Keeping connection with the older generations and learning from them is important. But I don't think, nuclear families are about denying that. It's more about having enough space and freedom to see each other when you want it, but keeping off each other's backs and not letting the differences between the generations ruin your relations.
I've grown up in a typical 3-generational Russian family sharing a rather small apartment, and I can tell you, it gets on your nerves when the grandparents want to watch TV at maximum volume, while the parent is trying to catch some sleep debt and the kid (me) is doing homework in the same room. That was one of the main reasons why I decided to move to the West where having enough private space was considered to be a basic and unquestionable necessity.
Please, don't romanticize it. If our economy is changing in a way where the corporations are getting richer and richer, while the rank-and-file employees are forced to live with their parents forever and will never afford to move out, it's not cool at all. It's a sign of very serious economic troubles and we need to focus on solving them instead of trying to think of the changes in a positive way, and then wondering why is everyone depressed.
> I've grown up in a typical 3-generational Russian family sharing a rather small apartment, and I can tell you, it gets on your nerves when the grandparents want to watch TV at maximum volume, while the parent is trying to catch some sleep debt and the kid (me) is doing homework in the same room. That was one of the main reasons why I decided to move to the West where having enough private space was considered to be a basic and unquestionable necessity.
I've had exactly the same experience, and I only now slowly come to realise the amount of emotional abuse that is normalised in such families. Shouting and fighting (physically, with bruises and injuries) on a daily basis, belittling one another, constantly being passive aggressive in any communication, never-ending hostility towards your closest family members — it's just something that is completely normal and expected in many, many families that live like this. Even without alcohol involved.
In some places where spacious apartments that were the norm 10 years have now new trend where the same bed room size apartment has gotten about 1.5 times smaller. Just the cost of the square meter is so high that even fairly high earning people could not comfortably afford them anymore.
I have sympathy for people who are gradually priced out of basic necessities in life, but living in a center of one of the world's busiest and most expensive cities isn't a necessity. If a person is insisting on making that choice instead of moving out, especially in a world that is moving more and more into remote work, well, it's their responsibility.
Comparing this situation with a system without private property or even ability to rent, where apartments are leased by the state through your employer and you have no choice in the matter and have to wait years in order to move is a really, really long stretch.
>Comparing this situation with a system without private property or even ability to rent, where apartments are leased by the state through your employer and you have no choice in the matter and have to wait years in order to move is a really, really long stretch.
Why is the soft touch approach of government making housing unaffordable any different, morally?
Three points: about government, about unaffordability and about morality.
First, although government has some influence over a market, it's overall influence is much less than in a country without any free market whatsoever - so even if housing would be really unaffordable and it would really be morally bad, the government's responsibility for this still would be less.
Second, as I wrote in my comment above, the fact that housing is unaffordable in the centres of the most desirable cities is not the same as housing being unaffordable at all. Complaining about skyrocketing San Francisco rent prices is like complaining about expensiveness of designer clothes. If you need to shelter your body from the elements, you can always go to the noname retailer store at the mall and buy jeans for $10.
And third point is the most important point in my personal worldview, but the one that people usually don't agree with me on — that's why I base my argument on three points and not just this one. Freedom of choice and control over your fate is more important than just expected value of the outcome. A system that offers more degree of freedom and where your choice has more influence on the outcome is always more moral than a system that gives a better average outcome. So the ability to make that choice, between spacious apartment or location, or whatever, makes all the difference in the world in my eyes — and even if this system would have worse average standard of living the the communist one (which, by the way, is obviously completely the opposite), it would still be better, just for that.
> That was one of the main reasons why I decided to move to the West where having enough private space was considered to be a basic and unquestionable necessity.
I thought the reason these societies lived together was lack of financial means. It's not very different from where I currently live, but anybody that has enough funds to go on his own does indeed do it. It's not, in my opinion, about culture but rather it's almost impossible for a 30-year old in these countries to strike it on their own. Pay too low, and living is too expensive. They have to make it work together.
Well, the Soviet Union really tried implementing all those fair progressive ideas the West is so excited about. So the periphery, where the land was abundant, had constant shortage of food and household items. And in Moscow, that had much larger supply quotas (why wouldn't the bureaucrats think about themselves, huh?) there was a massive shortage of living space. So, to make it fair and square, apartments were allocated based on a bunch of metrics that included "square meters per registered person".
