Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Modern life doesn’t work

358 replies

DeluluTaylor · 21/01/2026 07:16

I say this reading thread after thread of people trying to work around nigh impossible situations.
I am sitting here with chronic IBS from stress, trying to get the kids out of the door, to a school which can’t meet their need, to go to a job where I’m firefighting as nothing is fit for purpose anymore. Finding care homes for younger and younger people. People who want to work but can’t as they have learning disabilities. Yet in the 20th century an estimated 40-70% of people with LD were employed.
I have 38p in my bank account and all my money goes on paying for a big house that we’re in from 6.30pm 7 the next morning, with a huge garden which none of us have time to do anything in. That I sit in on my own when the kids go to see their father in a bedsit at weekends. Yet there are families down the road with three kids and two parents in one room.

The whole thing is crazy. If you were going to arrive here from another planet and looked at late stage capitalism you would say why do you live like this? Getting in debt to spend two weeks abroad rather than making changes to make the other 50 weeks off the year more bearable.

OP posts:
Original poster
DeluluTaylor · 21/01/2026 07:35

@BlackCatDiscoClubthat’s a really good point, my job will never be ‘done’, I imagine many people’s won’t.

OP posts:
CoastalGrey · 21/01/2026 07:35

Couldn’t agree more. We pay other people to look after our kids so we can go out to work then buy stuff we don’t need with our wages because you’ve got to feel like there’s a point to working and in the moment nice things tick that box but long term none of it makes us happy.

sugarandcyanide · 21/01/2026 07:34

I agree. Life has got so expensive that we live to pay bills and buy food. Disposable income gets lower every year.

Families need two parents working to afford to live and they end up paying the equivalent of a second mortgage to someone else to look after their children. Then everyone is scratching their heads wondering why people aren't having children any more!

People will have to work till they're 70 and give up all of their healthy years. Social care is a disaster in this country and relatives can't help like they used to because they're at work, so those houses families had to give up their lives to buy will eventually end up being sold off to pay £6k a month in care fees.

But it's still the better of two evils to own the house as the alternative is to have no assets and be at the mercy of a state that has no money and even less inclination to look after their elderly.

GreaterF · 21/01/2026 07:33

I'm not sure it's like that for everyone though is it. You've described quite extreme examples.

BlackCatDiscoClub · 21/01/2026 07:31

Our brains have not adjusted to the huge changes that have happened over the last 200 years. We work ourselves to stress, but rarely see what that work actually 'did'. 200 years ago we'd have worked 10 hours reaping wheat, and at the end of it we'd be physically tired and have seen huge bundles across the field and known 'I did that'. Now we sit in a chair and have to trust that our admin somehow helps to meet a target that does something important somewhere. And theres no beginning or end to it, theres always multiple things we are just in the middle of. Theres no planting, harvesting, feasting, conserving. There's just a constant flow of equally important things that need to be done now.

ChicoryChina · 21/01/2026 07:31

Goodness me. People think all this stuff is normal because they are used to it. Kids who hardly see their parents as they eat breakfast at breakfast club, go to school, play at after school club and eat tea late that their parents have raced home to prepare, homework and bed later than anyone who like. Nice houses that are bigger than we need rammed full of stuff the end up in the landfill ruining the environment but costs us so much money we had to keep working long hours as we feel we need this stuff. We could all live simpler and slower lives if we all forgo a lot of the material things but society had told us that is what we need and what is normal. I could go on but nobody agrees and partly that because it’s hard to admit that your lifestyle isn’t ideal when you are told by everyone it is just the way it is and by the time you are deep in it’s impossible to change. And how do you make meaningful change on your own? It’s not a criticism of individuals but of our society. What a waste. A previous post was talking about how a mother should work longer hours because her husband wanted her to. It’s not always that’s simple and there is value in being physically and emotionally available for your children because you have done household jobs when they are at school. Just because others do doesn’t mean it is the only way.

Placetobreathe · 21/01/2026 07:27

I totally agree with you OP.

We humans have created a crazy world.

DontPokeMe · 21/01/2026 07:24

It's a depressing thought OP.

I've always considered it bizarre that we have to spend more time out of the home to pay to keep it. Obviously there's no alternative, but it's bemusing to say the least.