To think our quality of life can’t keep going up forever?

[Wildflowers99]

I saw a post on a thread which said if you have 3 children (for example) you NEED 4 bedrooms, because children sharing a room is unacceptable in terms of their quality of life. And another saying being able to eat things like peppers out of season is essentially a right, and therefore they should have a price cap.

It got me thinking because what we expect as a basic quality of life seems very very different to even 50 years ago. But the problem is with the advent of climate change, cost of living, ageing population and so on, is it realistic for expectations to keep going up? Have we now reached a point where our quality of life will have to plateau or even reverse a bit because the economy and world cannot support what we have come to expect?

Hope that makes sense, I’m a bit zombified after a 5am start with my toddler…

Examples of what I mean:

1. Half my (very middle class I hasten to add - this does not apply to everyone) social circle complain about not being able to afford a house. Virtually all of them have a gifted deposit of for example 30k, but it won’t buy them exactly what they want which is an Insta house/flat in a very trendy area for 400k. They say they ‘can’t afford a house’.
2. The ones who do buy houses rip out perfectly good kitchens and bathrooms which are neutral and under 10 years old to replace them with something expensive and very fashionable. They then moan about the cost of renovations (took one of these calls this week)
3. People complaining about the cost of food who say my low cost and healthy suggestions are ‘slop’ and that they’ll be deficient in minerals if they don’t eat meat and blueberries every day.

The data is very skewed by housing benefit though - this is quite interesting: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/housing-costs-and-income-inequality-uk

Food costs have dropped a lot as a % of wages as well.

childcare is of course very expensive but it is somewhat misleading as it is now very widely used whereas in earlier decades many women wouldn’t have worked outside the home after they were married and gave up work to look after children, or more working class families would work alongside childcare doing things like taking in washing or ironing. Obviously nowadays many families couldn’t afford their mortgage or rent if both parents weren’t working, or the bank wouldn’t lend them enough to buy just on one wage, but that doesn’t change the fact that when women used to give up work to look after children, the family was then living on one wage which still meant they may not have had huge amounts of disposable income. So just because as a family they could afford for the woman to not work (which is now much harder due to housing costs) it doesn’t necessarily mean they had a lot of money leftover for lifestyle spends, and the point OP is making is that we maybe now expect to have a lot of things in that category whereas people didn’t used to be so accustomed to this level of lifestyle spending.

You’re spot on! Status anxiety is a good way of putting it.

Yes it’s a bit of a Daily Express headline but virtually every young woman I see has professional nails, lashes, extensions, tan. It must cost hundreds every month but is seen as routine beauty now, in the way a haircut and DIY nail polish used to.

I 100% agree with this post. I’ve been chatting with my parents (80’s) about their childhood/having a young family recently and the difference in standards is staggering. People were living ten to a room. Kids lived in hand me downs- no new clothes. They remember people with no shoes, barely able to afford to eat. People living in condemned buildings. It was a good year if you could afford a weeks holiday by the sea in the UK. No workers rights, sick pay and only the very beginning of an NHS. No welfare state.

Now everyone expects so much, I definitely don’t think we should be happy purely to survive but we have become very entitled as to what is a basic standard of living.

The only people doing that are influencers though, surely? Nobody in my circle is buying botox and fillers. Some get their nails done but it’s no more expensive than a night out (which I believe younger gens are doing less of).

@BigRenoLittleBudget I can't see where it says younger generations have more money to spend on frivolous things?

I should also add that although some people do spend a lot on childcare, there is now funded childcare for under 3s - during term time 3 days at the childminders for my 1yo costs me £10 a week because she accepts funded hours and only charges consumables. Yes it costs more during the holidays because you can’t use funding then, and yes not everyone can use childminders because XYZ, but it’s not as bad as it used to be.

Phones and clothes are cheaper but that doesn't mean buying a house or having dc is more affordable.

I should also add that although some people do spend a lot on childcare, there is now funded childcare for under 3s - during term time 3 days at the childminders for my 1yo costs me £10 a week because she accepts funded hours and only charges consumables. Yes it costs more during the holidays because you can’t use funding then, and yes not everyone can use childminders because XYZ, but it’s not as bad as it used to be.

Used to be when?

The vast majority of people are not paying £40 a month for 12 days of childcare.

In what way?

My experience is they don’t have more money to spend on frivolous things. But they do spend money on frivolous things. £40 nails would’ve been unthinkable to a person on NMW 50 years ago (adjusting for what would’ve been the equivalent of £40 back then, etc).

