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.

In fact, even worse for the upper classes in particular, in the past, not only did upper class women have more leisure inflicted on them than they desired, they also had their children taken away from them to be cared for by servants. They really were treated like pointless trinkets once they'd produced the heir and the spare.

So, even being allowed and able to look after your own children is a massive privilege that we shouldn't want to lose too easily...

rabbit Im only expressing what I experienced - yes I quoted the 1970s because I remembered it and saw my own mothers unhappiness.
I did state somewhere up thread that after the war there was a policy of pushing SAHM as the ideal to get women out of the jobs they had been doing (very well) so that the jobs were available for men returning from the war.
It depends as to your viewpoint about SAH as to whether you think SAH to look after your own DC is a privilege or not !
My DM saw it as a trap, she was miserable and would have been a much happier person and a better mother if she had been allowed to WOH!

My dm was allowed to work out of home and I was a child in the 1970s! What is it that your dm wasn't allowed to do, namechange? And who was stopping her? Was it societal expectation, or a genuine lack of any work, paid or unpaid, whatsoever outside her own home? Was she genuinely not allowed to work out of the home, or was she not interested in the actual work opportunities available to women at that time, or were the jobs available not sufficiently high paying to make them financially viable to her?

She was not allowed to study for a professional career ( I don't want to out myself)
She actually had a place and my father refused to allow her to go, her place was in the home

I'm not surprised she was unhappy, then, namechange! for her. It's not an argument to remove a man's and woman's freedom to choose an arrangement that works for them both for the purposes of a wider political agenda, however. I guess she married quite young, if she had children before seeking to study for a professional career? Or was she wanting to requalify? It doesn't sound as though she would necessarily have been happier to go out of the home to do a non-professional job instead of staying at home, though. Or do you think she would have been, but just wasn't allowed to do anything outside the home? Would she have been allowed to study something that wasn't leading to employment? Or was she really expected to do nothing much at all?

In other words, was the biggest problem hopes and ambitions frustrated, or genuine boredom?

Or a belief that her role was silly and pointless?

I think it was knowing that I didn't have to stay at home when my children were small, or, God forbid, for the rest of my life, that made me happy to choose to do it. Choice is a wonderful thing. If I had felt I had to give up work, I suspect I would have fought against that, because I hate nothing more than to feel controlled by others.

(happy to choose to stay at home when they were small, that is!)

Sorry I have been out - its roasting !

It was frustration at not being allowed to have the career that she wanted and the utter boredom of house and small children
She was the worlds worst housewife and cook - meals were banged onto the table !

yes choice is a wonderful thing if you have it.

I agree with Rabbit as usual.
It is the choice that matters.
It is wrong to be forced into one or the other and can't be good for a person's mental health.
Just as I would have hated a dh who wouldn't let me work, I'd also hate one who expected me to work.
I don't understand why couples make it so difficult for themselves, say what you want and live accordingly. If your o/h truly loves you they would want you to be happy.

It is the choice that matters. I wouldn't like to have stayed at home because I had to, but I had the choice and that is completely different. Each family should do what suits them and it would be impossible to have something that suited every family, people are so different.

The problem is though that sometimes circumstances dictate whether you have that choice or not.

what does the "couples making it difficult for themselves" mean morethan ??

Most of the couples I know where both work full time could live on one wage with a few adjustments. Not necessarily minor adjustments, but possible. They seem very stressed and wish they spent more time with the children. I guess it's because it's such a big leap when you aren't used to it, but I feel they make it difficult for themselves by choosing to be more financially secure, and have more things. They don't seem to get a lot out of work. I don't know why one or both of them don't go parttime.

Actually I am very jealous of some of their houses - we are quite short of space. It's worth it though to have the lifestyle that we do.

There are always choices namechange I appreciate that they aren't always easy. But there are few families who couldn't live on 1 or 1.5 wages, if they really really wanted to. In fact friends I have on a lower wage have to watch the number of hours the second person does, so they don't end up worse off...

I do think it works better if the SAHP does some part time work. DH does 10-16hrs weekly - it keeps him employable should I be paralysed in a car accident or some such horrific fate... (we are optimistic enough to think we might stay together) and it reminds him of how much he hates working and never wants to go back full time . It also give me days looking after the children on my own so I appreciate the work he does in the house. I am rubbish on my working days though, hopefully he doesn't spend hours on Dadsnet moaning about it. We are both slatterns so don't care if our steps aren't polished and that helps too

The choices always seem to be living in poverty ( been there) or moving far away from friends and family.

I recently discovered that we lived in abject poverty as DC because my father was hiding money and depriving us of even a basic standard of living.
I cannot imagine moving up north, away from my family, particularly as we are facing dementia as a diagnosis atm in our family.
What sort of choice is that ???

My choices have served me well.

Blimey, namechange - why was your father hiding money?! Did your parents remain married? I think I'd find it difficult to trust people if I'd been treated like that.

Because he could I guess!

Probably best I don't go into it on here.

namechange

I suppose I mean arguing about who does what and when, sometimes putting their own ideal before their partners and not being happy to compromise.
For e.g the stories we hear of men not allowing their wives to work etc.
i know I have said this before but as a choice to be a sahm my dh would have moved heaven and earth to work out a way in which we both could have kept careers, we discussed a nanny, him cutting back and having set hours and me having set hours and sharing the care of dc.
Some parents tend not to discuss this, just drift along and then wait for something to go wrong before addressing any compromise.
I just think some couples make it difficult when it can be so easy.

My mum wasn't allowed to work, but my dad supported her as soon as she could. She wanted to work so desperately so kept herself busy with clubs, societies, charity work during the evening and dad would take over after tea.

I think the most successful relationships are built on mutual respect, integrity and a similar attitude to risk and money! As I'm the one with more time to do it, I tend to be the one who researches how and in whose name our money should be saved and also largely how it should be spent, and having similar outlooks on life, dh tends to agree with me. We both see any money earned as our money, not his and hers, and it starts its life in a joint account. We both know where it goes from there.

I would agree with that. Our money is in a joint account and I never thought of it as being DH's money because he was the one out earning it. He couldn't have done that without me and so it was equally mine.

It was to challenge the claim in the OP that it was all perfect on the past when every family had a SAHM- it wasn't and this was widespread in the 60s/70s.

I think the use of antidepressants is widespread now but Im not sure there is a link to working status??

I had to look up alcohol intake - women are drinking more but much less than men.
The over 55s -65 in men and 44-55 in women drink more than any other group and actually younger women ( more likely to have young DC) drink the least of any group.
Affluence and independence seem to be the biggest indicators amongst women.