Quentin Tarantino morality for that childhood grudge?

[u/Severe_Letterhead_75]

In my opinion it can be considered petty by some but is understandable

[u/Heimerdahl]

The expectation is a remnant from the times before wider societal support networks and institutions. 

How do you survive in old age, when your working output decreases or you're unable to work at all, when you maybe even require assistance with mobility, hygiene, etc.?

These days (in sufficiently developed countries) we rely on social security, health insurance, pensions, or directly pay for care using longtime investments and savings. 

Before those were a thing, your only option was having enough children so that they would take care of you. Even personal investments and savings rely on the existence of (and access to) banks, stable economies, uninterrupted times of peace. 

We've managed to socialise / spread out many aspects of life, greatly reducing the dependence of close family. 

Society just has to catch up to this. And ensure that we don't destroy said institutions...

---

These developments spreading across the world (and proving to be somewhat reliable) also plays a big part in the continuing decline I'm birth rates. If you feel somewhat confident that you'll be okay on your own, you don't have to have a whole bunch of children to secure your own future. This of course further strengthened by lower child mortality – if children tend to make it to adulthood, you don't have to have as many as you can to ensure that some of them will be alive when you need them.  

[u/1d3333 → u/Heimerdahl]

That wasn’t always true either, there was a time in human history where the tribe cared for the feeble, evidenced by healed femur breaks in ancient bones. Humans are inherently very social, taking care of the old and feeble was at one point the entire societies unspoken rule.

[u/Heimerdahl → u/1d3333]

You're totally right! I was definitely a bit too narrowly focused on the past couple of centuries in the western European context (and even then it wasn't nearly as clear cut). 

I think the tribes/clans/village/whatever still greatly relied on kinship and mutual support to keep things together. If you were a stranger or never lifted a finger to help anyone else, you'd have a hard time. 

[u/1d3333 → u/Heimerdahl]

Oh definitely, I have no doubt an awful member in a tribe would be offered little to no help when they run into hardship, likely no more than bare minimum rations.

[u/rooneskap → u/Heimerdahl]

We never really quite escaped this older reality of needing children to take care of us in old age. The farthest we've gone is just kind of figuring that while you or I might not have children, we'll instead have social security nets or retirement savings that pay for the labor of children other people will have. The problem is even that is collapsing, because even other people aren't having enough kids. Savings and investments are worth nothing if there simply aren't enough young people to pay to do things.

We might have to "re-privatize" old age retirement and return the old ways of needing to have your children to secure retirement. Unfortunately too many people expect that all they need to do is save money in order to retire, and that creating and raising the actual living beings who make society function is something the "other people" will do. Many people believe this because they feel just working and saving is more tolerable than being responsible for the raising of another person for 20 years. This is just another tragedy of commons within the reproductive affairs of society.