The West is doing it in a more subtle way though. There is no National Bureau of Square Foot Planning, but the educated, financially independent suburban family with savings, that is trying to pass their ways to the kids, is no longer the role model. Instead, if your parents nagged your head inside out to do homework + extracurriculars + do STEM or GTFO, instead of watching TV and eating chips, you are privileged and must be ashamed of yourself. And if you represent a culture where packed multi-generational living is OK, you get visibility and a pat on the back to keep your ways, rather than strong pressure to raise your bar and shoot for the stars.
For lack of better conditions. You are arbitrarily picking this as an example of being right because it was done this way in the past. We changed so much for the better despite those things being done like that for generations.
If you want a more technical analogy, this isn't about having a dedicated connection but about proper QoS. You can live in a mansion with family because you're still unencumbered. But reality is that for most living with their family is like having 3 Netflix streams on the same 128K line. And the fact that this is how every civilization has done things so far doesn't make it less of a pain. Makes it a traditional pain though.
What civilizations did for ages has no bearing whatsoever on whether that was good or bad, either then or now. Not in and of itself. So I just took a hammer to the foundation of OP's statement. My argument was that it was always done like that due to lack of a better choice. Money aside almost everyone would choose better.
As someone who lived in those conditions, surrounded by people in the same situation, I can say nobody wanted to live with 3 generations under the same roof. The lack of privacy, of space, the conflicts you can typically get from so many views cramped together, and all the social dynamics within that group are definitely not something to romanticize unless you've never actually lived it like most people did.
It's easy to assume living in your parents' 6 bedroom house (or with the in-laws in the guest house of a 3000sqft main house, and the parents a mile away like one commenter though is a similar enough situation to the topic) is how "every civilization has done it" so far. Perhaps those insisting it's great (or that they're always right) might want to try it for themselves, the way those civilizations were actually doing it.
I left home when I started university and never went back. It was awesome to have the freedom and I think most young people cherish that moment.
I love my family and after my father died my mother and I were forced to live with my grandparents. It wasn't terrible, but there are generational conflicts that you have to consider. That can get exhausting and my mother was relieved when we got our own apartment even if she loves her parents. We are still near each other and there is no drama in my family. But I don't think anyone of us would like to share a house again.
I don't like the popular cry for abolition of the nuclear family in favor of some comittment-less commune. But the other model to live within a family clan isn't attractive either. And you can still handle it as you like, because nobody is forcing you in either direction.
I wonder why do you get downvote. Most of asian families are like this except for ones adopt western mindset, or the 1% down to upper middle class, they move wherever because they don't have to worry about family, money solves a lot of problem.
I am not sure that is as universally true as you believe. In the old ages, an apprentice actually had to move to a different area to be given the master title. I have no english references for you right now, and I am probably lacking the proper translations as well, but here is a German wikipedia article about the phenomenon which you can probably use to follow the breadcrums:
Also, I am not American, and moving out and implicitly stopping the overcontrolling manners of my mother was one of the best things I have done in my whole life.
IOW, it really depends on your parents and family if you can stay and still develop into an independant adult.
We live in a 3 generational family sharing anything but a small apartment and it's absolutely wonderful. Us, the nuclear family, occupies the 3000 sqft house. My in-laws live in the guest house which is about 800 sqft. My parents live about a mile away. We see a lot of each other but everyone has their space.
> “Living with parents” is a wildly different experience if you have enough space.
> My parents live about a mile away.
Living with parents is indeed great especially when you're not actually living with them. You live alone. In-laws in another house, parents a mile away.
Living with family means sharing the actual facilities of the house not just technically being on the same property, or in a house where you never have to cross paths. Having parents in another house on the same property doesn't mean "living together" more than a neighbor on the other side of a 30cm wall is living with you.
Totally, I spent some time with my parents, grandparents and uncle in a very large house (800 m2). We didn't even feel like we were living together, it was more comparable to living in the same apartment complex. We even had internal phone lines.
It was actually shocking to me because I usually lived with my parents in a small apartment and we were always aware of each other presence. It that big house, we actually had to do something to see each other, we could stay all day in our rooms as if we were alone if we wanted to.
the parent comment was about a 3gen family sharing a (most likely) 17m^2 room in a 30-sh m^2 apartment, which was very common in the ussr. 6-7m^2 per person was even officially considered norm until middle 80s
$400k, parents generation is retired with plenty of money. My point is more broadly that in a family where everyone can comfortably afford to live alone, living together can be massively more fun.
