<DrumBeat: November 12, 2007 The Oil Drum DrumBeat: November 13, 2007>

85 comments on Can Shrunken Families be Reflated?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

Richard Huffman on November 12, 2007 - 10:40am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Something that should also be mentioned in the drive towards smaller and smaller households is the marketing of the "American Dream" where each nuclear family owns a house (complete with an entire set of appliances to go along with it). Right now, that's the foundation of the product marketing mythos, as it were - and that's something that would definitely need to change, with large numbers of manufacturers, importers, builders, etc. standing to lose a good deal of money by doing so. A hard sell, since the division of the social unit into smaller and smaller pieces, thereby creating more and more effective consumers, has been a very winning strategy for the short term.

Encouraging extended families to group and stay together is only part of a solution - encouraging, rather than discouraging long-time friends to rent or invest in a home as a group (usually stopped in larger towns and cities by "anti-sorority/fraternity" laws) would achieve a similar effect - and to some people, marketing a return to family may be much more difficult than encouraging group housing.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
expat on November 12, 2007 - 10:58am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

This is pretty much a central point.

Imagine a houshold of 6 adults, and 4 children, and let's further imagine that 3 adults are essentially home at any given time.

If one of those adults was baking bread in the wintertime, the children could be involved in actually learning how to bake, while the energy used for baking is 'reused' for heating. The same applies to something like potatoes being peeled, then boiled, fried, or baked.

And what what happen if this idyllic vision became reality? A number of people no longer required in day care, or to work in mass production food facilities, reduced energy consumption, children actually participating as useful members of the household - it would be a calamity to how America is currently set up.

It might even threaten the term 'Happy Meal' (TM, etc.)

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
PeakPlus on November 13, 2007 - 7:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi expat,

This comment isn't directly related to yours, but..

I know you like ripping on the American way of life and you tend to idealize the way of life of the Germans (at least in their greener attitudes), but I have noticed a number of "attitudes" which will likewise be problematic once peak kicks in.

I don't think decreasing household size has that much to do with marketing. It has to do with increasing affluence - of course this affluence is "fueled" by cheap"est" energy. That is why *all* Western societies are increasing living space per capita. This will continue til tshtf. That's the way people are - at least that's the way our modern capitalist system is...

I was appalled at one German attitude when I got here. Each German child "has" to have its own room. As kids in America, we made fun of single chidren and of children who hat their own rooms. And college Students here **do not** room together, unless they're in a (sexual) relationship. Guys with guys just does not happen, unless you're just in for a visit. (I don't know how I would have paid for college in the States if I would have had to pay for my own room!)

AND they are willing to have fewer/no kids because each of the children would not have a room! Have you ever wondered why the birthrate here is the lowest in the world? (1.3)..

I'll admit they are at least consistent in their attitude. If there's no room, i.e. if the resources are not available, then "the environment" can't support any more children. Therefore don't have any more. Cramp your own lifestyle? NEVER!

I have thought a lot about living in extended families, but it seems so much EASIER not having to deal with the others. I want to have the remote control in my own hand. I'll even send my wife to bed early so that I can watch what IIIIII want. And we only have 1 TV :-)

If you call it greed, it would be one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Today we would call it being self-centered. But that is the point of modern capitalism, now, isn't it??

Cheers, Dom

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
expat on November 13, 2007 - 12:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I try to compare and contrast the America I grew up in with the Germany I live in now - and though my problems with the U.S. are clear, this does not make Germany paradise. Pretty comfortabe, at least to my ways of thinking, but often, I have the feeling that people are becoming ever more binary in their thinking - saying the U.S. is bad or Germany is good in a few sentences leaves out the complexity.

That said - German housing space available per person has been steadily growing for decades. However, for a number of reasons, this growth has tended to be matched with increasing energy efficiency at all levels - from insulation to more efficient appliances to recycling to reducing water use.

Living space is something people would generally like to have more of, no question, and you can certainly see that trend here. (Though it must be noted, most of Germany's housing was destroyed or damaged by WWII, so the trend has more than one factor.)

