Modern life doesn’t work

[DeluluTaylor]

I say this reading thread after thread of people trying to work around nigh impossible situations.
I am sitting here with chronic IBS from stress, trying to get the kids out of the door, to a school which can’t meet their need, to go to a job where I’m firefighting as nothing is fit for purpose anymore. Finding care homes for younger and younger people. People who want to work but can’t as they have learning disabilities. Yet in the 20th century an estimated 40-70% of people with LD were employed.
I have 38p in my bank account and all my money goes on paying for a big house that we’re in from 6.30pm 7 the next morning, with a huge garden which none of us have time to do anything in. That I sit in on my own when the kids go to see their father in a bedsit at weekends. Yet there are families down the road with three kids and two parents in one room.

The whole thing is crazy. If you were going to arrive here from another planet and looked at late stage capitalism you would say why do you live like this? Getting in debt to spend two weeks abroad rather than making changes to make the other 50 weeks off the year more bearable.

when you see the cost of childcare, Let's not pretend it's not a choice to have 2 full time working parents at the same time.

People who really struggle financially have to juggle so the children are with 1 parent at all time. It's not great, don't get me wrong, but when 2 adults decide to have a 9 to 5 Monday to Friday kind of job, each, it's a choice.

As Ellen Goodman wrote some years ago: “Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for—in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”

I don't know what the solution is. We don't have a car ourselves and our biggest expenses are the mortgage, council tax and energy bills, so we couldn't save a huge amount by being less materialistic. And the UK as a whole needs to improve its rundown public services, although that's easier said than done when the Treasury is short of money.

I think that's a bit of a simplistic take on that subject. As PPs have pointed out, women fall behind in their careers and are financially disadvantaged in a way that's difficult to come back from if they take time out to be SAHM. And running any sort of average household in those circumstances requires two incomes.

This leads us towards only the "rich" having children, and declines in birth rates requiring imported labour or potentially state incentives to reproduce which still negatively impact women. All of which have various and often less than ideal consequences.

But the brain and body have evolved for working on daily survival tasks. It may not be logical to you but it's still true.

Because as bad as capitalism is it’s better than the alternatives.

you’re in a big house and maybe you should downsize. A house is meant to be a home it shouldn’t be adding more stress to your life. Even if you got a smaller garden you’ll feel less pressured.

the problem with modern life, especially for women, is the lies we’re told. You can have it all, a family & career, whilst making working moms feel bad when they can’t attend every school play, the lack sympathy of employers when the kids are sick and just want their mom, The importance of a 2 parent family is down played, the picture perfect life, the stupid gift boxes parents are under pressure to buy not just for birthday or Christmas’s but now Easter and Valentine’s Day. It’s ridiculous, when was getting a chocolate egg not deemed enough. You can blame capitalism for the emergence of such flamboyant spending but where’s the collective responsibility of having our own mind. If more parents refused to interact with it publicly the less parents who would buy into it. Sorry I’ve gone on a rant there myself 🤣

Try being autistic and having burnout/cfs and then try to navigate this life. I have a buffer of a year or two and then I'm finished if I don't recover.

Is it actually enrichment though? Kids have access to hobbies and activities like never before but then you have families rushing from work to pick kids up to do dancing, gymnastics, sports etc every other night of the week. Meals grabbed on the go, homework rushed because you can’t not do it. Everyone knackered, no time to just be a bit bored at home.

Adults getting up at 6.00 to go to the gym or fit in a run before getting kids up for school and it all starts over again. We don’t need every minute of our day filled with activity, no matter how purposeful or enriching it might be.

l think that I am saying we have access to enrichment and recreation that we didn't have before and you are saying you think some people choose to do too much of it and are therefore massively overstretched. Our life (as in in my house) isn't frenetic in the way you describe.

I completely agree with this. The Right to Buy is a huge factor in the housing problem. I've been on a list for 7 years...in the meantime I'm paying extortionate rent to a private landlord so can't afford to save anything.

I'm so sorry you are suffering. I have a lovely friend who is autistic and every day is a battle for her. X

Mine isn’t either but then there are the thoughts of whether your kids are doing enough, are they having opportunities to learn new skills, are they social enough, do they have places where they excel outside of school. School timetables are so crowded there isn’t the place for doing music, choir, drama etc that doesn’t end in an exam. It doesn’t feel enriching.

Copying stuff out by hand because computers have been magically unexisted is not a daily survival task.