More like 5%. But the fact remains that "living alone" is considered aspirational in society, and that's not axiomatic. Plenty of American adults can afford to live alone, and do, but by pooling their resources with their parents, both can live on one property and have a much richer life together than living apart. My in-laws who live on the property sold their house to help us buy the property -- we couldn't have done it by ourselves, so we really had to break down some assumptions/default behaviors about financial independence which are fairly standard in the US.
I have become the self-appointed steward of the family photo archive after my aunt pulled a suitcase stuffed with photos out from under the bed in the spare room in her trailer.
The suitcase's original owner, another aunt, "Aunt" Faye, had lived to be 103 years old but had never had children.
And so I got to work scanning I believe over 500 photos — the earliest a tin-type from 1890 or so. Many were then cleaned up in Photos — levels adjusted, scratches and imperfections "healed" digitally. In time I was able to scan more photos from the family and increase my collection. Likely over 1000 now.
Some photos had something written on either the front or back and I also dutifully added metadata to the digital photo describing the text written.
At this time too, I had begun doing some genealogy on Ancestry.com.
As I pored over the photos, trying to determine who was in the photo, where the photo was taken, I began to "know" the people — family dead even before I was born. I could recognize them then. It became easier to approximate the date of the photos too: looking for young relatives in the photos, guessing their apparent age, knowing when they were born from my genealogy.
Eventually they began to sort: first a young Gertrude standing awkwardly in the tin-type as a child, another studio photo and she's about to become a teen, then with her sisters as a young woman, married, with her own children, in her new dress, with her daughter and her daughter's husband, on vacation, with her grandchildren, white-haired with her daughter - now old herself. Finally her headstone.
Entire lives, captured in photographs. And interleaved with the children they gave birth to, who too grew old in photos and also died — and in one case leaving, as it were, a suitcase of these photos that would come to me.
The connectivity of family back past 100 years has never been made so real to me as it has through photos. Maybe I should have been able to see that continuity in the absence of family photos but there they are.
And as I get older I do consider more and more those not yet born. I suppose this digital legacy is one obvious example. I have been spreading the photos as far and wide as I can, not just to far flung relatives but also to Ancestry.com, Find-A-Grave.com, etc. Surprisingly, I have already had relatives I did not know existed reach out to me having stumbled upon some of these photos on Ancestry and Find-A-Grave.
Family photo calendars I created for a few years were sent to two dozen relatives. I have a "family photo album" I am now assembling — I hope to have it done in a year or so and print a few dozen through Lulu.com or similar and send those out to as many relatives who want them as well.
I find your perspective and interest in your genealogy fascinating, primarily because I don’t share it. Like, not one bit, and I’m not sure why. If I found out tomorrow that my parents weren’t actually my parents and I was actually adopted, I would have no interest in finding my “real” parents. I’m also totally uninterested in having children — it seems like something other people are much better suited for and I’m happy to be on the sidelines paying taxes or pitching in to a nephew’s college fund.
I’m also not interested in having my photos included in family histories, or indeed being remembered at all. Not in a bitter way, just in the same way that I’m not interested in which mushrooms grow in Botswana. It’s a thing that I think is perfectly reasonable to be interested in.
I had no interest in genealogy until I had children of my own, got to be 50 years old.
It occurred to me that my parents would be dead one day and if it were to fall to me to tell the grandchildren the family origins I would be at a complete loss. I had relied on my "elders" to have that knowledge.
Ancestry and the like makes it easy to reconstruct your family tree even if you are starting with almost no knowledge. But there's the oral tradition of "your great grandmother's first husband died in a hotel from the gas lamp fixtures leaking" that would have been a lot harder to have found.
So I did find a sudden interest in genealogy. Or maybe it was a sense of duty or obligation — but that quickly did in fact turn into an interest.
Perhaps if you never do have children you might also never find an interest in genealogy.
I'll say this though, I have not fond any interest in finding genealogical connections to famous people. Nor have I had much interest in going back more than 150 years or so. I think the photos uniquely draw me into the lives of the generations captured in them. And perhaps because they are photos, not wills or marriage licenses, etc., I am come to feel either the futility and brevity of life or, at other times, the wonder and often humble dignity of it.
I felt the same way for most of the same reasons - plus other reasons like my father was about as bad a person as is possible. So I had not only disinterest but some reluctance to make sure I stayed disinterested.
