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

[workingdilemma]

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.

I agree that a feeling of being in control and responsible for your own future could lead you both to being a wohp and a sahp.

Interesting, namechange.

It's believing that I'm in control of my own life and responsible for my own actions and future that leads me to reject other peoples' opinions on what I ought to be doing with my life!

Lotus its extremely interesting
Google: Motivational theory and Locus of control.

If you enjoy work you are driven by a number of factors : internal motivation(desire to do well)Internal Locus of control( feel we are responsible for outcomes) external motivation ( pay/salary, social status, feelings of altruism),lots to do with personality and self esteem.

Do you have lots of employees Lotus ? this is basic management stuff !

Name change what if you're in between? I feel you can control most things but there are some events that you can't. Where does that fit?

Essentially we are all different and are looking at this issue from a completely different viewpoint ,which is part of who we are and individual to each one of us.

Whether you WOH or not often has little to do with our DC but more to do with our attitude to work!

I don't think its a matter of controlling everything but feeling that what you do has influence .
Sorry it was ages ago when I did this!

I think the highly internally motivated worker does accept, for example that the hours of work they are required to attend are not within their control (mostly) but they accept that if they feel what they are doing is of value .
they see it as a requirement and accept it.
The flipside is that working hours are seen as imposed externally and this leads to resentment, lateness etc.

Ah I see. Sorry I interpreted it as feeling in control of EVERYTHING.

Not really LASHES just that they are in control of their working lives.
They see themselves as the central force in achieving : I have done this rather than it is being done to me/I have to do this.

It obviously sums me up - cycling to the library in my mid teens to find out which careers I was interested in paid most; deciding to get the best A levels in the school; putting myself in for separate university entrance scholarship papers; deciding you do XYZ to get good jobs in my area so doing that at university etc etc.... Deciding to write some books (I wrote 30) and just doing it. Deciding I wanted a lot of children so married at 21 and 5 lovely children. So I find it very interesting to see women who are different from this - who think as they often say to me on here there is no point in aiming high because half of us have to be care home and minimum wage earners. They say it to me all the time when I say why not encourage your daughter into a "good" job - as if they think that is not for the likes of us, we will never amount to much, we cannot control our fate. Whereas I think if I work twice as hard as most people I will make more money and get on and not surprisingly that worked. Or I want a lot of babies so better have the first at 22 not 42. Or I don't want to get sick so I'll eat fairly healthy foods.

Anyway it's slightly off topic for the thread.

No employees now thankfully. It's too much hassle. I pay people who do bits of things for me when needed.

Lotus
you sound quite externally driven and motivated - by money !
I have never heard you talk about your work in terms of what you have personally done for others for example or winning a good case ( what ever lawyers do) etc - simply what you get out of it financially.( that's not a bad thing but different from someone who has internal motivators )

An example of someone who has an internal Locus of control would be your postman son, he is happy doing a lower paid job because he is not so externally influenced by money but feels what he does has value .

Surely that is just you choosing to read what you read. I also said I was very keen to have a lot of children (equally important to me) so I made that happen. I was very keen to breastfeed so I made that happen. I am very keen not to get sick so I make that happen.

I am not materialistic at all actually although I like having a nice house and to pay school fees. The principal issue with career choice which is what both my parents said in our teens is to pick a career you really enjoy. I feel I get paid a lot to solve jigsaw puzzles almost! Mind you it was a relief to finish checking the proofs of my book yesterday. Some tasks are less interesting than others although even with that finding a few changes in the area since I wrote it a short while ago gains me something called "flow".

Also i had 10 years with my own island in Panama and as I wrote about that at the time what I liked about that was peace, rain forest preservation, the natural environment and the like. I am not a one trick money pony even if that makes housewives happier to assume.

Also i had 10 years with my own island in Panama

Love it. I just love it.

I agree with a lot of the posts about controlling your own destiny. Absolutely right. This doesn't mean that we can't be concerned for the rest of society.

Not everyone has the aptitude to be as Bransonesque as the fearsome Lotus.

Lotus Im not having a go at you !
Nor am I a housewife !

I can only interpret what you wrote - which was that you cycled off to research the best paid careers.
Jolly good if you enjoy what you do and have a happy life.

LotusLight - you do nevertheless express yourself entirely in terms of your own self-interest, and appear to look down on anyone foolish enough to think or do something because they think it will make a positive difference to others and don't seem to believe that anyone could be made happy by that. It's ironic that you actually bought yourself a little island, because you talk about yourself as though you are a self-sufficient little island. I personally don't think there is anything inferior about feeling most happy within yourself when you believe that what you are doing is making a positive difference to others. It just depends whether it's done through free choice, or unwilling sense of obligation.

