AIBU to think one adult should be able to support a family with a full time job?

[Kendodd]

Talking about a normal size family, two/three children. Not talking about riches either, just an ordinary place to live and everyone well fed and clothed, all needs covered without state benefits. Any full time job as well, not just some fancy high paid thing.
I know for lots of people working really hard in full time jobs supporting their family just isn't possible on the money.

YANBU - they should be able to support a family.
YABU - they shouldn't be able to have a home and children on an unskilled job.

@topwings

Why is putting women (let's face it, it would be the woman) back into the kitchen and not being able to earn their own money being presented as an ideal life?

I have no idea. Education staff inspire children to study hard and that they can achieve anything in life so we certainly don’t want the message to be men work and women don’t. Whilst some families may model that, many others won’t want it to be the normal message sent out,

I would point out that I made no mention of a partner in my op.

I don't agree with tax credits subsidising low wages. I think employers should pay a living wage

But I wouldn't expect one modest earner to be able to support four dependants

@AlexaShutUp - by your logic a single parent on an average wouldn't be able to raise children with out the help of benefits.

I most certainly want my DDs partner to be able to support her should she chose not to work, I also would like her to be able to support her partner should they chose not to work.
In an ideal world quality child care would be easily available and house prices so low that one person could provide for a couple of children without support, or one of a couple should be able not to work or work part time.

I think it's somewhat of a myth that women didn't work at all in the 50s/60s/70s/80s, but it was financially possible for the family to survive with only one parent working for a few years. Funnily enough they would have accepted they couldn't afford a holiday or other luxuries, but it was doable.

I wish we could, as we are hoping to start a family soon and the cost of childcare is terrifying me!! I'm a planner, but sometimes maybe it would benefit me more to stop planning and just jump in 😂 anyway, I digress.

We wouldn't be able to live at home with one child on one salary. Our basics of:

Mortgage
C tax
House insurance
Internet
Water
Gas and Electric
Pet insurance
Basic TV subscription
Loan for Carpets (nearly paid)
Loan for Sofa (nearly paid)
Loan for Car (paying back a family member)
Combined credit card costs

All come to £1,200.

Then add in our respective life insurances (my husband's is expensive as he does a dangerous job), cheap phone bills and separate car insurance, plus other work insurances my husband has to have that would then increase to:

£1,500.

We budget £280 a month for food

£1,780.

We individually at the moment budget £140 each for petrol, if I wasn't commuting 40 miles a day, five days a week I could probably knock that down to £60 a month.

£1980.

Then we'd have to factor in the ridiculous estate maintenance charges that our new build estate attracts, about £100 a year.

My husband brings home approximately £2,500 a month.

Childcare where we are could be up to £700 based on a 3day week working 8-5.

We'd already be in debt 😭😭😭

I bring home approximately £2,100 a month working full time so for us it wouldn't be feasible until kiddo gets their free childcare hours.

I was born in the 1970s. Both of my parents had to work to pay the bills and we had to be very frugal. If we had a holiday it was camping.

At one point my Dad did a weekend window cleaning round to supplement his wages from London Transport and my mum had three jobs at one point. She had a school hours job and then worked evenings in the bingo hall and weekends in a pub. They had to to do the childcare in shifts and pay a teenager to babysit during the hour or so of crossover when they were both at work.

This wasn't an unusual way of life on the council estate/working class town I lived in. Everyone worked and there weren't many SAHPs.

I think my childhood experience had a lot to do with me becoming a SAHM - I didn't want the constant stress and worry that my parents had. I always saw work as something you had to do to pay the bills and nothing else.

I think that many couples who claim they can't would if they made different choices in regards to their lifestyle. People expectations of what is normal were luxuries for many in the 70s and 80s. When I was growing up, families fell under 4 categories. Those whose dad earn a lot, mum at home and very nice life. Those wit dad working only, very low income and at least 5 siblings. They were the ones with old,dirty clothes etc... Then you had the ones who had a very nice lifestyle, holidays abroad, nice home, activities etc... and had both parents working. Then you had those with mum at home, dad earning okish, 1 or 2 siblings, and they lived in smaller homes, not as nice neighbourhood, shared bedrooms, houses needed renovation and decoration. Some didn't have a TV or only black and white, some mums had to go to wash clothes at the automaton because they didn't have a washing machine. Food was cheap and not very exciting. They didn't do much activities, never went out, and holidays were once every few years camping trips. They were happy with that life, they didn't consider the alternative because they believed that having a sahp was essential.

Nowadays, families expect so much more. A nice new home, large enough for all kids to have their bedroom, nice area, at least one car, often two, even where there is public transport. Kids in very nice clothes, house very nicely decorated with a lot of nice furnishings. New appliances, annual holidays, if possible abroad.

These were all luxuries for one working family in the past. Should it be now be a due? I personally don't think so. I still consider these luxuries.

@rottd

Nice idea, but as well as house prices making this difficult or impossible, you're comparing with a time where lifestyles were very basic compared with today.