In late 2017, I grudgingly promised a sibling to piece some of our extended family history together. In 2018 I found a lost sister on Ancestry. And then I found a cousin who pointed me to my last surviving aunt (who I visited in 2019 and who passed 6 weeks ago). I also reunited with another lost sister. The sisters and I talk most days.
By the end of this year I will have added about 10k names in Family Search and 15k-20k in Ancestry (w/ much overlapping). It's safe to say my interests changed. I'm not saying I think yours will. Certainly my genealogy numbers don't represent anything likely.
What I can say is that things change, sometimes unexpectedly.
You don't have to put your tree in Ancestry and pay monthly, especially if you have hosting somewhere. Webtrees is good software. If you are associated with a university, you may have access to an Ancestry subscription for free through the library. Set up a system for digital files and naming conventions on your local machine to back up any documentation you add to an online tree. Family tree software should all operate with the GEDCOM format, which makes it really easy to move around if you are dissatisfied (although objects like photos may be harder to).
When I started in high school 20 years ago, it was just a tree of everyone I knew I was related to. Then you get back far enough and have to ask people for help. My grandmother remembered dozens of names and dates, which got me further. Ancestry and similar free websites (findagrave.com) can fill in a lot. Newspapers.com helped me find a ton of obituaries and gossip column entries, which filled in even more.
It's only recently that I got into thinking about the "History" going on around my ancestors when they were alive, and that's been driving my interest for the last year. Person A lived in this place in the 1890s--what was going on there, and how were global events affecting them? Newspapers.com or another archive were very useful for this as well.
Although Ancestry and Newspapers.com are subscription, even one month lets you dig into and download as much as you want, so if money is tighter you can sign up for a single month and dedicate a lot of time to getting as much raw material as possible.
I have some questions for you too. I have a goal of digitizing photo albums, photo slides, VHS, camcorder tapes, and 8mm tape reels that had been kept by my grandmother.
What software tools did you use to organize your archive?
For myself, I used Apple's Photos on the Mac. Of course you could use Lightroom, etc. but I am swearing off software subscriptions.
Get Info in Photos and add all the metadata you need.
For myself I try to set the date for the photo — at least get close to the correct year. I set the day/month/time to something like January 1, 12:00 AM as a sort of indication that I have no idea when during the year. And if I am not even sure about the year I indicate as much in the description for the photo.
I enter a description (on export this will populate either one of the EXIF or IPTC properties or both). I describe what was written on the back and/or front (if any). Describe who I think the photo is of, maybe where the photo came from, etc.
I add keywords. Keywords for each person I recognize in the photo, keywords for the collection the photo came from, keyword "Family Photo" so I can differentiate from all other photos in my library.....
Any decent photo editing app should have a means to set the date, enter a description, add keywords. And all of these are exportable — are part of the EXIF and/or IPTC spec. And, again, a decent photo editing app will preserve these on export.
The beauty of course is that you can then create "smart albums" to show your family photos chronologically where: keyword = "Family Photo", sort by date. Or find all photos of "Faye Coble".
This is ahem something I am not good at. Currently I use DigiKam[1] for general photos, but I don't include extensive metadata on files themselves.
All my resources are kept in a single directory, with subfolders generally using "lastname, firstname m" naming. I don't do as much cross-referencing (shortcutting) as I should, but that's also handled to some degree in the GEDCOM and full-text search of the filesystem.
I lament the pressure for US nuclear families to fissure apart. It may not be overt pressure but it's consistent, delivered in countless expectations (do job|college and move out|away) and assumptions (gone yet?)
My parents died when I was 14 & 21 respectively. Decades before, my dad moved my mom away so we grew up w/o any extended family nearby. When my first child was born, my wife and I were on our own - which would surprise zero Americans.
Objectively I was good parent and a terrible parent. With no ongoing guidance, the terrible wound up outweighing the good (because w/o exp, what we have are hunches, anecdotes and ill equipped reasoning). My kids and I will spend the rest of our lives repaving my bad roads. This result would have been different with extended family nearby and - critically - some on hand.
Some American ideals (eg:individualistic independence) come with an unreasonably high price. We would be a far better people if we elevated keeping 3+ generations together and normalized housing that would support that.