Among many differences, however, is that in Germany, the increase in living space has not been matched by increasing amounts of energy use for heating, and that trend most certainly continues. Both building codes and simple self-interest tend to be place a major emphasis on energy efficiency, water/sewer use, etc.

I actually believe that the changes required in the U.S. for a well accepted 'crowding' together are larger than that required for restarting effective rail systems, but it is a feeling, and much like the article, I haven't much in the way of research or numbers to back up that feeling.

However, the amount of living space people here can accept remains quite small, at least by American suburban standards. The one time I visited a college dorm, each student did have their own room, but after bed, desk, and clothes cabinet, if there were two square yards free, it would have surprised me. Much smaller than the dorm set-ups I was familiar with in the U.S. I won't go on about what people rent here - however, space with a sink and a toilet, no kitchen, maybe 10 square yards large, are just part of the homeownership equation - either it will be rented to help pay the mortgage or it will be used as the children grow older for their 'own' apartment.

German child raising is a very complex subject, also very regional, and so I'll just say that there are a number of children sharing rooms that I know of. But then, these are families with more than one child - at least this region still has a number of growing families, unlike parts of East Germany.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
PeakPlus on November 14, 2007 - 5:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

.."is a very complex subject, also very regional"

That's something I do tend to forget. "Rich" Munich's attitude is somewhat different than that on the Rhein.

Cheers, Dom

ps We redid our house (insulation, windows, roof, heater w. solar) because of a cheap loan from the KfW (government sponsored) and because of the resulting living standard.. One could sleep in the attic without turning into an ice cube.-)
---
Just remember the Golden Years, all you at the top!

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
galacticsurfer on November 14, 2007 - 10:44am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

We have three rooms, 80M² in a Hamburg apartment and the two boys have bunk beds.

“Without a video the people perish”-Is. 13:24

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
sldulin on November 12, 2007 - 12:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Exactly right, this would be the Christopher Lasch argument that the main centrifugal force tearing apart families was simply the inherent nature of late-stage capitalism and marketing imperatives. Quite similar to Kunstler's entropy, the idea that there is an imperative to increase market size at the expense of the family...we all need our own car, ipod, plasma tv, kitchen, bathroom,etc. I find the argument pretty compelling, but on the other hand, there is no doubt that government policies have also played a huge role in molding the profile of the average American household.
Specifically, I'm referring to the home mortgage interest deduction, a subsidy to homebuyers which generations of Americans have learned to exploit. This has fed the trend of fewer people per house, and more and larger houses. So, what to do? Politically, the subsidy is inviolate. A third rail. And the gov't cannot allow housing prices to collapse, with so much of American's net worth bound up in them and demographic time bomb ticking.
One way to address this would be for gov't to simply buy foreclosed homes and bulldoze them, reducing supply and putting a floor under prices. If done in a directed manner, this could also work to consolidate residential de-development into serviceable nodes and corridors post-peak.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
yartrebo on November 12, 2007 - 3:08pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"One way to address this would be for gov't to simply buy foreclosed homes and bulldoze them, reducing supply and putting a floor under prices."

This would be a terrible waste of resources and minerals.

The USA is a growing and sparsely populated country. We also have many homeless people and people cramped into small quarters because of housing affordability issues. The hope for more reasonable house prices is the only reason I was and am rooting for the housing bubble to burst and prices to continue downward.

We produce enough food to potentially feed over a billion people and we have a large share of the world's natural resources to boot. We should be increasing our population (by immigration, not by birth) to ease overcrowding in the rest of the world, as our country is one of the most capable to handle it in terms of our natural endowment.

Even in the Northeast, where I live, the population density is quite manageable.

With current trends of about 400,000 demolitions/year (.4% of stock) and pop growth of about 1.5%/year, we could reduce the per capita housing stock by 2%/year if we halt all new construction. It will take a few decades to halve the per-capita housing stock, but with a little luck the down side of the peak energy hill will be around 2%/year, so it will be manageable. Since a large amount of energy is used to build houses, halting construction will also save energy and resources in that manner too.

Some of the laid off construction workers could also be employed to switch from labor-efficient demolition to labor-intensive disassembly, which will allow far higher rates of reuse and recycling than demolition allows.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

85 comments on Can Shrunken Families be Reflated?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version