I don't understand why that changed.
It's easy to point at social media, and that's part of it, but I think it's probably the ubiquity of photos and videos, easily transmitted to others. Even those of us who aren't on social media still send photos and videos of our kids to the grandparents, to cousins, to other friends and family. We're constantly exposed to parenting highlights, which subtly shifts the expectations on what the non-highlight portions look like.
One big one is that today's parents put too much pressure on themselves (both individually and as a group) to always be supervising. Some parents don't feel that they can leave their child alone for 30 minutes while they shower or clean, or watch TV, because we've built up expectations that everything is structured and that we're supposed to sacrifice our individuality for the kid. Some recent research has shown that millennial parents are spending a lot more "hands on" time with their kids than any previous generation, rather than passive supervision like when kids are playing in the house while the adults do something else.
Plus there is a significant line of people who feel compelled to do high effort, high visibility shows of parenting effort: Instagram worthy birthday parties, more structured play and learning, high effort cooking of things from scratch rather than convenience foods, etc.
Finances (and working hours) are definitely a big part of it, but a bigger part is the shift in norms and expectations that we're expected to be much more for our kids than prior generations.
I assure you, many of us were drinking copious amounts of coffee before kids, too.
(man puts stick in own bicycle meme)
I don't know how representative my preferences are for the rest of the USA, but I live in a dense city.
I have a bicycle (and my city has plenty of bikeshare rentals scattered all throughout) so I'm usually not willing to walk more than 10 minutes.
When the weather is nice, I will walk within 5 minutes (roughly 0.25 miles or 0.5 km), bike within 30 minutes (roughly 5 miles/8km, depending on lights and traffic), and drive or Uber/Lyft beyond that.
When the weather is bad, I usually take mass transit if I can do it with less than 2 transfers, or I'll drive/Uber/Lyft otherwise.
My choice between driving and Uber/Lyft is usually driven by some combination of cost (including parking), convenience, and whether I intend to drink.
The vast majority of full service restaurant transactions are by card. Something like 80% of restaurant transactions are by card, and full service restaurants with servers are even higher.
There's not a ton of cash tips at this point, so underreporting cash tips doesn't make as big of a difference as it used to.
Isn't that just what Lemmy shitposts is?
Break it out into 168 hours per week:
56 hours of sleep
45 hours of work (include the potential for working a bit longer each day)
5 hours of commuting to/from work
6 hours of exercise/gym
2 hours of grocery shopping
7 hours of cooking and other food prep
7 hours of eating
1 hour of laundry
2 hours of general cleaning around the house
2 hours of other general chores
That's 133 hours per week. You still have 35 hours for socializing, hobbies, other activities you enjoy, or just plain sitting around and relaxing (with a book, with TV, etc.) if you enjoy that. And some people can fit in part of those needs in terms of overlap: white collar jobs that don't mind if you buy something for yourself online during the day, restaurant jobs that cover a shift meal, physical jobs or commutes that reduce the amount of time you might need to get exercise outside of work, etc.
For me, I actually really enjoy cooking (and eating) so I probably spend more time on those than is strictly necessary, but it doesn't feel like work to me.
I'm probably lucky in that I spent some time working in restaurants that gave me a ton of kitchen skills (not just the actual ability to prep and cook delicious food quickly, but the sense of meal planning on a strict budget that reduces food waste), and makes me appreciate the regularity of a white collar job schedule that actually fits with circadian rhythms and the flow of the rest of society.
Kids make it harder, though. A lot of that 35 hours per week carved out gets totally eaten up with a second commute to daycare (5 hours), bedtime routines (7 hours), extracurricular weekend activities (5 hours), and extra cleaning (5 hours), a second load of laundry (1 hour), and extra chores (2 hours), leaving you with only 10 hours per week of hobbies/leisure.
At that point you've gotta find the time from somewhere. I personally dipped to 7 hours per ~~week~~ day of sleep around that time, dropped my gym attendance to around 3 hours per week, and started paying to outsource some of the cleaning (a weekly service) and cooking (more takeout/restaurants) and shopping (more grocery delivery).
But the magic, for me, was that my kids are really fun. They leave me with less time for other things but I love them and that part feels less like a chore. And they're a forcing function in that I have to be home when they're asleep 3-4 hours before my bedtime, when I don't have anything better to do than clean a bit, do a bit of meal prep, and watch a lot of TV with my spouse.
I don't think most people consider dates to be the same as dressing up for work. One can look "nice" without having to look like a white collar drone in a boring workplace.
For example, I have different suits and ties for the workplace (conservative, standard dark colors) versus for things like weddings (brighter, more expressive colors and patterns and fabrics).
But even short of that level of formality, there are fashion choices that can attract attention. If you're in an environment where the dress code is to wear a collar and some buttons, there's a difference between a plain polo (whether cotton or some kind of performance polyester athleisure) or a short sleeve buttoned shirt with some fun prints (whether we're talking about Dan Flashes or a Hawaiian shirt or something more subtle), on top of the decision on whether to wear that shirt tight or loose or baggy.
Or, some people make conscious choices for their athletic wear, when they're going to the gym or for a run or a bike ride, or playing sports like golf or basketball or tennis.
For people who are going on dates, the attire can convey a message, either intentional or not. And people might choose to send completely different messages in the workplace versus on dates versus just out with friends.
It can basically move a blade along an electronically controlled path, so it can cut intricate shapes.
It can also use a pen or marker attachment to draw on paper, so that you can have things that look like handwritten script. So for example, if you want to send out a bunch of wedding invitations and you want to make "hand written" addresses on the envelopes, you can use certain script fonts with your existing address book, or even try to design a custom font from your own writing, and use that as a mass produced "writing" tool. There are a bunch of ways to make drawings and things like that, too.
Like rehearsing a speech in the mirror while getting ready for the day.
We're always picking up new slang. Some slang never really makes the jump between generations, regions, subcultures, even languages, etc. But some do.
One of the most successful slang words is "cool," which spread from the jazz scene in the 30's to the general American lexicon in the 50's, and has basically become such a core part of the English language, even outside of the U.S., that those of us born after don't even think of it as slang.
Every generation has a few of these, and they might have started in a particular video/movie/TV show/song, some other work, in a certain community among a certain generation, ethnic group (or bilingual speakers who just slowly incorporate calques or loan words from their other language), or other group, and the popularity of that particular word makes the jump to those who might not be familiar with where it comes from.
I was a kid when "my bad" showed up in the basketball world (possibly coined by Dikembe Mutumbo), got picked up by American black teens and spread to other generations and races until it eventually just became part of standard colloquial American English. 10 years after first hearing it, I heard a white boomer college professor use it non-ironically, and I realized that it was just something people of all walks of life just said. Now, 20+ years after that, it's still going strong.
Thinking back, I think "dude" made a similar jump in the 70's. The TV show Seinfeld popularized a bunch of phrases that entered the lexicon: "yada yada," "regift," maybe "shiksa." "Clean" as an aesthetic descriptor probably became popular after Outkast's 2000 hit "So Fresh, So Clean," even if the song itself reflected existing cultural usage. Post 2010, I'm guessing "sus" has staying power, and definitely jumped generations, largely off of the brief "Among Us" popularity.
"Yeet" and "rizz" have stuck around a bit longer than fleeting teen slang usually does, but it remains to be seen which Gen Z teenage words actually survive regular usage into the 2040's. I'm guessing the ones that get featured in a popular song or TV show are the ones that have the highest likelihood of long term survival.