Few children had their own bedroom, most families had no car or possibly one old car, eating out was very rare, far fewer treats and expensive days out like theme parks, no technology, almost no-one went abroad on holiday, far fewer clothes etc etc.

When was this? I was born in the 80s in London & loads of my peers had one parent working, holidays abroad became accessible with cheap airlines, things like mcdonald's & pizza hut were popular etc

I was born in the 50s, my mother worked, all the mothers I knew worked. I had my first child in the 70s, I worked, all the mothers I knew worked. My grandmother worked in the 20s and 30s when she had children, her mother worked in the 1890 and 1900s.

Obviously some people lived on one wage, but that's true now.

With 3 children, no. Perhaps with 1 child

I was trying to fit my family into one of the 4 groups posted by @vivainsomnia but couldn’t really.

I was born in the late 70s with two older brothers. My dad worked, but it wasn’t a highly paid job-we didn’t ever go abroad or to restaurants, but had a week away on holiday each year-usually somewhere in the middle of nowhere! We had a decent house and a bedroom each, but it wasn’t fancy. We had a telly, no cheap clothes, my parents decorated nicely themselves and had a lovely garden. My dad had a company car and late in the 80s when my mum got a part time job, had another crappy car for her and then us to practise learning in.

I can’t believe people are still banging on about washing machines.
You know washing machines are cheap these days.
You know that going to the laundrette costs around £30 per week in London.
No poor person could afford to go to a laundrette in this day and age, having a washing machine isn’t luxurious.

When we bought our first house in 1982, the building society would only take my dhs income into account! The mortgage was 3x his income, over 20 years, and we paid a 5% deposit. The interest rate was about 7%.
Now people have combined incomes taken into account, interest rates are very low, and younger people can get mortgages over 30+ years. My DD is paying the same monthly that I paid 10 years ago for a house worth 50% less than hers.

My Nan (born in 1932) and my grandma (born in 1926) both worked in various forms over the years. My grandma was nurse trained and worked as a nurse throughout her life, despite having 5 children. Her husband (my grandad) worked for David Brown's tractors.
My other Grandad was a HGV driver and my Nan did a few different jobs over the years.

I don't think it's necessarily correct that all families used to survive on one wage.

A big part of the issue now is that wages simply haven't kept up with house prices/cost of living generally, so unless a person earns a very good salary, it would be difficult to support a family on one wage.

I think lifestyle is a factor, although not the sole reason for not being able to have a family on one wage. Tech is cheaper and more readily available now that it would have been in the 70s/80s and even early 90s. There is massive variation though. If you want the latest phone on an expensive contract, it will be costly. A more modest phone/contract will be less.

Me and DH both have Samsung Galaxy phones. Both have data/messaging etc. We pay £12 a month for both (not each!). They are not the latest phones but both do what we need.

We don't have loans on cars. Each was saved for and paid outright. We put money away each month so that eventually, when needed, they can be replaced. Both decent cars that are reliable and run well. Not top of the range things though.

We have one child so he has his own room anyway.

We are quite frugal generally. We could spend more than we do but are happy as we are. Obviously, others may not be happy to be that frugal. Each to their own.

@CheddarToldMeTo I don’t get it. Don’t your numbers say with you not working your dh brings in £500 a month spare after your outgoings. Then if you worked, 3 days so approx 1700 a month, and paid 700 childcare, you’d clear another 1k a month after childcare so you’d have 1500 to play with/save/holidays. That sounds like you can easily afford a child??

If it’s an unskilled job then how much is the person you’re talking about going to be on? If it’s minimum wage then I think it would be hard to support a family of two/three kids plus run a house. We sometimes find it hard and we have a joint income of £73k.

@MauveMagnolia

My house cost £6000 in 1970. It was bought by a male teacher and his housewife, wife. A male teacher earned about £1600 (women earned less)

It was sold in 2006 for £570,000. A teacher earned £29,500

Today it is a million. A teacher earns £35,000

One of the by products of most families having 2 working adults is house price inflation.

Yes housing costs are behind a great deal of the financial struggles for young people.

As a graduate first year employee in the public sector I was (just) able to get a mortgage and afford a decent two bedroom flat in a mansion block with gardens, in a decent area of zone 3 in London.

That same job starting salary has gone up approx 3. The price of the flat has gone up 18

Interest rates were higher in the 80s but we had MIRAS to offset interest (double if you were not married at one point).

More social housing is desperately needed. Selling off all the good quality social housing created a cottage industry of hobby landlords and profiteering from first time buyer type properties. The lack of decent social housing combined with lack of security in private rental market results in people feeling pressured to buy when in most of Europe they would live in rented more securely.

All of this is independent of the single earner argument. I don't think women should drop out of the job market and take a massive risk when they do. However when I look at colleagues in Scandinavia and Benelux countries then both parents downsizing jobs to 3 or 4 days a week when children are young I wish it was an affordable option in the UK.

Family Income Supplement was introduced in 1970 to support the working poor. I’m not sure it’s ever been possible for a family of four to live comfortably but frugally on a single unskilled labour/minimum wage income although the current levels of housing cost have definitely made it far more difficult.

