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.

If you want the option of a SAHP - it does come with compromises in lifestyle.

However given the huge cost housing - huge deposit and mortgage repayment/rents needed in SE and London part of that lifestyle compromise is either you find a pocket of cheaper housing costs/rent or you don't live in that area or both work.

We can't live near our parents as there is no work for us there - well no work that we want to do in our areas of interest. It's a similar thing if want SAHP- live where that is still an option.

What most people want is more p/t, flexible hours, home working from employers or more give and take and perhaps a more understanding of gaps - not just for parents, for people dealing with elderly relatives or who have hobbies or things they want to go off and do for a few years. I wonder if this will come in as more and more workers have to juggle not just child but elderly relative commitments

Plus it would be nice if the Government actually took a long hard look at housing - sorted more social housing, sorter more protection for renting in private sector and got more houses build generally.

However do agree it's an unintended consequence of greater opportunity for women to continue working - being a SHAM becomes less affordable or socially acceptable.

Greater opportunity is fantastic - I think the fight for affordable but high quality childcare and more flexi working for all still needs fighting.

Not chicken, but potatoes (sorry OP)... When I was a kid in the 1970s I remember my mother spending ages washing and peeling the potatoes every evening. These days it's easy to get baby new potatoes and just fling them in a pot. Of course, in the 1970s my mother could buy potatoes either at the greengrocer across the road from her very part time secretarial job, or from the greengrocer three minutes' walk from our front door. The hours of her life she must have spent peeling potatoes...

Sorry, I don't have any real solutions, apart from a half-baked idea that maybe property owners should have to pay tax on the value of their property. I can see that idea raising a whole new set of problems though.

Both my mum and Nan worked f/t - I don't think it's so unusual for working class families with low paid menial jobs.

I saw earning a good wage as my way out. I made the link very early on that money empowers people and financial independence provides choices. Regardless of what my husband earned, I would never surrender my earning power. I saw too many of my mother's contemporaries trapped in awful situations.

So yes, my husband and I earn well (not stratospheric) and we earn more than we need. But I like the freedom having money brings. I've been a sahm for a short time and worked part time/full time. I've been skint. It's miserable.

I'm now in a full time professional job which I'm good at so can negotiate for flexibility to have that work/life balance. I find it fairly easy to fit everything in - particularly now my children are growing older and have their own interests. I have to be organised of course. And it helps that Im not really bothered about show home standard tidiness.

But this whole "modern life is harder than its ever been" seems very indulgent to me. I remember all of my friends parents had similar jobs to mine, so some mums would be out the house at 4am, doing 3 hrs cleaning then back for the kids then doing another 3 hrs cleaning after 6pm, or working night shifts in factories, or working in the corner shop from 5-10pm etc. That strikes me as hard. Much harder than the life my family have now.

I'm not sure that a one income family is a utopia in this age either.

To be a higher rate tax payer you don't actually have to earn a lot in the sense that two earners on a fairly low wage will be better off financially, because together they will be taxed less and will have two tax free allowances rather than just one.

A higher rate tax payer / minimum wage combination is not one that gives freedom. It ties one partner into carrying all the financial burden and stress that goes with that, whilst the minimum wage earner may well find themselves in a situation where working will cost more than child care. It becomes only worthwhile to return to work if their are career prospects. Plus if the single earner looses their job, then you are much more at risk financially than a couple with more moderate incomes.

Push it a little higher though not much and the high earner looses CB whilst those on a moderate income keep theirs.

How you address this, I'm not sure. There are arguments for and against sharing tax free allowances for example. And simply raising the minimum wage without acknowledging that this will cut jobs and cripple small businesses in particular is short sighted. Working tax credits are a concept that is frankly laughable and ridiculous in practice yet remove them and you have an issue on your hands.

But ultimately I do think it comes down to society and its expectations rather than the cost of living. Even a lot of food we would see as 'essential' is in fact a luxury or a commodity. Its not the holidays or the tvs or the clothes or the meal out or the car or two cars. Its the bags of crisps or the ready meals or the fizzy drinks or the bar of chocolate or the occasional bottle of beer and wine that our parents or grandparents didn't have. We have got sucked into branding and brand loyalty. We take for granted that we all have central heating and moan about the cost of rising fuel bills. My parents grew up without it, and I remember them having to install it into our house when we bought it in 1984. It does all add up and it is about pennies becoming pounds. My Dad, born in the early 50s, describes ice on the inside of the windows and emptying the ashes from the fireplace in the morning as a child.

I think if people lived a 1950s lifestyle then fewer would need a second income. Even with high housing costs. They would simply save a lot more a lot quicker. Its our culture of freely available credit and instant purchases that really undermines the way we live. People don't save up to buy something and don't know how to, yet generations before had no option but to. Yet we blame the banks without taking responsibility for our own financial management. We take the attitude that they wouldn't give it to us if we couldn't afford it. That's not right any more than the banks were right. Its a joint blame and I think we need to wake up and realise that.

