To think it's a bit sad that both people nowadays need to work to afford a household?

[Lowef]

I know this isn't a popular opinion on MN but was thinking how rubbish it is that today mostly both parents need to be working to be able to afford the basics of food, clothing, rent. mortgage etc for the family without being on the breadline.

I have really fond memories of playing with my mum in the garden planting pots, watching her cook whilst i sat on the worktop. She'd collect us from school everyday and on fridays she'd have baked some warm muffins, sweet buns which were still warm and fresh from the oven. She'd give some to my friends too. She taught me so many things like sewing, cooking, gardening (she was very green fingered), growing veg. She spent alot of time with us kids and i look back at those days really fondly.

In comparison I am nothing like this with my children - I just don't seem to have the time and energy for the things she did. I can't bake cupcakes in time for the kids school pick up as they're in the after school club. Dinner is a quick whisk up whatever I have in the freezer / fridge , I'm too frazzled and tired for spending lots of time with the kids. DH is the same.

In an an ideal world i would love to be a SAHM and have more energy and time for my family and myself too instead of just rushing through life. The years are going by so fast and most of my energy and life is taken up by work. The children are growing up so quickly.

Not sure if anyone else feels the same too or if ill get an MN roasting!

I think it was inevitable when the equal pay act came in that wages would go down.

I don’t think anyone could have foreseen that for a lot of the families with 2 incomes that their salaries would have been reduced so much that they had to apply for benefits to make up the shortfall.
If we are going to be protesting about anything I think it should be about paying people a living wage.

Growing up I would say the latch key kids made up of maybe 4 or 5 children in my street. Paid f/t childcare just wasn’t heard of.
Even at 5 years old children would walk home from school, usually in a group with other parents and classmates and then let themselves into their homes or play out on the streets till a parent came home.
There was one boy who lived in our street. His mum had died or left and his dad was a long distance lorry driver. His dad would leave money for food and off he would go in his lorry and the boy was expected to look after his self for the 10 days he was away.
The talk of the street was they still had the Christmas decorations up in July.
Nobody seem to bat an eyelid that a young boy was left for 10 days at a time.
Occasionally people would get baby sitters in but mostly parents put their children to bed and then went out. Or just leave children playing in the street with a jam sandwich for the day and go off to work or shopping in town.
There was a lot of what would be called neglect now. SS would have had a field day in our street alone.
Mostly other parents looked out for their children and any other child in the street.

We've always been able to live off one salary - if necessary with cut backs.

Since we had children we have both had turns of being SAHP - me 2 years worth of maternity leave and him one year through choice. We have also both done a bit of part time. And we are 13 months and counting now of wfh.

But mostly we've worked full-time through choice. It suits us. Its what is right for our family. We are happy with the choices we have made.

This is equality it's what feminism has demanded for years. As we move away from traditional female roles within the household because banks will now lend against the woman's income so now we need two incomes to afford a house and looser credit to push prices up. It's a cost of equality but probably worth it for the women it's liberated.

@Bythemillpond I think it was inevitable when the equal pay act came in that wages would go down

Would you mind sharing your source for this as I have never come across this before and can find no evidence to support it. In fact I believe the opposite to be true. Wages continued to rise with the introduction of the Equal Pay Act and then later with the introduction of the Minimum Wage. It took until the recession of the late 00s to see wages fall.

Attached is a graph illustrating the trend in average wage rises which includes the post 1970 period. (Source Bank of England and ONS.)

@Whoarethewho

This is equality it's what feminism has demanded for years. As we move away from traditional female roles within the household because banks will now lend against the woman's income so now we need two incomes to afford a house and looser credit to push prices up. It's a cost of equality but probably worth it for the women it's liberated.

Banks have lent against women’s income for years. The issue is they now take a couple’s salary into account, not specifically woman’s. Gay men are in exactly the same situation with no pesky feminists around ruining it for everyone.