Yes it’s a bit of a Daily Express headline but virtually every young woman I see has professional nails, lashes, extensions, tan. It must cost hundreds every month but is seen as routine beauty now, in the way a haircut and DIY nail polish used to.

Equally I hardly see this & live in London..

As a Gen X-er, standards are returning to what they were when I grew up.

The expectations that my tween nieces and nephews have vs what I did are amazingly different. I don't necessarily think that's a good thing either.

My experience is they don’t have more money to spend on frivolous things. But they do spend money on frivolous things. £40 nails would’ve been unthinkable to a person on NMW 50 years ago (adjusting for what would’ve been the equivalent of £40 back then, etc).

But why do you think that nail money wouldn't be spent on other non essentials?

OP I do agree with you.
I was recently reading the Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, which was published in the early 1930s. He did a sort of fact-finding tour of various northern towns to find out how miners and their families lived. In some ways it's difficult to read (patronising style at time; sometimes ends up further dehumanising the very people he's trying to stand up for), but wow was it eye-opening for me. 11 people sharing a single bedroom. Mums sharing one double bed with their daughters and fathers sharing one with their sons as this was the only way to limit the 'risk of incest'. Outdoor toilets sometime shared between more than 30 people. This was less than 100 years ago in our country.
Standards of living have increased so much and I desperately hope those gains won't all be undone, but I also don't see how we can expect things to keep getting better and better. There is a whole world beyond the UK of people whose comparatively very low standards of living and brutal exploitation in the workplace has made our own higher standards of living possible - for instance through the cheap food, clothes and technology they help to supply us with. Will those people be content to endure those standards forever so that we can keep living as we do? Some think technology will remove the need for exploitative labour but I'm deeply cynical about whether this will happen. And whilst I won't deny that we have lots of terrible genuine poverty in the UK today (just because it isn't as bad as the 1930s doesn't detract from the awfulness), the idea that not having a foreign holiday or a separate bedroom for each kid makes you somehow terribly hard-done-by just doesn't wash with me.

Many, many people's quality of life, concerning wellbeing, housing and income inequality actually NEEDS to go up. I would say we can't keep pretending that stress and poverty aren't growing. There is less access to affordable housing than in the past 80 years and a barrier to entry in many things for far too many people.

Whilst I agree that there is an air of entitlement to many who can afford it, largely the newly asset rich working class, there are far more worrying trends to think of.

I think quality of life peaked at least a decade ago and it's currently on a gradual decline.

Living standards peaked in the late 90s/early 00s and are already in decline. It will get worse as wages rise in developing countries and we have to pay more for items like clothing that are made abroad. For the past few decades we've relied heavily on cheap labour from developing countries and people in the west will be in for a rude awakening as their standards rise.

There is a whole world beyond the UK of people whose comparatively very low standards of living and brutal exploitation in the workplace has made our own higher standards of living possible

This is a bloody good point. Those blueberries were probably picked by somebody in Peru earning very little.

I 100% agree with this post. I’ve been chatting with my parents (80’s) about their childhood/having a young family recently and the difference in standards is staggering. People were living ten to a room. Kids lived in hand me downs- no new clothes. They remember people with no shoes, barely able to afford to eat. People living in condemned buildings. It was a good year if you could afford a weeks holiday by the sea in the UK. No workers rights, sick pay and only the very beginning of an NHS. No welfare state.

My parents are younger & grew up fairly poor but they didn't live ten to a room or have no shoes.
Sick pay started in the 80s so 45 years ago. The welfare state in the UK can be traced back to over 100 years ago??

Those advocating multi-generational living (on the basis that it happens in many parts of the world) are overlooking the fact that it happens in more traditional i.e third world non progressive parts of the world.
You can't flourish as an independent adult and live a modern life if you never fly the nest.

Can you please explain what you mean about life expectancy reducing? I haven't heard of this before.

People are informed by their experiences.

A person who shared with a sibling happily will obviously think that sharing is normal, acceptable, pleasant, preferable even.

A person (like me) who had to share a room until they were 16 and never had any personal space and all of my stuff ruined by my sibling finds it unacceptable.

I stopped at two (for many reasons) but as it turns out my children are likely to live at home indefinitely so I’m really glad I did.

If I had them both in a two bedroom house with not enough space we’d be fucked in every way.

My DH and I both work hard and I don’t think expecting to eat out , get my hair done and go on holiday is unreasonable
But we can afford it
The problem seems to me to be that people expect to have things they can’t afford