There's been two BBC programmes recently that have sort of made me realise that we don't a) really appreciate how we spend our money and b) just how much our culture and expectations have changed in a short amount of time. They were the above mentioned Back In Time For Dinner and Eat Well For Less. Both of which are worth watching and reflecting on.

I don't believe there has ever been a utopia as suggested. Just swings and roundabouts and really, we are much better off than we were. Our standard of living and life expectancy are the real indicators of that.

As for the OP and BU... I think there's been a few comments that have screamed they don't know they are born, making moral lifestyle choices that others my not be able to even think about and just generally not appreciating the lifestyle they do have rather than focusing on the negatives about it.

We are the " me " generation . We want it all , driven by advertising , magazines , tv , neighbours and basically completely unrealistic expectations.

Our children are suffering and we have to ask why there are unprecedented numbers of teens presenting with psychological problems . Sweden are leading the way here and is direct result of children being farmed out in pre school years .
Government don't want this promoted for obvious reasons .

All posters here have commented on taking a step back from full time work
How less stressed their families are . These little people don't ask to be born so if we don't think we can 'manage' on one or one and a bit incomes perhaps we shouldn't have children . Probably help solve the obesity problem too if a parent was at home a lot more .

When I got off the merrygoround we certainly had a lot less money but it's only then you find out how much is spent on childcare / help ,ready made meals , we just stopped the overseas holidays , got second hand cars , used charity shops for children's clothes etc . Everyone so much happier and I don't regret it at all - we all live so long now there's time to get back into work , start up your own business etc .

Red tooth brush ,

You' ve nailed it . Well said

What all this boils down to OP, is life costs money. Most people have a choice. Work and earn money. Work less and earn less money. No one has the right to a "respectable lifestyle" without earning the money to support it. To suggest otherwise is just absurd.

As for the PP who suggested property owners are taxed on the value of their property - we are!!! It's called Stamp Duty.

I don't want to live a 1950s lifestyle. I don't want to be a little housewife dependent on a man and treated as being less than a person by society because I don't have a willy. My goodness, it wasn't that long since all women had got the vote (1928?). I want to be able to travel overseas, pay for my son to do language courses, be a member of an athletics club or other activities he wants to do and eat in nice restaurants.

We still have a long way to go with equality but we've come a long way. And we've come a long way with technology too, so we do have washing machines, fridges etc and can do the supermarket shopping online, which frees up time to spend on other more enjoyable things.

The people who think that it was all lovely and you spent 24 hours with your kids doing crafts and having a wonderful time - well it wasn't like that. They went off and played with other kids and you did back-breaking manual work in the house like the washing, the cleaning, queuing for food (remember there was still rationing well into the 1950s). A Utopia without social problems it was not.

As for blaming the banks - well yes I do, because other than my mortgage I live within my means. I don't take any loans, we are a one-car family and bought the car from savings, and I don't use credit cards. I don't buy things unless I have the money to buy them, it would never occur to me to take out a loan. I earn fairly well so I can save, but it would be just as easy to spend all the money on fripperies and max out the credit cards, which we don't do.

As for the PP who suggested property owners are taxed on the value of their property - we are!!! It's called Stamp Duty.

Only when you sell it.

I don't want my baby to be placed into an institution (nursery) and receive 1/3 care. I would like my baby to receive one to one care and from the people that love him the most.

"All posters here have commented on taking a step back from full time work
How less stressed their families are . These little people don't ask to be born so if we don't think we can 'manage' on one or one and a bit incomes perhaps we shouldn't have children . Probably help solve the obesity problem too if a parent was at home a lot more . "

Charming. Both DP and I work full time, we're busy but happy, our children are happy, and neither of them are obese. But hey, those working parents, eh? Neglecting their children that they shouldn't have had in the first place and making them fat.

We could actually live on one of our incomes, but we don't want to.

"I knew the comments about the damage of working parents/mothers would soon get thrown in..."

Yes, it's very tiresome. Why have children if they're going to be raised by cruel strangers in child prisons? If you really loved your children you'd learn to live on less/work all night so you could be with them all day. Children of working mothers are fat. Yawn yawn.

(I find berating of stay at home parents just as tedious and unproductive, fwiw)

Nurseries aren't institutions ffs!

No, Athena, it is exactly the same as sending them to a cruel orphanarium. Beatings are mandatory.

These little people don't ask to be born so if we don't think we can 'manage' on one or one and a bit incomes perhaps we shouldn't have children

Our income has varied wildly since being parents. Job changes, redundancy, moves dictated by work, pay cuts to get experience, the out going childcare costs, buying house wiping out our savings unexpected costs and bad luck wiping our the rest, plus cost of living rises all affect income and not in ways that we could have predicted.

Obviously it should be a consolidation when planning DC but life happens.

Round here most two parent families do mixture of two incomes, pt for one, part time for two, working round each other hours - evenings, nights or work form home or home self employed flex business - selling/child-minding - some manage the elusive school hour jobs. It's a mixture of needing and wanting to as well. Things aren't static they often move over the years between different work patterns. However we are not in the SE.