The demographic bomb of a huge mass of people entering high-cost-healthcare old age and not being supported by enough young people being born (aka the entitlements pyramid scheme) seems to be exacerbated by the elderly potential grandparents not offering their services to make raising of grandchildren easier, especially in modern two-income cultures.
While obvious I was not around for previous generations of childrearing and can't comment as to whether the 1950s nuclear family represented a fundamental drop in childrearing support/labor by grandparents and extended family, being a recent parent and being around other recent parents, it does seem like grandparents and extended family aren't as helpful as it "feels" like they should.
Combine that with the massive generational war underway in America between college debt, healthcare costs, home ownership costs, and vastly reduced job market, it really does seem like we need fundamental policy to encourage having kids, starting with child care. Immigration can't serve all of the generational pyramid scheme.
A "retired people child care corps" would be a nice thing to try. Mental and physical activity is key to health in retirement, and childcare is an excellent healthy disruption to retirement. They especially could help out with unscheduled childcare needs.
>A "retired people child care corps" would be a nice thing to try.
I don't see how we can - liability. While older means wiser, it doesn't necessarily mean safer. We can offset the risk a lot by mandating minimum 2, non-related caregivers. In families, however, the vetting is so much more complete.
Regardless, I genuinely like and appreciate that line of thinking.
> In the mountain village where my uncle and father were born, a single deed could mark or stain your family’s reputation for generations, placing you in a hierarchy that, if only enforced by gossip or shame, might still decide the fate of your progeny. I am not sure that’s still true, but my father held on to that notion until his death, in part because it was taught to him by his father, who had learned it from his father. This is why they had to leave the ancestral village and move to the capital, my father would say. Though neither he nor his siblings had committed shameful acts, they longed to start over in a new place where the generational burden was less weighty.
I’ve often reflected on this reality that seems to have been lost for most of humanity. At least urban dwelling folks, although I’m sure it persists in a lot of rural areas. The desire, need, instinct to be in the “in group”, not excluded was a matter of life and death for all of humanities existence. Bullying, cliques, and tribes (political parties, sports fans, programming language zealots, ...) make more sense when viewed from that angle (imo) and not likely something we’ll easily overcome.
In an old house there is always listening,
and more is heard than is spoken.
And what is spoken remains in the room,
waiting for the future to hear it.
And whatever happened
begins in in the past,
and presses hard on the future.
The agony in the curtained bedroom, whether of birth or of dying, gathers into itself all the voices of the past, and projects them into the future.
I come from South Eastern Europe and lived quite a bit with my grandparents, my parents are split though. The experience wasn't really good. Older people tend to have a very fixed and opinionated idea of what is good or 'correct' that does not match the reality. I heard for the best part of my adolescence and childhood that 'sitting in-front of a computer will not put food on your plate'. Guess who studied CompSci?
So, while this could work for the average household, it isn't a gospel and needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
>I heard for the best part of my adolescence and childhood that 'sitting in-front of a computer will not put food on your plate'.
To be fair to your grandparents, large amount of screen time is not good for children and teenagers. And let's face it, if you were like a typical teenager, your screen time was largely devoted to gaming or other non-academic endeavors. I suspect when you have children of your own, you'll start sounding like your grandparents. I found that after your 20s you start appreciating the advice and experience of older people and the wisdom behind it.
I agree with your comment and that a typical teenager will probably devote most of their time in non academic or in gaming.
While I did game a bit during childhood and early adolescence, a large portion of it was spent socialising, I really did not socialise with peers during those years and that is a direct consequence of the overbearing and 'strictness' of the grandparents, so I socialised in the only way they couldn't control, through video games and the internet. Thank god World of Warcraft was a thing, it was my only social interaction that was deliberate.^1
My late adolescence, i.e. 15-18 was spent reading on light gaming, reading and watching documentaries. I also received a lot of expose on the hacker(not cracker) culture and that has shaped me a lot as a person, or perhaps it was inevitable since I was and still am the same curious child that I was back then.
PS. gaming has also helped me in many regards that are not perceptible to an outside observer, such as self discipline and setting goals and theory crafting. All of which have stayed with me and have probably made me a better scientist.
^1 I understand the difference between 'real' social interaction and 'virtual' interaction but I will take it over nothing.
That's not quite what he said. He wrote: "I heard for the best part of my adolescence and childhood that 'sitting in-front of a computer will not put food on your plate'."
I interpret that to mean he was talking about his childhood.
