That's always been my deep unsettling feeling about the whole idea of "mass-market social security nets" of the type Americans call "social security" - it's one thing to provide for those who literally have nothing and nobody; it's another to blanket everyone with it and disrupt natural processes that are as old as time.

Of course, many actual families do NOT go to extremes, and in fact USE the social security they get to help fund the grandchildren, in all sorts of ways. But you have to actively fight against the status quo to do so.

It's interesting to note that even though everyone 'knows' you don't pay SS payments into some account somewhere that is drawn from later, it's transfer payments now - it is still marketed and sold as the former.