Lotus you focus so heavily on telling us time and time again how happy and successful you are on numerous threads over numerous years. Happy people are too busy being happy to go on and on and on about how happy they are. And they don't need to dismiss other people in a patronising tone when they organise their life differently.

Your issue is that you cannot and will not understand why others live differently and can be just as happy or happier than you in doing so.

Yes, I was 10 when I decided I'd buy an island when I grew up. I asked my father what they cost and I drew a chart. (I assumed you kept 100% of income with no tax and no expenses..... which are not a very accurate assumption.....) and different careers showed how long it would take to save up. I still have the diagram.

Why should I look down on anyone? I say being happy and not ill and not mentally ill are the priorities in life.

Lots of things I do do good to others. It is as if low earners think women who earn a lot do no good on the planet. In fact it's the other way round - the more money you have the more good you can do whether that is helping local people abroad, saving rain forest, curing the world of malaria or whatever. Never mind the fact that working parents also of course bring up children and care and love them too.

There you go again, though, LotusLight - asking why you should look down on anyone, then apparently looking down on people who don't earn enough money to cure malaria. By the way, now that you've done the self-indulgent island buying thing, are you saving up for that cure?

As well as the aspiration to have a single income family I think it is a relatively modern concept that we are no longer multi generational. When I was a child many homes had grandparents mum and dad plus 4-5 children.

It is really refreshing to read a discussion where the focus is on the benefit of work to the worker rather than "the family" or "society". Imo this is where it should be and how policy should be directed so that we all have choices about how much work we do and when we do it and are paid equally for doing the same work. The benefits system, the student loan system and the childcare subsidy arrangements all work skew the value of the same work for different individuals.

Coming back to the question of house prices, current interventions in the housing market skew the costs of acquiring houses of similar value for different individuals.

Hang what about the rain forest I preserved? Is that not a social good or do I have be on the minimum wage washing the feet of the sick to get the mumsnet moral highground (or serving a family and OAP relatives for zero pay)? Do we put the corns of the elderly above trees I wonder?

There is also the issue of woman as martyr which is perhaps what someone just above is getting at. Women can work if it feeds the children. Women can stay home if it benefits their husband. Women can do anything they like as long as it only pleases and serves others. Men may do as they choose and will always be heroes either for supporting a family or doing one hour of babysitting or wielding the loo brush once.

I think this is a really fascinating and compex issue. How do you really draw the line between a person doing something for their own benefit, and doing it for someone elses? And surely there's often a bit of both?
I've never met a single SAHP Who has genuinely felt 'I don't want to be doing this, I'd rather be working, but I believe that would be detrimental to my children and therefore I am acting solely in their interests.' Most SAHP I know do it because they prefer it to being a WOHP. Or sometimes a bit of both... They'd rather SAH and they Believe it's best for their children too. And of course there are so many variables... Eg if I had a tedious job then I can see that being a SAHM would be a more attractive option.. It wouldn't mean though, that I enjoyed being at home more than a WOHM with an interesting job does- it wouldnt be a realistic comparison between the two scenarios.

Lotus I really do agree that often women are the pleasers and servers.
Do try not to sneer at those who wash the feet of others though, you will probably need their services one day - I think there is a Christian message of humility in there somewhere !

32 I met many SAHM and they are often on here stating that they had no choice but to give up work because their family life would suffer.
They SAH because either their DH career took precedence and the man wouldn't do anything CC or domestically or compromise in anay way.
I think its often best for the family as a whole but guess who has to give up work, their pension etc to do it ! CLUE: < not the man>

I am finding it difficult to understand why a sahm would automatically be assumed to be this Martyr type. Can some people not see that just as it's important to look at the benefits of a working mother to herself rather than family or society this is also the same for a self choice of sahm.
I believe that yes, ultimately both woh and sah do this to benefit the family/ society they would hardly do it if it impacted negatively, but whatever your choice you need to be satisfied and happy with this choice.
Or have I read the above wrongly? I do that sometimes? I have a small IQ

Actually, sometimes it is the man - not all men take LotusLight's condescending attitude to SAH parenthood. Clearly such men have been brainwashed into thinking they are downtrodden women.

LotusLight - it doesn't have to be a competition, you know... I think you'd find people would be more interested in your rainforest if you hadn't gone out of your way to denigrate their footwashing and step polishing, first! You have a spectacular capacity to be offensive to those you clearly consider to be your inferiors, then when confronted state you think life is all about mental health and happiness, making it painfully transparent that you do not believe that anyone actually can be mentally well, happy and a worthwhile human being if they don't share your attitude to life and that they are silly, weak, empty-headed little idiots to disagree with you.