &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; (the bad &amp;quot;free&amp;quot;, as in &amp;quot;deadbeat&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;moocher&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s the whole debate that GDP is the wrong measure precisely because it doesn&amp;#x27;t measure these kinds of &amp;quot;unpaid services&amp;quot;, but I prefer to look at it another way: a &amp;quot;livable&amp;quot; city is more than what restaurants and bars are around, but also who your neighbors and social connections are (I&amp;#x27;ve heard this described as alternative forms of capital beyond financial capital like social and cultural capital).&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not that millenials are killing the babysitter industry, it&amp;#x27;s more millenials are reaching the age where they understand the whole &amp;quot;it takes a village&amp;quot; folk wisdom.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lm28469</author><text>Globalisation doesn&amp;#x27;t help with that. It&amp;#x27;s now easier than ever to move to a &amp;quot;hot spot&amp;quot;, most of the time for work. But no one knows each other, everyone come for &amp;quot;the game&amp;quot; and their career. Social networks and instant messaging gives you the illusion that you still have a community.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s all good in your 20s, when you&amp;#x27;re in good health, and when it&amp;#x27;s easy and cheap to make friends.
Then you hit your 30s and find out that you don&amp;#x27;t have any community, everyone moved somewhere else, the city is too expensive for a 2-3 bedrooms flat, and even if you stayed you&amp;#x27;d have to work full time (if not overtime), which means you&amp;#x27;d need someone else to bring your kids to school and take care of him&amp;#x2F;her after work, which isn&amp;#x27;t free.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a lot like the &amp;quot;get a loan to buy a car, buy a car to go to work, work to pay the loan&amp;quot; analogy. It&amp;#x27;s not a life, you merely exists for work and pay other people to take care of what used to be the core experience. At the end of the day the only thing you&amp;#x27;re looking for is a meal and this new netflix show your heard about.&lt;p&gt;The worst part is, as you said, that it&amp;#x27;s now frown upon to rely on your community because it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;free&amp;quot;, and surely you haven&amp;#x27;t made it if you rely on free things.</text></comment>
<story><title>The New 30-Something</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/style/financial-independence-30s.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>floatrock</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Then there are the free services. Ms. Palmer, who is 39 and lives near Washington, D.C., said that the free 20 to 25 hours of child care she receives every month from her parents contributed to her family’s decision to have a third child. If she were to pay a babysitter, Ms. Palmer estimates it would add up to around $6,000 a year.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This kinda bugs me, not only because inter-generational child rearing has been the norm for most of history rather than something unique that deadbeat millenials are relying on, but also because it propagates the belief that anything you don&amp;#x27;t pay for with money is considered &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; (the bad &amp;quot;free&amp;quot;, as in &amp;quot;deadbeat&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;moocher&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s the whole debate that GDP is the wrong measure precisely because it doesn&amp;#x27;t measure these kinds of &amp;quot;unpaid services&amp;quot;, but I prefer to look at it another way: a &amp;quot;livable&amp;quot; city is more than what restaurants and bars are around, but also who your neighbors and social connections are (I&amp;#x27;ve heard this described as alternative forms of capital beyond financial capital like social and cultural capital).&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not that millenials are killing the babysitter industry, it&amp;#x27;s more millenials are reaching the age where they understand the whole &amp;quot;it takes a village&amp;quot; folk wisdom.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cflewis</author><text>&amp;quot;It takes a village&amp;quot; has really bitten for me, I&amp;#x27;ve seen just how bad it is without. Moving to the Bay Area, far away from any parental help, seemed so great when I was 25. Now I have children that I am raising without family help, while trying to do well in my own career, can just be totally emotionally crushing sometimes.</text></comment>