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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to think dual person 'full time' worker family households should never have become the norm?

755 replies

workingdilemma · 24/06/2015 20:57

Was thinking about the other thread talking about tax credits etc.

Around 40 years ago, as a society we'd reached a point where one person working in a household was enough to support a young family.

Now we've ended up where it's pretty much required to have both working full time to be able to afford the same lifestyle - mainly due to the insane 'cost' of housing.

It would have been far better to have had both people in a couple working perhaps part time to allow engagement with the world of work, and also a healthier work/life balance.

Why did we end up like this? Was it all an orchestrated plan to keep the debt cycle going - after all, you can lend on two incomes now for a mortgage. Lovely jubbly for the debt pushers. Is that why the banks and governments encourage this?

I dunno, but I do yearn for a better way to deal with the problems we're having now then everyone demonising each other.

OP posts:
Gemauve · 26/06/2015 15:48

When I was in the US 15 years ago (not sure about current situation) couples could choose to be taxed as individuals or as a couple with shared allowances.

That was the situation here for a period in the 1970s and 1980s, when married couples could opt for separate taxation. However, for reasons of insane sexism, investment income was always taxed as the husband's irrespective of whether you had elected for separate or joint taxation. So married women always had to declare all their savings to their husbands, or risk prosecution, and I think women paying standard rate tax had their investment income taxed at higher rate if their husband earned more (there might be more to this than I remember, as "composite rate" complicated things: a tax specialist with a long memory might be able to correct me).

This wasn't resolved until some time in the late 1980s, when the whole concept of married taxation was abandoned, the final nail in the coffin being the abolition of dual-income MIRAS (with the insane decision to give advance notice which led to some stoking of the housing market).

The changes to child benefit see the return of this, and we have to hope that it's an aberration rather than the return of a particularly toxic injustice.

LotusLight · 26/06/2015 16:00

Like most parents and presumably most of the husbands of wives on this thread I adore children and love spending time in their company. A few hours a day is lovely.

Would you m ake the same type of comment to a working husband or ask him why he bothered having children if he was going to go out to work? No because he is a penis so you treat him like a God who can do no wrong.

SarfEasticatedMumma · 26/06/2015 16:05

No because he is a penis so you treat him like a God who can do no wrong.
Have you been around mumsnet long lotus?

SarfEasticatedMumma · 26/06/2015 16:06
Grin
LashesandLipstick · 26/06/2015 16:06

Lotus if a man told me he didn't like spending more than a few hours with his kids and preferred working yes I would ask why he had children.

Meechimoo · 26/06/2015 16:07

you're cool with stay at home dads though lotus so I find that I can't take a single thing you utter seriously Grin

workingdilemma · 26/06/2015 16:28

Does that include people with lodgers? How are you planning to distinguish between houses in multiple occupancy and "family units"?

I had defined that in the post - I guess your eagerness to respond didn't allow you to read it properly. No problem.

As I said, two people who aren't in a relationship are considered separate.

What about siblings sharing houses: family unit, or not? What about people whose adult children are living with them? How many family units are there in a house containing a grandparent, two of their children and four of their grandchildren?

Look - details, details. My consultancy fees are quite high and I'm not going to write a prototype for you for any less than six figures. I do like that sum.

If I have a lodger who has a child, and sleep with them once, have we become a family unit? Twice? Three times?

I will answer this, because I'm so impressed with your vivid imagination. If your sauvignon blanc fuelled night of passion with the lodger happens once, that's nobodies business. Twice even.

Here's my proposed algorithm. This is a piece of pseudocode, published under the workingdilemma public license.

Apologies, this is the opposite sex algo - we'll be dealing with same sex couples in the full implementation.

We'll be monitoring this using an internal rfid chip, a bit like an oyster card. If contact is detected, that's a hit. Apologies men, you're going to need your penis chipped.

We'll also be using internal sensors to monitor blood alcohol levels.

acceptedAlcTolerance = 0.00001 // apologies for the hard coded value.
definiteSexCount = 0
nowAFamilyUnit = false

while (landload and lodger live together) {

if landlordAlcTolerance < acceptedAlcTolerance and
lodgerAlcTolerance < acceptedAlcTolerance then {

  //this means that the couple are not under the influence
  if penetration occurs 3 times within 15 seconds then
     #expected pump frequency 
     definiteSex +=1
     continue
 }

}

if definiteSex > 3 then
nowAFamilyUnit = true
callHMRC()
}

There's probably a few bugs and we'll have to deal with how to process things as events, but it shouldn't be insurmountable.

Hope that clears that up.

Thanks,

Workingdilemma.

OP posts:
workingdilemma · 26/06/2015 16:30

Sorry - mumsnet posts don't seem to remove leading spaces, so my code has lost it's nice formatting.

Should still be readable though.

OP posts:
rogueantimatter · 26/06/2015 16:33

The apparent refusal to work less hours of many men who can afford to work part-time, contributes to the normalisation of women spending more time at home than men. It's annoying IMO.

rabbitstew · 26/06/2015 16:43

"because he is a penis so you treat him like a God who can do no wrong." Grin Well, I guess if you married a penis rather than the whole man, you could rub along together quite nicely for a while, but I don't think the arrangement would remain firm forever. Grin

howabout · 26/06/2015 17:00

The benefits and tax credits systems already have definitions of households whether or not you agree with them although I am sure IDS would be desperate to add some more coded algorithms to his swanky UC roll out.Grin

I think the original incarnation of the tax credit system did go some way to providing for differences between household size as allowances. However including low waged single earner allowances and childcare allowances muddied this and depressed wages. Failing to keep pace with increases in the tax free allowance and compensating with increases in the per adult / child amounts while increasing the withdrawal rate have distorted it beyond recognition. It now looks like a low wage benefit rather than an additional allowance for most families as it was originally intended to be.

