I wonder if a positive step would be to raise the retirement age?
This sounds plausible. I wonder if people’s attitudes towards retirement is a huge affective forecasting error where they think it’ll be sublime, but it ends up isolating and boring (like school breaks were for me as a kid).
Anecdotally, children and grandchildren seem to form an increasing fraction of people’s social network as they age because they attrition much slower than friends or colleagues (assuming you’re not a terrible parent)
But I wonder if that attrition isn’t related to parenthood. I haven’t had kids yet but my friends seem to drop off the map socially as they become parents. It’s sort of concerning. Having children also seems pretty isolating to many living in environments that cater to nuclear families.
Surely there’s evidence for this question as it pertains to loneliness. I know that having grandchildren is clearly good for subjective wellbeing, but the evidence for the effects of parenthood, in general, are much more mixed/ambiguous.
This sounds plausible. I wonder if people’s attitudes towards retirement is a huge affective forecasting error where they think it’ll be sublime, but it ends up isolating and boring (like school breaks were for me as a kid).
But I wonder if that attrition isn’t related to parenthood. I haven’t had kids yet but my friends seem to drop off the map socially as they become parents. It’s sort of concerning. Having children also seems pretty isolating to many living in environments that cater to nuclear families.
Surely there’s evidence for this question as it pertains to loneliness. I know that having grandchildren is clearly good for subjective wellbeing, but the evidence for the effects of parenthood, in general, are much more mixed/ambiguous.