This is one of the reasons why I roll my eyes when people talk about how traumatised today’s children are about the Covid lockdowns.
The reality is that MOST children had access to the internet, phones, gaming systems, friends via phones/social media platforms, Netflix, TV, online lessons etc. Yes there were things they missed out on but it wasn’t exactly a WW situation.
God help the kids of today if a war akin to WW1 or 2 broke out tomorrow.

💯 this is why they are known (rightly or wrongly) as the snowflake generation.

I can see huge changes afoot not just economically but attitude related in the near future.

I think if you are unhappy, you need to make big changes. But most people are too scared to male huge leaps, in case they fail.

For myself, I was made redundant a few years ago, and it gave me the chance to try to be self employed. I now do less work, and earn a lot more money. Would I have handed in my notice, had I not been pushed? No! I would have been too scared to fail.

My adult DD and her DH decided that they wanted to live in Australia, as the cost of living is cheaper, and they wanted a change. They secured a working holiday visa, booked flights and left. Just like that. No jobs to go to. No place to stay. They landed, checked into a motel, and started looking for jobs and accommodation. They found both within a month. It was an extremely ballsy move, that paid off. But not many people would be so brave. If it was me, I would have lined up all my ducks before moving, but maybe that would be hard from 10,000 miles away? They just jumped on a plane....I mean, when you do that, you have to work it out at the other end, don't you?!

check your privilege.

Just because some kids had a boring but bearable lockdown (mine did) does not mean that all kids locked up have not been severely impacted and are not still suffering from the consequences - for many reasons, and without even mentioning the ones locked up in abusive situations.

it wasn’t exactly a WW situation you realise some kids had a very happy childhood during the war?

Making ridiculous generalisations is never helpful, and never true.

I think we had better start having children and building our manufacturing base again. It looks as if the 'new world order' of globalization, which is causing manifold problems, will fold if not under the Trump's onslaught then via China et al. It is going to be necessary to revert to the nation state with proper borders and a measure of protection for nascent industries against competition from abroad. I am no protectionist, but unfettered free trade is not a panacea, indeed, it is the problem since it outsources wealth creation to somewhere else, which impoverishes us.

I would blame more parents with insane behaviour - see the threads about not allowing a 17 year old to spend a weekend at home alone. That will create young adults completely unprepared for real life.

Not the lockdown.

It's easy for oldies with grand ideas to look down at the kids when it's not their childhood / teenage years that have been impacted.

It's about time we walk away from the lazy parents using the "kids must be bored" as an excuse for their own laziness, and we pretend that the lockdown was not a horrible experience for many people.

I completely agree with this, and the post it was referencing. We don't know how lucky we are, when we compare our lives to the lives of those living through WW1 and WW2. And there are many countries that are at war right now where people have no food and shelter, and people are being massacred on a daily basis. Perspective is needed.

Children who show resilience have strength of character and perseverance. Aren't they admirable skills to be applauded? But instead you call it "privilege' - why?

I do see what you mean. I'm about an hour outside of London, I have an 8 year old and the vibe here with the parents I know is very much a couple of nice hobbies they're really going to enjoy, and teaching them to choose between things so that they're not doing all the things all the time. I think my friends in London tend to do a lot more of the dashing around that you're talking about and I agree that it doesn't actually seem to make anyone very happy.

Tragically my former colleague's 17-year-old daughter took her own life during lockdown. Her parents knew she was depressed, but she had appeared to be coping.

Some people found the restrictions and isolation of lockdown easier to cope with than others. I found it relatively easy as I'm an introvert who prefers working from home, but I don't see that as resilience. I was lucky, I suppose.

Agree. People couldn't afford bills and rent and run a car on one wage.

Because having the basic resources like IT and internet access to persevere through the lockdowns as described was, for many, a privilege they did not enjoy.

There are two families I know through a voluntary programme. When the lockdowns hit they did not have computers. They lost out on weeks of education until the scheme which directed old office equipment to schools could deliver them clapped out old laptops with 2-3 hours battery life at most, and even then the kids had to ride around on the Metrolink to use the wifi because - you guessed it - no internet at home and the libraries were all shut.

@bathsmat and @Netcurtainnelly you say that people can't manage these days on one salary but there are more single parent households than ever before. 1 in 4 families in the UK nowadays are headed by a single parent (figure taken from Gingerbread). How are they all managing?