Galdos · 26/06/2015 17:07

I'm a single parent with three kids at school and 'little family/friends support locally'. In theory I work part time, but it doesn't really work - I am missing things all the time at home (why do schools treat education as a 'partnership' with parents, and load so much stuff at home?), and struggle at work. As a result I am quitting work - fortunately I think I can afford to, provided I don't live too long! Child care is a complete nightmare, and hideously expensive if outsourced, as some must be. Despite all, in some respects its better than my parents' generation - my mother didn't work, no pensions, little savings, eating out was a serious once a year rarity, and holidays were staying with contacts in strange places (northern Holland at Easter? The dormitory of a convent school in summer hols?) and no phoning relatives abroad without permission and a timed booking. And we were very middle class.

On house prices - agree that too easy lending very unhelpful.

Andrewofgg · 26/06/2015 17:47

I didn't say the workplace should discriminate against older people, just that the notion of discriminating equally between men and women by age rather than by sex made a bit more economic sense to me in the face of rising intergenerational inequalities.

True howabout but discrimination by gender, or age, or race is wrong even if it makes economic sense. It's probably easier to manage a homogeneous workforce - one where everyone "fits in" than one which isn't, so it would make economic sense to keep your workforce homogeneous - but it's wrong and also unlawful.

HelenaDove · 26/06/2015 18:07

When DH and i were signing on in the late 90s I was in the JC and pulled to one side to sign a form saying i would consider part time work.

DH wasnt asked this by them. This happened in the late 90s over 25 years after the equal pay act came in and 23 years after the Sex Discrimination Act.

TheSnufflet · 26/06/2015 19:50

workingdilemma I love that code. I think you should be running the Universal Credit scheme instead of IDS Grin

workingdilemma · 26/06/2015 20:05

Thanks Snufflet for the vote of confidence. Yes - if you're reading Iain, get onto Carney and print me another 12 billion. I'll write you a model so detailed in its nuances for detecting acts of lodger penetration, granddad's thursday arvo child care sesh and most importantly - chicken eating largesse that it can calculate in real time the exact amount of state money that has to be diverted to the recipient.

Hell, we'll even deliver it in bitcoin.

OP posts:
workingdilemma · 26/06/2015 20:10

We'll also be putting sensors into all door steps to ensure any stay at home parent is doing their bit to keep them shiny.

To keep their personal allowance or benefits, I'll create a workfare program that sends them randomly to other family units composed of two actual 'wealth creators' - i.e. full time workers - to make sure their doorstep is done too.

OP posts:
Andrewofgg · 26/06/2015 20:24

Dilemma You are a genius. PMSL.

If you use an underscore _ instead of a space you can keep the formatting.

workingdilemma · 26/06/2015 20:44

Thanks for the tip and the compliment Andrew! Unfortunately we can't edit posts otherwise I'd rectify it right now.

Who knows - maybe we could 'crowdwrite' a new, fair model for the tax and benefits system right here on this thread?

I am fluent in python, c++ and Java for when we need the final implementation.

And I more than get by in Italian and Spanish. But you didn't need to know that.

OP posts:
LotusLight · 26/06/2015 21:15

..my is should have been has for the penis of course (as should someone's it's I think be an its above and I think I spotted a less rather than fewer... but there we are)....

Lots of mothers and fathers love being parents but are glad to work too as they want that balance. It does not mean they don't like or bring up their children of course.

Galdos · 26/06/2015 22:49

So the message is that women are offered part time roles and men aren't? I'm not sure who is being discriminated against here. I adore being a parent, and had a fantastic time with the twins in Westfield today (a school inset day), but I know I have to make the time up with late nights - slightly less resentful as I know I am on a glidepath, but in terms of equality the whole thing sucks.

OwenMeanysArmadillo · 26/06/2015 22:57

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Andrewofgg · 26/06/2015 23:43

In fact I think the government would probably quite like the fact that I spend more money on convenience foods, petrol, buying new instead of replacing things when I'm working flat out.

The government this, the government that. I ask whether you think that the government and indeed the world is some vast sinister conspiracy and then I read

the impact of FT dual income work on the health of families is also something which I feel is deliberately under researched

and I get the answer. You do.

What changes do you want to have imposed by whom on whom? Can you specify?

puffinrock · 27/06/2015 07:57

I am the same as Lotus. Largish family and that is what makes me want to work! Would drive me insane only having the children 24 hours a day.

namechangefortoday543 · 27/06/2015 09:27

Oh fgs so now all FT workers are the cause of environmental damage. Hahaha !!!!
I cycle to work, NEVER buy ready meals and like many FT workers don't chuck money around buying stuff all the time !
I will be fined and my bins not emptied if I dont sort the recycling - its not hard to put the recycling into whatever bin its meant to be put in Hmm

You are also barking up the wrong tree as regards health - WOH has been shown to improve MH particularly and poverty has the biggest impact on childrens health ( includes those who are in working poor families)

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