6 hours ago, Phillyterp85 said:

That can be quite a hike if you’re talking about every day baby sitting. I’m 20 miles from my in-laws. It’s a 40 min to an hour drive depending on traffic. They watch our daughter once a week. If we lived in their town (as they did with their parents) then they’d probably watch her 2-3 times a week.

And anyone I do know who’s parents watch their kids 3-5 days week, all live close to the parents where it’s a short drive.

I haven’t looked up the data but just based on personal experience, I think today’s generation of adults live further away from their parents than the previous generation.

1 hour ago, TEW said:

30 miles can be a pretty long drive these days.

Exactly. In major metro areas 10 miles can take you 30 minutes. It’s not like most people live in rural Kansas where they have clear roads and no cops to enforce speed limits. And not only is there the time issue, but it’s usually a pretty stressful drive with a ton of traffic.

Yeah, but they all live w/i 30 mi, not 30 mi on the dot.

Median distance is 18 miles, and more Americans live in the burbs or rural than live in cities by a factor of 2:1.

2 hours ago, DEagle7 said:

If housing prices get any worse that distance is gonna come crashing down quick.

That's not a bad thing.

Except maybe for the ones who would prefer less interference in the governments willingness to supersede family bonds.

Throw in some increases in home schooling and we might be on to something.

Of course you were Fing homeschooled

19 minutes ago, DEagle7 said:

Of course you were Fing homeschooled

I was actually went through school when grades mattered you inbred pedophile.

Did you get your SNAP card filled today too? You're welcome.

8 hours ago, Bill said:

Yeah, but they all live w/i 30 mi, not 30 mi on the dot.

Median distance is 18 miles, and more Americans live in the burbs or rural than live in cities by a factor of 2:1.

18 miles is still a good hike when you’re talking about every day babysitting, especially in suburbs where you’re dealing with lights and traffic. You could be looking at a 40 min trip at that distance if not more depending on where you live.

I would bet that 40 years ago that number was a lot smaller.

Again just personal anecdote, but my grandparents lived within 5 miles of us growing up. Same for my wife. One lived right next door.

Now we’re 20 miles from both our parents if just looking at radial distance. 35 miles from my mom if looking at actual driving distance.

7 hours ago, lynched1 said:

I was actually went through school when grades mattered you inbred pedophile.

Did you get your SNAP card filled today too? You're welcome.

He's a pediatrician and you blow hobos in the rough part of town for beer money, literally nobody here actually believes you're not the poor one in the conversation, dumb ass.

22 hours ago, Bill said:

75% of people live w/i 30 miles of a parent.

30 miles isn’t close

9 hours ago, Bill said:

Yeah, but they all live w/i 30 mi, not 30 mi on the dot.

Median distance is 18 miles, and more Americans live in the burbs or rural than live in cities by a factor of 2:1.

18 miles isn’t close either. Unless your are out in the sticks that’s a 35-45 minute commute

We had to go from our house to a restaurant in Chester springs the other night. It was 24 miles and at 5 o’clock. Took us almost an hour.

Is half a mile too far?

10 minutes ago, paco said:

18 miles isn’t close either. Unless your are out in the sticks that’s a 35-45 minute commute

We had to go from our house to a restaurant in Chester springs the other night. It was 24 miles and at 5 o’clock. Took us almost an hour.

Yup. My kid son was off from school Thursday so my stepmom came to watch him. 22 miles away but they’re out in KOP are and we’re in south Jersey. She left at 3 to beat rush hour, still took her 70 minutes to get home.

1 minute ago, RPeeteRules said:

Is half a mile too far?

How is 1/2 mile the cutoff for what is considered a pharmacy desert? What? I’m a mile from my pharmacy. There’s another 2 pharmacies about 2-3 miles away. But I’d be in a pharmacy desert according to him?

1 minute ago, Phillyterp85 said:

Yup. My kid son was off from school Thursday so my stepmom came to watch him. 22 miles away but they’re out in KOP are and we’re in south Jersey. She left at 3 to beat rush hour, still took her 70 minutes to get home.

Yeah but Mr. "Kamala is going to get 500 electoral votes” will argue that you were going around an urban area to dismiss it.

My drive was 100% Chester county so it ranged from suburbs to horse farms.

