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.

Btw - do you polish your step? Or pay someone else to do it? Or are you a slattern?

Clearly, step polishing is a vital hygiene measure. I'm surprised we aren't all dead, given the unhygienic steps I see EVERYWHERE. Particularly in North London.

pps clearly you are a hopeless slattern. Fancy finding kitchen grease below your hob that has been there for years.

Clearly you can't do and have it all, after all. So you have decided to cut back on the bits you consider to be unnecessary or "beneath" you (or beneath your hob for 30 years!...).

I can see why you no longer have a dh, LotusLight - you appear to see every relationship as a financial transaction. Did your relationship fail because your dh didn't do enough housework for your liking? Or didn't give you enough sex? Or was he annoying and kept wanting sex after you'd had enough kids, already, and didn't understand that you were not maintaining him just so that he could pester you for sex all the time?...

I think I would worry about my dh's sanity if he polished our front step. I suspect he would, likewise, worry about mine if I did it. Still, each to his own.

This might interest you, LotusLight, for next time you are out at work on the front step.
[http://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete/polishing/canall.htm]

That's better...
www.concretenetwork.com/concrete/polishing/canall.htm

Why is it OK for your son to be a postman? Is this because he is male and he has a free choice, whereas if you are a woman you only do 'lowly' things because you were conditioned or your mother did it?
As a SAHM the whole day is free to do as you want - you can certainly finish by 2.30 or 3 everyday, you can get to bed early, you can spend whole days in the sun and you can go for long walks etc. I fail to see the difference.
You have a most peculiar view of SAHMs, Lotus! They may be doing OU, running a business, volunteering, concentrating on painting, writing a book etc You do appear to be stuck in the dark ages!

I have never polished my step- it doesn't need it. I have lived here 5 yrs without polishing the letterbox!

Women own 1% of the world's wealth and earn only a third of its revenue. The more women who stay at home the harder it will ever be to ensure women have equality. Every woman at home makes that harder to achieve. The personal is political.

I had to unscrew part of the electric job so I doubt anyone does that very often to clean under it. I left the gas part that we use as there is a good chance the man won't turn up. The front step? It's just paving slabs.

Maybe they think they have the better option. I just want enough to be comfortable and not worry about bills. I don't want wealth. Power and status doesn't' interest me.
It would be nice to have more women in top positions- if they want it.

I don't even have a step

It's more of a ledge...does that count?

I clean the house for about 30 minutes a day, my house is neat and tidy because I am...if I worked more than I do my house would still be neat and tidy

I really resent it when people infer that all I do is clean the house all day, it makes me a bit stabby...and not in a cute mumsnet way, more of a "give me a second to get the largest knife I can" way

Weirdly being compared to a prostitute makes me less angry as I just think that anyone who says stuff like that has serious issues and I feel a bit sorry for them

LotusLight - you seem to think like a sexist man and appear to want as many women as possible to become like sexist men. Why is it desirable to live in a world where more human beings are intent on demeaning others and going on rather unpleasant power trips, where they demand people do pointless activities to keep them under the thumb, instead of appreciating and valuing them? Earning money is only one way of contributing to the family and to society - a man-made way of doing it. It didn't exist before we invented it.

Rufus - no step?! That's the cheat's way out of polishing it. I'm sure they have pretend step kits in Robert Dyas for those who feel they may be missing out.

Posting purely because the idea of this thread finishing with 666 replies gives me the heebeejeebies.

So you'll be baking the rest of the time Rufus?

I've been baking all day today. Wish I'd gone for a swim to cool down!

rabbit earning money or more likely bartering goods or services has been the means of survival for centuries.
Children as young as 4 or 5 would be taught to knit or sew as a means of boosting the whole families income.
Leisure/ not working to provide in any capacity, is a very modern phenomenon.

merry

No baking...though it is cake club on Friday, at a local cafe, with my husbands money (wink)

Why am I not winking (wink)

Aahhh

Blithering idiot

namechangefortoday543 - baking, cleaning, farming your strip of land, supervising your children so that they don't kill themselves, teaching them how to bake, clean, farm and help around the homestead (in fact, teaching them to knit or sew...) - they've all also been the unpaid means of survival for centuries. You can't just ponce around writing up legal contracts for people for money and live on that - someone has to do the rest of the work to keep you alive. Or have you conveniently forgotten that? Paid and unpaid work go hand in hand. If one part of a family chooses the paid bit and one part the unpaid bit, the only difference is, that's their choice these days. It isn't work and non-work.

By the way, leisure is not a modern phenomenon - board games over a thousand years old have been found; flutes started their journey to the modern instrument in the stone age; dancing and singing have been enjoyed purely for the fun of it (and not just as a means of keeping the slaves going...) for thousands of years; alcohol and all its related stupidity has also been around for a very long time. If human beings weren't obsessed with leisure and pleasure, we wouldn't be able to make money out of each other. It's because we are frivolous that we invented money.

And don't even get me started on football... I don't think THAT was originally invented for money. That was invented for fun and leisure and then someone decided to make money out of it.

Also, if you sell a little bit of knitting these days, or swap a jumper you knitted for a casserole, or sell some old clothes on e-bay, or sell your old stuff at a car boot sale, does that mean you aren't a SAHP? How much do you have to earn or barter to count as a WOHP?