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.

My mum was a sahm and we had a charmed childhood but I never realised how hard it was on her until she started a career of her own and her confidence blossomed. She actively encouraged me to have a career and combine it with children. My younger siblings are much more confident than I was, I think they benefitted from her increased confidence and from not being so tied to her apron strings

I am sooooo bloody grateful that I worked part time since my boy was little. It enabled me to escape an emotionally abusive relationship and keep us in our family home

I think the housing thing is a scandal but both parents working is not a bad thing. In my area of work at least most parents work flexibly around their children so even if the parents work full time, or nearly full time, the children are not in full time childcare. (For instance, stbxh works full time and I work 32 hours a week but the children only do 2.5 days in childcare, the rest is with a parent

Mixed feelings on this.

In my more cynical moments I think it benefits the banks who can now base mortgages on affordability. And of course you gotta keep those proles as busy as possible, or they might start asking awkward questions like "why are all political parties asset stripping the wealth of the country into the pockets of a tiny minority?"

But then...I look back at my mother, who is a very intelligent person, and yet like most of her generation where I grew up, was expected to pop out some babies and stay chained to the house. The problem with encouraging one parent to stay home is that it's generally the woman, and what if she wants a career too?

I now live in Sweden, which has probably the best solution - great parental leave, encouraged to share it equally. Very low cost childcare (about a hundred quid a month) which is seen as being best for kids - workers are degree educated and kindergarten here is very different to the UK. Both parents can work, contribute to the tax base and knowledge economy.

YANBU!
Many famines agree with you. Politicians seem to have a blind spot concerning this desire of the majority.

Families! Not famines!

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

It isn't the "same" lifestyle. Owning a car was rare, owing two cars rarer still. Foreign holidays were rare, with exchange control greatly complicating matters. Wine was an obscure luxury. Some people had fridges. University takeup was around 8% (pick your date).

And there's a hell of a lot of difference between choosing not to work and being required to resign upon marriage, which was still the case in some occupations, and quotas being imposed for training and entering some professions. The sex discrimination act was passed 40 years ago this year.

You mix in high company then scarlett. Only 15% of earners pay higher rate tax.

Of that, the percentage of those in a part time job must be absolutely miniscule.

Sorry just realised that's pretty much what you're saying.

I identify with your desire, OP. I have been on mat leave for the last 10 months and, this time, have really enjoyed the slower pace of life. The children are happy and the house is functioning. No crazy stress to get to work & childminder for 7.30/8am.

But, I don't know if it's 'enough' to fulfil me beyond a few years. Then what do you do after taking time out from your career? It's a conundrum.

Hardtoknow- it's certainly true that while some of our grandmothers may have not been in paid employment, they were certainly working their socks off doing all the cooking, cleaning, laundry etc without any mod cons. I believe there's also very clear evidence that even though these women may not have had paid work, they didn't have any more hands on contact with their children than many of today's parents have. They were too busy with the daily grind of living to be playing with their kids, chatting
Or reading to them or going to playgroups (which are a recent phenomenon anyway)
A lot of this is sentimental.... Looking back at the past as if it were some golden era which provided the blueprint of how childhood 'ought' to be.

I do however think that those talking about how it is materialism / a need for a luxurious lifestyle that makes both parents work must not live in the south east!!! It's nearly half a million for a 2 bed council house where my sister lives and its 300k here for something similar! And we would love to move but jobs/ other circumstances prevent it

Rather naive to compare our supermarket bought appliance led convenience food assisted "scratch" cooking to the same thing in previous generations.

Only 58 percent of uk homes had a fridge in 1970 for example.

I suppose these jobs pay well even part time - some of my friends pay higher rate tax still.

Enfin je me rappelai le pis-aller d'une grande princesse à qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.

Yes, working class woman always worked to some form, but that didn't effect house prices because working class people rented long term and never expected to own their home.

Similarly, it was only in the early 70s that womans wages were included in calculations in how much banks would lend a couple. That pushed house prices up massively in a short space of time (it was just as my parents got married and suddenly found they couldn't afford to buy after all).