1 minute ago, Phillyterp85 said:

How is 1/2 mile the cutoff for what is considered a pharmacy desert? What? I’m a mile from my pharmacy. There’s another 2 pharmacies about 2-3 miles away. But I’d be in a pharmacy desert according to him?

Consider the source

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPkOBEDDUnt/?igsh=OWV2bW9uOWxmbjVq

7 minutes ago, paco said:

Yeah but Mr. "Kamala is going to get 500 electoral votes” will argue that you were going around an urban area to dismiss it.

My drive was 100% Chester county so it ranged from suburbs to horse farms.

A cousin of mine lived in Long Island for most his life. Then he went out do Colorado for a few years for work. It was funny the different perspective people had on distances. Out there, 20-30 miles away wasn’t considered too far as it would take 20-30 minutes to make that distance and never had to worry about traffic. 20 miles in Long Island could mean you’re in the car for 90 minutes to 2 hours lol.

Just now, Phillyterp85 said:

A cousin of mine lived in Long Island for most his life. Then he went out do Colorado for a few years for work. It was funny the different perspective people had on distances. Out there, 20-30 miles away wasn’t considered too far as it would take 20-30 minutes to make that distance and never had to worry about traffic. 20 miles in Long Island could mean you’re in the car for 90 minutes to 2 hours lol.

Yeah, out there depending where you live 20-30 miles would be 18-25 miles in a straight line with almost no cars. (Assuming you’re not buried in snow in mid July )

But the average suburb with stop and go traffic? It takes at least 2 minutes per mile.

On 11/6/2025 at 9:52 PM, Nice Work Pal said:

Well, my meme says his name is Dale and he’s from Mississippi

Eh, I get your anecdotal evidence, but the current mean living distance to a parent (18 miles) is actually 2 miles closer than the mean distance of a married person to their parent around 40 years ago.

Currently, around 47% of grandparents live within 10 miles from their grandchildren.

Where the distances start to get greater is correlated with education levels of adult children, so it would make sense that a lot of you here with advanced degrees would be outside the mean, but anecdotally being outside the mean doesn’t negate the existence of the mean.

9 minutes ago, Bill said:

Eh, I get your anecdotal evidence, but the current mean living distance to a parent (18 miles) is actually 2 miles closer than the mean distance of a married person to their parent around 40 years ago.

Currently, around 47% of grandparents live within 10 miles from their grandchildren.

Where the distances start to get greater is correlated with education levels of adult children, so it would make sense that a lot of you here with advanced degrees would be outside the mean, but anecdotally being outside the mean doesn’t negate the existence of the mean.

That would be a very surprising result. Can you post the source?

13 hours ago, Bill said:

Yeah, but they all live w/i 30 mi, not 30 mi on the dot.

Median distance is 18 miles, and more Americans live in the burbs or rural than live in cities by a factor of 2:1.

I mean, I live in the burbs and if I want to drive 6 miles on the beltway during rush hour it can take up to an hour depending on traffic.

If this were 20 years ago I would agree, but the population and density of suburbs has grown significantly while the capacity of roads has remained basically unchanged; short distances don’t necessarily mean short drive times.

37 minutes ago, Phillyterp85 said:

That would be a very surprising result. Can you post the source?

https://www.demographic-research.org/articles/volume/52/34/

35 minutes ago, TEW said:

I mean, I live in the burbs and if I want to drive 6 miles on the beltway during rush hour it can take up to an hour depending on traffic.

If this were 20 years ago I would agree, but the population and density of suburbs has grown significantly while the capacity of roads has remained basically unchanged; short distances don’t necessarily mean short drive times.

I get that there’s going to be areas where the infrastructure is just Fd and it would be difficult, and I would say that the Beltway is the most Mad Max driving experience one could have in the Us.

At the end of the day, we’re trying to rationalize data driven evidence with anecdotal evidence.

What the data does show is that there is correlation b/w education/income and distance to a parent, so potential childcare costs are going to be more with the middle class relative to everything, given that the average daycare is closer than the average parent.

From my own anecdotal inferences, a lot of my peers with children are complaining that their parents aren’t taking as much of an interest with their children as their grandparents did with them. So taking my own anecdotal evidence in with the data makes me infer that grandparents as a whole could probably be helping out more than they are to some extent, but I do not know what that extent is because, as always, there’s not enough data.

And, as always, there will be both data and anecdotal outliers.