Quote:
Originally Posted by beanandpumpkin
Oh, I know that... and I do feel for those families. Usually the women who I personally hear saying "wow, I WISH I didn't have to work! What a luxury you have!" have husbands who make more than what my husband makes, but they also have two new cars and a half-million dollar house, and their kids are involved in 3 sports each, and they all wear clothes from Macy's, go to DisneyWorld every year (which they charge on their credit cards) and so forth. 
Some people also don't take into consideration how much it actually costs the second parent to work, when you add up daycare costs, meals out (because they don't have time to cook), convenience foods (ditto), working wardrobes, gasoline, extra taxes, etc. If a mom makes $25,000 per year, after all of those deductions, she might be actually taking home $6,000 per year, which might make or break the bank for some, but MOST people can probably spend $100 less per week and still get by. Meanwhile, the kids have a parent at home, cooking more nutritious foods, etc.
Okay, I know I'm breaking off onto another tangent, sorry! |
Okay, I realize I'm sounding like I'm ready for my tinfoil hat fitting, but our economy has now become utterly dependent on the two-income family. As soon as political economists realized the benefit to a consumer economy of having women working, all of a sudden in the late 60s to early 70s or thereabouts, the prospect of women working changed from "Feminism will destroy the American culture" to "Women should work." Emboldened by the spirit of fabulous feminism, women working was seen as sexy and empowering -- an image ceaselessly promoted by the media in everything from sitcoms (i.e., the working gal Marlo Thomas in
That Girl) to perfume (i.e., the jingle from the perfume Enjoli which featured a power chick singing about how she can "bring home the bacon" and "fry it up in a pan").
Of course, women working meant that increasingly, women weren't going to be at home and that greater and greater responsibility for raising children fell to the schools as the great instrument of "socialization." More and more, school became entrusted with curing society's ills and taking over the job of parenting, so its role expanded from merely teaching reading and writing and math to teaching sex education, health, driver's education, and PE -- mostly things that had been left to the job of parents, but which were no longer capable of being handled by them. With the exception of the very poor, who almost always had to have a dual income in order to survive, parents increasingly surrendered their functions to the state.
Obviously -- and I'll say it again just for laughs and fun --
obviously, women have always worked for wages, particularly poor women. What changed was that now middle-class and rich women were
also socially expected to work for a salary and work even after they were married, which
was a substantial change. Ultimately, I think many women were essentially deluded by feminism -- not on purpose (I don't believe Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin sat down at a meeting of minds and hashed this out as a coherent plan for the future with all of its ramifications in mind), but deluded they were nevertheless. They were deluded into thinking that they should work outside the home and at the same time should still do their jobs in the house: an impossible, burdensome task that basically doubled their work for a fraction of the pay that men got.
As the standard of living under the dual-income family rose, families felt the subtle (or not-so-subtle) pressure to keep up with the Joneses. The median size of the family home has risen from somewhere around 950-1000 square feet in the 50s to somewhere around double that now -- and mostly, as the late, great comic George Carlin observed, because of the need for "a place for our stuff."
Right now, it's the societal expectation that both parties in a couple work. The woman who stays home is "selling out" or "selling herself short" and is looked down upon by working women because what she's
not selling is her time and apparently that makes her a pathetic throwback to the caveman era. The man who stays home is worse: he has no b***s; he can't "man up" and support his family. That, of course, is the stereotype perpetuated by the media, which (of course) benefits tremendously from a family with two incomes to spend.
The couple who bravely decides that they're going to have LESS than their friends, LESS than their parents, has to put up with substantial societal criticism. Their friends will be able to have parties in their large McMansions while the couple (let's call them the Refuseniks) won't be able to fit more than a few good friends in their house at any one time. The Refuseniks won't have an SUV; they'll drive a compact car. The Refuseniks may have only one child (because more children equals more car seats and car space and house space, none of which they have), and on and on.
However, the Refuseniks will have many hidden advantages as well: they'll have an affordable mortgage payment with a stable interest rate. They'll have a car that won't cost over $150 to fill up at the pump. If they homeschool, they can afford to live in a less posh neighborhood (and have more house for their money) because they're not worried about the quality of the school.
Still, for some people, retrenching is an idea they haven't even considered because it would be antithetical to the vast trend of this society. In short, few people want to swim against the current, even if going with the flow means financial suicide.
Their choice.
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