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I have 2 kids and work full time. And yes, at times, I was relieved to get to work and drink my coffee in peace because caring for 2 kids under 20 months is hard. BUT I also paid daycare without any government help to the tune of 4,400 per month (for the 4 years they were both in daycare at the same time). I never expected anyone (besides my husband) to help me out. I worked for my sanity and for my 401K, health insurance and seniority position I currently held. Now my kids are both in public school (paid by my school tax) and I could not be happier with my decision to stay a working mother during those years.
In this day and age most people are living better and larger as far as nice stuff and having stuff than previous generations.
Daycare in the 70's and prior was almost unheard of. It wasn't until the 80's that it became more popular. Now the kids who had daycare in the 80's had kids who put them in daycare and those kids put their kids in daycare. So what we have now is people living better material wise but with disconnected families more so.
I was a kid in the 70's dad went to work mom stayed home, I bet if you ask people in my age range that was common. Now mom and dad both work (if there are two parents) and the kid gets put in a daycare all day and the kid knows the person supervising them at the care center more than knowing the parent or parents.
While anecdotal, growing up in the 60's, it seemed nearly everyone had a grandma living with them or near bye. They often provided childcare for dual income or single working parent households.
In my case nearby grandma worked too, so great grandma was in charge. She was blind, crippled and senile so we mostly watched over her. Lol.
Any woman that recognizes she is not built to be a SAHM is doing the best thing for her kids by going to work. Luckily, women have options these days and are not forced to be a SAHM if they aren't good at it or it doesn't suit their personality.
My Mom was a SAHM and she was SO UNHAPPY. I cannot tell you how many times I wished she had gone to work. Perhaps she would have been a happier, more fulfilled person. That would have done WONDERS for our household.
There has to be a market for poor people. Not everyone can cater to the wealthy. That is what the free market is all about. There is money to be made from poor clients, it is just less money. In a free market the companies with the best reputations would serve the wealthy, and the ones without the best reputations would serve the poor. Notice, I didn’t say “bad reputations” because that is not what I meant. If the poor are not being served it means there is missed opportunity in the market.
Very common for states, counties and municipalities to substantially subsidize child care in low income areas.
Such places are typically staffed by single moms who are required by a 1996 Federal Law to train or work at least 20 hours a week. They recieve training and licensing The outcome is your kids are in subsidized daycare while you work in another daycare and by golly, satisfy the 20 hour a week minimum.
Back in the day Ward worked and June stayed home with kids. Leave it to Beaver was a long time ago.
The lifestyle of Leave it to Beaver was upper middle class from an economic statpdpoint. Ward had a study where he presumably hid from his family and paid bills. Beaver and Wally shared a bedroom.
Dick Van Dyke was another upper middle class economic household. It was a 4 room house in New Rochelle, NY.
Who knows who watched the Ritchie, when Laura met Dick in the city?
Band leader Ricky Ricardo and Lucy were packed into a tiny apartment. Presumably Little Ricky had a bedroom.
Alice and Ralph Krandon shared a tiny 2 room apartment in NY. If they had had a baby, presumably it would sleep in the oven.
It’s more the fact that conservatives are still lamenting that women work instead of staying home cooking and cleaning, despite the fact that in today’s economy, a middle class lifestyle for a family is almost unobtainable on a single income.
If small children are that cost-prohibitive (whether due to childcare costs or having to live on one income while they are tiny), then perhaps some people need to come to terms with living a less-than-middle-class lifestyle until their children start school.
People entirely over romanticize the 1950s. The truth is not all wives stayed home because not all wives could afford it. The reality was that almost all the women earned less regardless because they held very few professional, skilled labor, or management jobs. If the wife was a secretary there was probably much less discussion of financial impact. A lot of families also lived near Grandparents. So Grandma became a de facto caregiver during the spurts when Mom had to take on work.
The other reality is that standard of living was way lower in the 1950s. Take a quick look at the houses. There is a reason so many houses had one car garages- it was not uncommon to have 1 car. And the closets could be smaller because people did not have 35 outfits a piece. And Johnny and Sue might have a sport or two apiece beyond neighborhood pick up games. There were not 4 sports seasons for most kids and no one did travel baseball, 20 tennis tournaments, competitive cheer, regional hockey teams, etc.
I'll also bet money on only about 60-70% of the millennials having kids and many of them only having one. The 3 or 4 kid families seem to be the provenance of the wealthy and the poor outside of certain devout religious types.
Average new house in 1950 was less than 1000 square feet, despite housing larger families. Today it's almost 3x that size and family sizes are smaller.
Larger space costs more to heat, cool, illuminate and insure. . Not uncommon for annual utility bills to be higher than annual household incomes in the 50's.
Nearly half the households had no TV. No one, including kids, had their own phone. No Cable. No internet. No iPads/ tablets. Dining out was a special treat.
Average new house in 1950 was less than 1000 square feet, despite housing larger families. Today it's almost 3x that size and family sizes are smaller.
Larger space costs more to heat, cool, illuminate and insure. . Not uncommon for annual utility bills to be higher than annual household incomes in the 50's.
Nearly half the households had no TV. No one, including kids, had their own phone. No Cable. No internet. No iPads/ tablets. Dining out was a special treat.
Food also costs a significantly bigger chunk of the household budget. We're getting cheaper highly processed food that's making us sicker and fatter, but hey we have room in the budget now for phones, tvs, bigger houses, etc.
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