Monday's Most Active Threads

As is usual now, the Gaza war thread continued to be the most active yesterday. But, with fewer tha 500 posts, activity was lower than it has been since the initial attack. The most active thread after that was titled, "Millennial women are saying no thanks to parenthood" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to a Washington Post article that analyzed data showing that while the number of families with one child has stayed stable since the 1980s, the number of childless women has increased markedly. Moreover, the increase has coincided almost completely with the progress of millennial women through childbearing years. Let me start with my obligatory disclaimer that I dislike generational labels. Even the Post article describes such categorizations as "squishy, man-made distinctions". Others, of course, embrace such labels. The original poster says that the Post's conclusions follow what she is seeing in her personal life and, with millennials hitting 40, she says the trend is unlikely to turn around. While I didn't read much of this 16 page thread, what I did read did not reveal many, if any, posters disagreeing that being child-free is a trend. Many of those responding cited personal examples of either themselves, relatives, or friends choosing not to have children. The reasons for millennials choosing not to have children varied. Several posters blamed the cost of childcare and the need to upscale housing. Others claimed that choosing not to have children was a rational reaction to the examples of older women who were expected to work full time and still be perfect moms. As one poster said, "Until men step up women are smart not to fall into the trap." Another reason that came up and which was also mentioned by the Post is that millennial women seem less likely to marry. Many threads in DCUM's relationship forum have revealed that as women have become better educated, received more challenging and fulfilling job opportunities, and earned higher incomes, they have become less dependent on a spouse and, therefore, more picky about marriage. Both in the experience of many of those responding and as described by the Post, unmarried women are less likely to have children. We have operated DCUM through most of the millennials' childbearing years. As such, I've probably read thousands of posts that touch on this topic. In my view, the explanation was captured best by a sentence attributed to "just about every source we consulted" that said, "Hammered by the Great Recession, soaring student debt, precarious gig employment, skyrocketing home prices and the covid-19 crisis, millennials probably faced more economic headwinds in their childbearing years than any other generation". Prior generations had a sort of pattern: graduate from college, get a job, get married, buy a house, adopt a pet (okay, some leave this out), have children. Lots of millennials have been stymied after the first step.

The next most active thread was the one about frustration with President Biden which I have already discussed. After that was a thread posted in the "Off-Topic" forum titled, "What would you do? Random kid showed up and set up a lemonade stand on our lawn". The original poster explained that she and her husband visited her mother-in-law who is recovering from a hip replacement. She lives on a corner lot that gets a lot of traffic and while they were there, a parent dropped off an approximately 10-year-old boy who set up a lemonade stand. Between cars honking, the boy yelling that he had lemonade for sale, and the mother-in-law's dog barking at people in the yard, the original poster thought this was too much noise. Therefore, she went out and gave the boy $40 and told him to call his mother to pick him up. When the mother arrived, she screamed at the original poster, making several allegations about ruining her son's childhood and so on. The original poster asks what others would have done. Responses are basically divided between those who think the original poster did the right thing and was maybe even too generous and those who would have left the kid alone. Among the first group, the main argument was that the yard is private property and the child didn't have the right to be there. On the other hand, posters argued that the first few feet from the street are normally frontage that is legally public space. Among the group who would have left the kid alone, their main argument is that he wasn't hurting anything or causing any problems. They didn't consider the noise to be a legitimate complaint. One revelation for me, and apparently for many of those responding, is that some folks have adopted the habit of honking at lemonade stands and other situations in which kids are selling things. This appears to be meant as a sign of support for those doing the selling by those who can't, or won't, stop. Those living where such sales are common don't find the honking to be particularly supportive, or desired. On a forum with as many lawyers as DCUM, it was no surprise that at least one poster got legalistic about the situation, arguing that in order to sell edible items a permit requiring the Health Department to inspect the kitchen is necessary. So, apparently this poster would have hit the kid with a code violation.

Next was a thread titled, "Atheism is losing popularity because it won’t own it’s own sins" and posted in the "Religion" forum. Yesterday I discussed a thread about Christmas displays and noted that the religion forum had become a thunderdome and that the original poster of that thread had started a number of controversial threads. This thread is another one started by that poster. In this thread, the poster linked to an article arguing that flaws in "New Atheism" has led to an increased interest in Christianity. One such flaw was a failure by "New Atheism" to "own their own sin" by which the author meant the killing of millions of people by the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China. When I discussed this poster's thread yesterday, I mentioned that she was generally not receptive to responses that disagreed with her point of view and tended to brush them off. The same thing is true of this thread. The original poster is eager to respond to almost every reply in order to explain why the reply is wrong. This is a 23 page thread and I really have no interest in reading it. A huge number of posts were reported and I've had the unfortunate responsibility of removing quite a few posts. I've seen enough from that experience to know that this thread is not worthy of my time and probably not anyone else's either. The flaws in the initial argument are clear. First, no data is presented to show that atheism is losing popularity or that, if it is, Christianity is benefiting. Moreover, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China had many characteristics, of which atheism is just one. It is not clear why the author fixated on that aspect in lieu of say, the regimes' authoritarianism, to blame for the mass deaths. As several posters pointed out in the thread, many religious regimes have their own bloodletting for which to account. At any rate, my main takeaway is that the initial article is unconvincing and heavily flawed. The fact that this thread has reached the length it has is owed more to the fact that posters in the religion forum simply like to argue and don't really care what they are arguing about. The original poster is more than willing to stoke that interest.

The final thread which I will discuss today was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum and titled, "PSAT scores/National Merit". I am not completely convinced this is the correct forum for this topic since it deals with a high school test. But, since the test impacts college scholarships, I see some relevance. Regardless, I don't care enough to make an issue of it. The original poster asks if anyone has information about the cutoffs for various levels of achievement for the National Merit Scholarship Program. The poster also doesn't understand how the Selection Index is calculated. A poster responded almost immediately to explain the Selection Index calculation. Others explained that the various cutoffs are based on state. Apparently, the District of Columbia has the highest cutoffs in the nation and students need to be almost perfect on the test. There is some dispute over the method of calculating the Selection Index and whether that favors girls. Some posters insist that it is biased toward girls while others say that it simply reflects the reality of college studies. Much of the thread consists of posters providing their children's scores and asking for guesses about whether they might meet one of the cutoffs or not. There is considerable discussion, much of it deep in the weeds, about how PSAT scores are used and what value they may have. For the most part, it seems like this thread is free from acrimony and fairly substantive. Overly substantive if you are looking for drama. About the only dispute other than the disagrement about bias towards girls is over the disparity in score cutoffs among states. For instance, one poster pointed out that in California a score of 220 would fall short of stutus but in 45 other states, the same score would qualify. Several posters thought this was unfair for a test that is supposed to be "national".