@Pumperthepumper I've taken a cursory look at the figures - you certainly have a point with regards to insecure employment, housing costs and wage stagnation. Despite what I said about median incomes about 20% of people in poverty is still too high (although it is not 'most' people).

The fact remains however that the poverty rate of children in single income families have always been more than that of those in double-income families - as shown here:

@Snookie00 Totally agree. A child's well-being and future prospects are most impacted by the quality of parenting (whether by working or SAH parents), the socio-economic status of the parents and their attitudes to education...it's got nothing to do with whether your mum stayed home with you at age 2 to bake cakes.

OnlyFoolsnMothers
I absolutley agree about women being shafted I can say this as a nanny mother’s help in my younger days . Women carry the mental load of the household running and their job and caring for aging parents and some whilst dealing with the menopause honestly I am in absolute admiration but I feel having it all was a joke of a strapline because the workplace still is not shaped to accomodate having a family life as reality and it should be acknowledged and intergrated at least for some work from at home may be helping??

" The children of mothers who return to work full time in the years before they start school have slower emotional development and score less well in reading and maths tests, according to a study published today by the Institute for Social and Economic Research."

www.theguardian.com/money/2003/nov/14/workandcareers

[quote ChochoCrazyCat]@Snookie00 Totally agree. A child's well-being and future prospects are most impacted by the quality of parenting (whether by working or SAH parents), the socio-economic status of the parents and their attitudes to education...it's got nothing to do with whether your mum stayed home with you at age 2 to bake cakes. [/quote]
And this is exactly what the research shows

sorry pressed enter too quickly!

www.ifs.org.uk/publications/9347

So the fact remains that for the poor a single salary has never been enough to survive on in the first place. Also these studies don't account for all the under the table work done by supposedly non-working women such as taking in people's laundry etc.

My point is while poverty rates etc are rising - if you're a lower earner relative to the rest of the country you have never had the opportunity to properly keep your head above water. Professions like teaching etc in 'those days' were the height of prestige and not as ordinary as they are today. They would not have been the working class.

In many (most?) parts of the country it is totally feasible for a parent to opt out of working. What it does mean is that they won’t get to enjoy the same standard of living and housing as couples who both work. All this moaning about two salaries being taken into account for mortgages. Well yes - if you as a family are richer then you’ll get to live a more affluent lifestyle.

It’s such a retrograde step for women to want to give up the hard won financial freedoms that we’ve got so some of us can opt out of the workplace to play house for years on end. Its tougher on single parents (of which I was one for several years) as they have no choice and are having to do it all themselves financially but this whole thread reads as a moan by women harking after the 1950s/60s so called glory years without acknowledging that most women in those days had considerably less options and were way more vulnerable to financial and other abuse as they were stuck at home with no financial freedoms. If you want to step back in time to some mythical time when women were content with play dough and washing then knock yourself out but don’t expect other women to sacrifice our independence to help you do it.

Wow Snookie what a judgmental horror you are.

@Norked apart from the fact that the article doesn't like to the actual study - there's no link to the actual study. I've tried searching Google scholar etc but can't find it

Also it says that this study runs counter to other studies that show no impact

@Norked

Wow Snookie what a judgmental horror you are.

Norked. I couldn’t care less how you or other mums chose to live your life. But moaning about the obvious impacts of your choices (less money because 50% of the family is economically inactive) and then justify it by saying that children of working parents are going to suffer by not having their mum on hand every minute of every day should definitely be called out for the nonsense that it is.

[quote Norked]www.theguardian.com/money/2003/nov/14/workandcareers[/quote]
www.tehrantimes.com/news/224436/Working-mothers-do-not-harm-their-children-study-finds

This is more recent

@proopher

To be honest I I think that many could live on one salary but see what they could afford if both worked and want that lifestyle instead of the single income one. They wouldn't always be on the breadline, though of course that is the situation for some.