It's shit, but so was before that if you weren't a married couple with decent incomes - working class people would rent long term, with the limits on security that went with that. Similarly, woman rarely could get mortgages, no matter how good their income was. Deposits were needed, along with having proved record of being sensible with your finances, no other debt and the bank manager would go through your statements and judge your spending habits.

If you could have afforded to buy a house under the 50's/60s rules, chances these days you have a (male) breadwinner the sort of job where you could probably cope on one wage now if you were prepared to live in a smaller house in a poorer area.

Most people didn't own.

YABU. I don't want to be a women living in the 1970s. That would be very very depressing. All the sexism.

And I love love love my work. Would be very sad if I have to give it up. Besides my mum worked full time too and I was born in the 70s.

Just doing the laundry without modern appliances took whole days.

Similarly, it was only in the early 70s that womans wages were included in calculations in how much banks would lend a couple.

And even in the 1980s, the most common formula was something like "three times the higher plus the lower", with the assumption that the woman's income was the lower and would cease upon having children anyway.

Let's not even start on the male to female ratio in universities (as opposed to nursing colleges and teacher training colleges), which was overall close to 70:30 well into the 1980s.

32percent that is a good point too. When I talk to my grandma about raising children an enormous part of her day was housework etc. whereas on my non working days and weekends and I do barely any so I can focus on the children

Similarly, looking through diaries of more affluent relatives in the past and they mainly had nannies doing the child rearing

We are romanticising a past that never existed in large part, and for those it did exist for I am not sure it was all that great in reality! I would rather do my career part time with the kids in an amazing nursery and days off for lots of fun than spend my days boiling laundry etc with bored children under my feet!

We are romanticising a past that never existed in large part

Hint: Swallows and Amazons isn't documentary fiction.

Rather naive to compare our supermarket bought appliance led convenience food assisted "scratch" cooking to the same thing in previous generations.

Rather presumptious to think I haven't bought the veg and a few chicken breasts from the store down the road, and chopped it and fried it up in a couple of minutes. I'm pretty sure my grand parents did the same in their day, and it didn't take them 10 hours to do it then either.

MIL said she put DH in the garden to do housework. He was also born in the 70s. I think it's definitely right they spent a lot of time doing housework back then. Modern appliances really helps. I needed only 20-30min 3 days a week to keep up with all the housework at home. (The 3 days where DD1 was at preschool and DD2 asleep).

Long term renting was much more common for past generations. My grandparents rented the same house all their married life until the early 80s when my widowed gran downsized as she couldn't afford the rent on her own. The housing act that brought in ASTs changed the rental market and right to buy reduced available social housing.

Well chicken was an expensive luxury until relatively recently workingdilemma. Much more likely to have been a stew made from a cheaper cut of meat.

Extremely naive to thik you could have afforded the chicken in the first place! It wasn't the equivalent of four breasts for a fiver from Asda then. Food costs were much much higher although housing was lower, and th range of food was much more limited.

Honestly, you are now being ridiculous.

Salaries have not risen with prices, entire industries have been outsourced overseas (a profitable but deeply cynical move) or become obsolete. It does seem as though many people are desperately swimming against a relentless current.

OTOH, as others have pointed out, women have always worked. Both of my grandmothers worked throughout their lives, though their options were limited. I am deeply grateful for the opportunities I have been able to take advantage of in terms of education and career which my grandmothers couldn't even dream of. And I think it is better for society as a whole that women currently pursue various careers that used to be exclusively the province of men.

You know one person working doesn't have to mean it's the man...

We currently have dh at home looking after ds (2). Dd (5) is at the school which we live practically next door to so we have a fairly laid back morning each day as there's no rush for the kids in the morning. Then during the day dh is with ds - recently got an allotment, so often there or at toddler groups etc :) I teach, and have responsibility, so earn enough for us to live at a reasonable standard in our area. Plus with dh at home we can grow stuff and shop around. We only run one car and we don't have holidays abroad. As a teacher I also get the holidays to spend with my family.

It's only been like this for a couple of years, beforehand we were both working full time (dh as a chef so lots of late nights and weekends). It is so much better now in so many ways. And financially we've found we actually don't need to be spending what we were in order to be happy. Sometimes you get so used to the treadmill that you don't really see where the money's going or where you could save.