He is partially correct, my childhood and early adolescence was spent on video games, my later adolescence was spent on CompSci and reading. I explain more in the sibling comment.
Folks here might be interested in FamilySearch.org, where you might be able to find really interesting stuff about yourself. They are building a single (genealogical) family tree for humanity, it is free, they allow storing photos, stories, documents, etc., all connected with oneself and ancestors, so the memories can be preserved or researched or coordinated with other living relatives (even distant ones).
It is impressive to see "where am I from" based on actual people names.
And, it is hard to think of a life investment as good as being good to your family.
Hmm yeah.. first one I looked at "The Case for One More Child: Why Large Families Will Save Humanity" seems pretty insane - too many extremely wacky sentences to quote here.
Plough is the publishing house of the Bruderhof, an international movement of Christian communities whose members are called to follow Jesus together in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and of the first church in Jerusalem, sharing all our talents, income, and possessions (Acts 2 and 4). Bruderhof communities, which include both families and single people from a wide range of backgrounds, are located in the United States, England, Germany, Australia, and Paraguay.
Ah they are anabaptist. Thought that 'about us' sounded somewhat fringe. They hold some pretty extreme views on which relationships are okay/allowed, and how those relationships can be lived (no divorce or remarriage, only hetero, etc.).
They are the last people anyone should listen to on the subject of modern relationships and families life.
I really think it's modern American values (or more generally those of WEIRD[1] countries) that are the outlier, when we consider what's "extreme".
Like, I get this whiff of parochialism, like people have never been outside North America or Western Europe.
A concern with ancestors and descendants is baked deeply into many "pre-" monotheistic religions, whether aboriginal, Shinto, "pagan" from e.g. Europe (e.g. origins of All Souls Day), etc. In a way these "different" religions all share much in common. I'm sort-of trying to break down the mental walls we put between these categories. I'm saying these are the normal beliefs people have had since forever.
Likewise, taboos against divorce are ubiquitous. That's like the whole point of marriage. You might not ban divorce outright, but it's supposed to be the exception.
Heteronormativity (which you mentioned) varies more across cultures, but even here I think 2020 leftish culture is now an outlier. Yes, the conservative American culture it was born in reaction against was, in global terms, not among the most tolerant. But while a larger degree of toleration (e.g. via various "third gender" concepts) exists elsewhere, I think this is done in more of a pluralistic/subculture way than by really changing prevailing dominant norms. More of a "oh yeah, some people are different, which is ok, they're called _______." There's also more "you're probably going to form a heterosexual marriage and have kids, but maybe you also had a same-sex lover (especially when you were younger)", like the ancient Greeks. Like, Zeus took male lovers but was married to Hera and seems pretty culturally "straight". I'm saying there may be more tolerance but it still fits into a traditional and somewhat heteronormative framework.
Back on the ancestors/descendants thing -- I find the conflict between leftish and conservative-Christian values funny, because it was Christianity (and monotheism more generally) that did a lot of the work of reducing emphasis on family, lineage, and kin. You could call this the transition from "these are my people" to "we are all children of God". Now we have a leftish monotheism-without-God.
It's hard for me to explain what I'm trying to get across. It's like -- most of the world, and most of history, is conservative/traditional in a way that The Culture (in the Ian Banks sense) isn't. It's focused on kinship and rooted in biological interest. And even when those cultures seem "more tolerant" it's still within some traditional framework that keeps an emphasis on the heterosexual reproductive union.
All of which is to widen the frame and make us reconsider what is "extreme".
I'm also saying that this word "modern" just, with a sweep of the hand, dismisses the traditional beliefs of ... basically anyone who immigrates to America. It's a cultural erasure. Which I think many people will come to regret.
[1] "western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic" -- a term from psychology
I've grown up in a typical 3-generational Russian family sharing a rather small apartment, and I can tell you, it gets on your nerves when the grandparents want to watch TV at maximum volume, while the parent is trying to catch some sleep debt and the kid (me) is doing homework in the same room. That was one of the main reasons why I decided to move to the West where having enough private space was considered to be a basic and unquestionable necessity.
Please, don't romanticize it. If our economy is changing in a way where the corporations are getting richer and richer, while the rank-and-file employees are forced to live with their parents forever and will never afford to move out, it's not cool at all. It's a sign of very serious economic troubles and we need to focus on solving them instead of trying to think of the changes in a positive way, and then wondering why is everyone depressed.