Or they both want to work? There's an attitude here that of course all parents (by which they mean mothers) want to be at home full-time but they're forced into working by financial necessity. We could afford for one of us not to work (though it would mean not being able to give our children a lot of things I value) but neither of us wants to give up our career. Us both working means we could both cut down to 4 days, which seems like a much, much better option for us than one of us working full-time and the other not at all.

You can usually find a survey or research to back any point of view!

If people don’t work then, unless of private independent means, they don’t have as much. You have to cut your cloth according to your means.

I work, I bring in the only income in my one adult household, I work slightly less than full-time hours with a WFH day even before Covid. A choice so I could help my teens while bringing in an income.

When they were younger I worked full time. One had a reading age that was four or more years ahead. The other was dyslexic. Same environment. Individuals don’t tend to fit in with stereotypes.

@Pumperthepumper I’ve posted articles throughout the thread that show how houseprices have outstripped wages, and how we’re now closer to the poverty levels of the early 1900s that kickstarted the welfare state than ever before. Loads of figures in both articles.

House prices are, on the whole, ridiculously high in this country but across the country they vary a great deal.

I have family in Essex where a 3 bed smallish terraced house with a postage stamp garden is around £340,000. I now live in the East Midlands in a nice village where a bigger 3 bed semi with a 100 ft garden is around £110,000.

House prices where I am have not really gone up in years and years if I look at prices on Rightmove. There are even cheaper areas fairly close which are nice.

Rents also are much much cheaper - around £500 for a 3 bed semi as opposed to around £1,100 for a 3 bed terrace in Essex.

@Norked You can find a study to support any viewpoint. There's no one conclusive study to prove beyond reasonable doubt that being either a SAHP or working parent is better for children.
Anecdotally, not one of the people I know, including myself, who had full time working parents have had our development affected. My mum went back to work when I was 1, DH's when he was 6 weeks old (which is far too soon IMO but she would've had her reasons). We were both A grade students and now have careers in intellectual fields. We both have good relationships with our parents.
It's fine to be a SAHM, it's also fine to work full time.

I have 4 children and have always worked full time apart from a year of maternity leave. So they all had me exclusively from 0-1. 1-2 they went to the best nursery I could find (reputation, inspections, previous experience) which of course was the most expensive and then apart from the last one I was off on the next maternity leave from about 3-4. At school they went to a childminder in early years and then after school clubs after that (which they actively wanted to go to, because they were fun). I feel zero guilt and have zero concerns about them. They are happy, well balanced children with no issues who do well academically. They have no behavioural issues. Everything is about them and we work to give them a secure environment to live in and plenty of experiences and the opportunity to see other countries. Even when at work I would be constantly prioritising them - often spending lunchtimes researching things for them, ordering things they needed etc. now with the youngest ones I check their homework online while they're still at school so I can help them in the evening, if they need it. It's much easier now days with technology. Because I kept working I was senior enough by the time the younger ones were in EY to work from home much of the time and was often able to pick them up from school. I have missed maybe 1 sports day in 15 years. I've been to every school play and every music concert.

I don't doubt most good SAHP do exactly they same but there is zero difference in their children and mine in terms of attainment or happiness and to try and find research to show that children are damaged by a few hours of childcare from 1-5 is simply laughable. It's not those children that live in poverty. It's not those children that drop out of school. It's not those children who become 3rd generation unemployed and take on their parents council housing. There is good and bad parenting in all areas of life - I'd say living with an alcoholic parent has got to be up there with one of the worse things for a child and I know unemployed alcoholics and professional alcoholics, but to say that children of parents who work are routinely disadvantaged? Nah, doesn't hold water and doesn't work to justify the perfectly valid (though not for me) choice of being a SAHP.

I remember many of these experiences too. But I got them from both parents, as they both worked.

Today, we have much greater expectations of comfort and home life, so we need to earn more to be able to afford them. How many of us would be prepared to give these up?

I'm nearly 60 and my mother was a teacher. Doesn't seem odd to me.