Families
It's probably inevitable: More people want to try to keep the "Social Security" pyramid scheme tottering along for just a few more years, rather than to preserve at least the disability pensions by opting out of retirement pensions unless, and until, disabled. I mean, even I wouldn't dare to bring up this topic if, as a brand aging by decades, I hadn't been fifty for more than five years by now. It is thinkable to say "I don't want to live on a pension while I am able to work." It's not thinkable to say "Other people's parents should keep working as long as they are able," though it is thinkable--and accurate--to say "People who keep working into their sixties, even into their nineties, are healthier and live longer than people who 'retire' at comparable ages and medical conditions."
So we have confusion as documented by this Italian writer. He imagines that his child is actually lonely for child companions, though at that age children don't play together and his child's interest in other children is probably more curiosity than loneliness. He lets his thoughts be framed as having something to do with other people's recognition that there are too many humans on Earth right now, that all people should choose to have one child or none--"falling birth rate" sounds more alarming. But in fact what he's observing is a different trend altogether. Nuclear families are drawing into themselves and pushing other nuclear families away. Instead of letting their children go out and choose whether to join in a group game with the neighborhood kids, or play or think by themselves in their own yards, they're hovering over their children, allowing them to interact only if it's necessary to dump the children at the same day care place for hours on end.
One-year-old children don't seem to be much harmed by this sort of thing. What's crucial to their development is quality time spent with adults. Spending much time with other young children does retard learning and intellectual development, and the "social skills" gained in return often seem to have negative value. Seeing other young children seems to have little effect either way.
Later on there will be sincere, long-term interest in the company of other children who can do the same things on the same level. By age eight or ten, children who watch baseball or football games on television usually want to organize neighborhood teams, even if that means dragging in kids who don't really want to play, or understand the game, and don't play well and feel traumatized for life when children mention, as children will, that they are liabilities to their teams. Teenagers are in a position to get real benefit from the sports, music, arts, laboratory, and trade school programs high school offers; unless the family are extraordinarily well connected I think teenagers with serious life goals are likely to gain more from going to high school than from being homeschooled. Up to age ten the advantages seem to be all on the side of homeschooling.
"But children need social experiences!" A functional family is a healthy social experience. A crowded classroom full of children the same age who don't want to be there, whose only common interest is in increasing the distance between them, is an unhealthy social experience. Do parents really want to raise children who will think, and say, at thirteen, "It'll be fun--I know everyone who's going well enough to flatten any of them!" No? Then instead of wasting pious words on children who don't understand them, wait for the children to decide they want to join activities and make friends. Eventually they will.
Fortitude
I suppose dangers always seem greater to those who haven't faced them yet. I was at the home of some people in town. It was dark outside. Things went bump outside the house. I thought about the Professional Bad Neighbor, wished I'd brought a weapon, and started to look around for something that would make an emergency weapon before I reminded myself that this family had the normal kind of neighbors who mind their own business, who had every right to be slamming car doors shut and stamping on steps. I hoped no one had noticed. Then I heard a big strong man say something like "I felt nervous in between the car and the house. I saw deer in the vacant lot and thought what might happen if one of them ran toward me." I tried not to look as if anything unusual had been said, while wondering if a deer ever had become urbanized enough to run toward a human.
Though vegetarian, deer do fight, in self-defense and for status, and their sharp little hooves can break human bones. You can't just walk up and pet a deer--and if one lets you walk within five yards of it, either it's become dangerous by having been someone's pet, or it has rabies or chronic wasting disease and is really dangerous. They are timid prey animals, like horses; like horses, they are not exactly gentle. But they usually bound away from humans, even toddlers. Nature has provided most animals, even the ones who will eat us if they're hungry enough, with a deep feeling that we smell disgusting and should be avoided. If deer are a nuisance in an orchard the easiest way to discourage them is just for humans to spend time in the orchard, perhaps hanging a sweaty shirt on a fence post.
Then someone mentioned a concern about packs of feral dogs reported here and there in the process of devolving into coyotes. Had I ever seen a pack of feral dogs, someone asked. I don't think one has ever approached the Cat Sanctuary. I've seen packs of dogs, Neighbor A's hounds or Neighbor B's, or sometimes a group of dumped-out dogs straggling up from the highway, not yet either feral or a pack. I have, like most people, gone out on the porch to shout at them, "Go home!" They've skedaddled. Deep down I love dogs, but I know it's not kind to encourage other people's pets to approach us or our homes without a command from their own humans.
"If you ever see two or three dogs chasing your cats," someone warned me, "don't go out. If they're hungry they'd attack you."
Let's just say that, if I saw a dog, or dogs, chasing Serena, I would not go out unarmed. I'd take a long axe, or a pistol, or both. I don't like firearms, but it wouldn't be the first time that, for the sake of some relatives' peace of mind, I used one. You've not heard stories about the other times because there are no stories about them. It is not as if I were some hotheaded, impulsive, excitable boy. But I have regretted having had to starve a sick animal in a trap for lack of firearms.
Work, Home-Based
When people work for ourselves, it's relatively easy to keep our work home-based and integrate it into our personal lives. When they do "remote" work for corporations, some of this benefit is lost. I'd say that, overall, the community still benefits from anything that prevents "rush-hour traffic." What would you say?
Writing
It may be a bit like disputing the proper word for Kamala Harris's misspent youth--she wasn't glamorous or classy, but was she paid by the hour?--but I give thanks that, as a hack writer, I've never had to stoop to this kind of hack writing...A hack writer is someone who writes mostly anonymous work on topics of clients' choice, for mostly low wages. The phrase is neutral. Some hack writers write things they believe to be false and/or harmful. I don't.
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