I blame Thatcher. Thirty five years on we’re still seeing the impact of right to buy.

[quote Jellycatspyjamas]@Monkeybusinesss I’m not sure why you’re getting stroppy with me, I’m not the only person who cites lifestyle as being part of the issue. The point I was making is that lifestyle was much simpler, with way fewer expectations on what would be considered essential. So if you’re saying should one salary be enough to cover housing, food and essentials you really need to be able define what’s essential, and those goalposts have shifted immeasurably in the last 30 years (when it would be much more usual to have one salary cover a families living costs).[/quote]
Ah yes.
Millennials just need to stop with the avocado on toast to be able to buy a mansion in Notting Hill.

Or we could acknowledge that basic housing costs have inflated massively more than salaries in the last 30-40 yrs, social housing and good quality professional private rental stocks have been denuded and stop pretending that young people's lifestyles are the cause of inflated house prices.

It’s unreasonable to expect that 50% of the adult population could economically inactive and the economy still function the way we want it to. We can’t have it k no it’s ways, half the economic activity means half the lifestyle.

@Kendodd

I don't think it's possible anymore.

I know it's not possible.
The question is whether it should be possible or whether we are ok with it not being possible.

Your question is essentially a piece of string concept. How many children before it becomes reasonable that the second parent should work? Also, of course it is reasonable to expect to have only one parent work with 3 children - like in the 50s. But then you have to expect the same living conditions - outside toilet to most houses, no car, maybe no tv, no fridge, no eating out, absolutely no holidays abroad, most people didn’t go to university. So the question is totally irrelevant to today’s society.

I’m not sure being able to support 3 dependents (1 spouse plus 2 children) on 1 salary is totally necessary for the duration of working life - eg age 21-68. I think that we have a gap in provision of childcare between 0-3 (assuming some people do not get maternity leave due to zero hours contracts) and special needs care and elderly care. I think we also need a better CMS service as well and support for single parents.

We also have huge housing costs due to lack of supply and higher expectations re:space. I think probably it is more practical for more 3 bed low rise flats to be built with shared communal facilities rather than more houses which take up more land. Building at an adequate rate to keep house/flat prices reasonable would be a good start.

Yes I think you’re right Namenic. It’s not really viable to set up a capitalist society for one full time wage earner to support three or more dependents when only a small minority of households will fall into that structure by necessity, normally due to childcare requirements or disability.

I’m not sufficiently qualified to judge whether it’s “better” to support that minority through state aid and leave the rest to the free market (within the constraints of the minimum wage and other employment legislation) but that’s definitely the choice our society has made.

@AlexaShutUp

It's actually quite depressing that so many people want to go back to a life where only one parent works. We know it would be the woman who ended up staying at home in most cases. I honestly don't understand why people aspire to this as some kind of ideal.

My mother's salary wasn't even taken into account when she and my dad applied for their first mortgage. It was considered irrelevant. She did give up work when we were born, because it was considered the done thing, and she was bored and miserable as a SAHP. Her mental health has never recovered. Her biggest regret now is that she wasted her talent and potential.

I really don't want to go back to those times. I don't want my dd's future spouse to earn enough to support her. I want her to be independent and in an equal relationship.

It takes two parents to create a child. Why should only one pay for that child?

This.

We cannot progress to equality if women want to be supported and as a result, fully dependant on someone else.

I think YABU to think that only one adult should WOTH. If that is a choice that any family wants to make, then fine, but obviously part of that decision is a financial sacrifice, long term.

Why is putting women (let's face it, it would be the woman) back into the kitchen and not being able to earn their own money being presented as an ideal life?

We cannot progress to equality if women want to be supported and as a result, fully dependant on someone else.

I didn’t get this from the OP. I don’t think that she is advocating for a return to the stay at home wife model.

I took it to mean, if you have a household of two adults and two children, and both of the adults are working in minimum wage jobs, and the children are small, and childcare is unaffordable, should that family expect to be able to cope on one of the adults’ wages for a time?

To which the answer should be yes. It only works if you have social housing available, and targeted benefits though. Both of those things identify and deal with need, which I’m not sure that you could achieve through salary.

For example, you couldn’t expect employers to pay person A more than person B for the same job because A had a non-working partner and small children and B had only one or neither of those things. Although that is pretty much what used to happen before wage equality was legislated, with the B group being women!

I think there has been a major shift towards having it all: nice holidays, nice car, new furnishings and white goods, definitely not secondhand, eating out and takeaways - when I was small there were perhaps 3-4 chippies locally, and that was it. 4-5 restaurants one was Italian, 1 Chinese 1 new one was Indian - you had a birthday meal in one of those, pubs didn't do food. Crisps and pork scratchings were a new thing.
I worked 3-4 jobs a week to earn/save a 10% deposit. Sat on the floor , ate on my lap, no TV for months after moving in. Carpeted the bedroom first then the lounge.

it's all so very very different now.