Though having two incomes and using Childcare is obviously valid choices - should have made that clearer.

I never thought I'd want to stay home with my DC - after having them we decided we wanted that for a while. Others I know found it drove them mad and were to their surprise desperate to get back to work and their DC thrived in their chosen childcare.

Staying home does come with a price that isn't always immediately obvious. You expect the loss of income, hit to pension, the added pressure on the wage earner and you think you get that it will impact your career choices it's often not till you try going back that it really hits - plus you've got a DP/DH who is used to you dealing with children and house stuff and that takes readjustments.

I think the actual change is that middle class people are far more likely to generate their household income from a salary than they were fifty years ago. Before that, they generated their income from what we'd now call 'small business'.

Before salary earning became the norm, people either worked on farms or were small traders. Back in the pre-internet, pre-motor car days, all goods and services had to be bought locally, so you had a far wider group of people owning shops or providing their own services directly. Paid work for an employer was for people who only had their labour to offer and not skills, goods or assets.

So income generation was a family affair. Wife would mind the shop while husband baked the bread and son went out on a bike to deliver. Wife would make cheese or cream while husband tended the cows. Wife would do the books while husband wrote the wills or traded the stocks.

Children were part of this economic unit - they were expected to be an extra pair of hands as soon as they were old enough and eventually take over the business and support the parents in their old age.

A whole family working together to earn an income has been the norm for centuries.

What's different now is that only one person can contract with an employer for a salary. If the wife wants/ needs to make a contribution, she has to find separate salaried employment. Children are basically completely unproductive. Economically the wife isn't making a contribution by staying home and bringing up the children because the children won't contribute anything to the family's income generation (or at least, not for many years) and won't be expected to support their parents.

I think we're being a bit blinkered and privileged by assuming that women and children have always been supported by other people's income and should always continue to be so.

soverylucky
A debate about the need for two earners and was this something that ever existed and something we should return to and then someone just throws in the comment about institutions with no link to the debate at all.

I thought that.

A whole family working together to earn an income has been the norm for centuries.

Historically true.

Plus point made earlier by a poster about childcare being needed more now - my parents and DH were latch key kids at young ages - now you'd be paying for childcare till end of primary - and then probably be worrying about sorting something till mid teens.

In our society children cost more for longer.

Charming. Both DP and I work full time, we're busy but happy, our children are happy, and neither of them are obese. But hey, those working parents, eh? Neglecting their children that they shouldn't have had in the first place and making them fat.

indeed. What happens if both partners like their work? Both DP and I work in jobs we like.

Also, a Harvard study backs up the idea that a working mom is good for kids.

I'm a SAHM. We get by & have enough from DH's salary that we can pay the mortgage/bills & not have to budget too tightly for food. We can also afford to have the odd takeaway or day out somewhere cheap-ish. We don't have any gadgets bar our low-spec phones & a laptop we got on sale. No TV, no foreign holidays we go camping in the UK once a year, a car we bought with some inheritance.

I consider myself incredibly lucky to be in a position where I don't have to work & hate the societal expectation that I should be getting a job probably about as much as those who wanted to work resented the expectation to stay at home before the "norm" changed. I'm asked pretty regularly what I used to do pre-DC & when I'm planning to get another job. My DC are 3 & 2yo. I'm dreading the looks I'll get once they're primary age & not only am I not working but I'll be HEing them too. People are already making comments about how I could go out to work if I sent them to school at the mere suggestion of our plan.

Whatever the societal norms are there will always be those who would be happiest doing the complete opposite. What we really need is a society where anyone can choose to stay at home or to work without judgement or worry about paying the bills. I doubt we'll ever reach that point though because the government will always be out to make money & people as a whole, not every individual will always be inherently judgemental of those who make choices that they don't understand.

YABU
Dual income households are not a new phenomena.

Single person households are the fastest growing element of society.

Almost 1 in 4 children live in single adult households today. In 1960 this figure was less than 1 in 10.
www.familyfacts.org/charts/135/more-than-one-in-four-children-live-in-a-single-parent-home

Many second earners only earn enough to cover childcare costs.

YANBU to point out that housing market distortions and subsidies and tax and benefit policies may be adversely influencing lifestyle choices.

I don't know if it's possible to generalize about this. In that I think there's a bit of a class divide and that the law of diminishing marginal utility needs to be taken into account.

For families who are scraping by on lower income jobs, two wages are absolutely necessary to be able to afford to live in decent housing and put food on the table. To me, it is outrageous that we have families where both parties are exhausted working flat out, and they can barely afford a treat each week. This cannot be right.

For families who have two much better paid jobs, there is definitely an element of the aspirational in terms of the laws of diminishing marginal utility. Many of those families could survive on one wage, if they accepted a lower (material) standard of living, e.g. a smaller house, one car, state schooling. So it isn't, in fact, necessary for those families to have two wages to have a very high standard of living.