Received: from the-word-garden (NewPrague-7.dialup.means.net [206.9.108.10]); Thu, 26 Mar 1998 18:44:55 -0600 (CST) Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 18:43:38 -0600 From: Betsy BarnumMessage-ID: <351AF63A.25DD@polaristel.net> Organization: Great River Earth Institute References: To: positive-futures@igc.org
> What I am trying to get at is what has changed in our society
> that put people in the position of having to work to "pay off debts"
> instead of staying home with the kids. How did all of the generations
> before us manage to have a parent at home most of the time?
Here's one reason, from Rachel's Environment Weekly a month or two back:
In the U.S., between 1972 and 1995, real wages for a full-time worker declined 19% in inflation-adjusted dollars. In 1996, income for men with full-time jobs fell another 0.9%.
It's a very different economy today than it was when people in their 30s and 40s and 50s -- even those in their 20s -- were growing up. In the 1950s, when I was a child, a single income was plenty to support a family. Not only is that not necessarily true now, but more and more jobs pay less than they used to, in real dollars, so that even a person holding down one and a half jobs of this sort can't bring in enough to support a family. This is not the only reason for two parents to work, but it is a significant one, contrary to the popular description of the "yuppie" couples who want more and more luxuries (they exist, too, but I think the working poor who are in this situation, and have little choice about whether to work or not, are often ignored). Another post: how VS applies/doesn't apply to people who have little choice in the economy.
> Is it
> because the people of this country have gotten away from living within
> their means and use credit cards like they are cash? Or they go through
> a period of credit card spending and then decide to have a child and
> can't stay home with her because they have to have a second income to
> pay off debts or keep up with the Jones's? (conspicuous consumption?)
> Is it due to a total shift in values??
I doubt if most people who are in a comfortable place economically would identify their motivation for needing two incomes as "keeping up with the Joneses." The truth is, as you said in another post, they just haven't ever thought to question the American Dream, especially as it has evolved in the past few decades. They are lulled into *not* thinking about it by all the techniques that consumer culture and the global economy can muster -- propaganda about consumerism from TV, movies, ads in every conceivable location and medium; distraction by the demands of getting, operating and maintaining all the labor-saving devices we have come to accept as standard; indoctrination by an education system that rewards passivity and discourages critical thinking; scare tactics about scarcity, the spectre of illness and old age, crime and other things people need to defend against by having more money and stuff; and out-and-out deception, the big lies about "progress" and "growth" and "rising standard of living" and "technology" and so on and so on.
It's my opinion that a lot of people are asleep; I also perceive that a lot of them are starting to wake up (viz. the Yearning for Balance study done by the Merck Family Foundation a couple years ago). For folks who have been passive receptacles for consumer culture's messages all their lives, waking up to the falseness and destructiveness of those messages can be pretty scary and difficult to do without support, and, of course, our society offers zero support for this kind of rising awareness. I think it's important to be non-judgmental of other people's values if possible, by recognizing that they have probably accepted those values blindly, without even asking themselves if these are values they want to hold.
From another angle, though, I don't think it's all about money. For women who saw their mothers' talents, yearnings and individuality stifled into the limited role of "homemaker" in the 50s and 60s, being able to seek a career both for self-expression and to be valued for "what they are" is the most obvious way to avoid that trap. I won't go into a history or a critique of feminism in this regard, but I think working *can* satisfy a legitimate desire for mothers who want to define themselves as human beings with skills and contributions to make in the world aside from their biological role as mothers. Such women are probably better mothers for being out in the work world than they would be staying at home.
Related to that, again due to the way Western culture especially in the U.S. has evolved, caring for children alone in the nuclear family is very difficult and, some would say, unnatural. Even the strongest personalities sometimes crumble, or come close, from the relentless day-in, day-out responsibility for young children and a home, sometimes not seeing another adult all day until the spouse returns from work too tired to engage in any kind of conversation. I don't think it should be at all surprising that women who have a choice, economically, would want to escape from this often dreary existence. This is not the way "nature" intended child-rearing to take place, IMHO. As Hillary said, "it takes a village." That's just not how child-rearing is set up in this culture.
I chose to stay home with my sons in their early years, and I felt some days that I barely survived. When my husband decided he didn't enjoy his job anymore, we switched roles, and he became a "house-husband" or "stay-at-home dad" while I went out and got a full-time job. We did this for about four years, until we had to have an emergency roof job on our house for $12,000, and had to take out a second mortgage to pay for it (it wasn't just a new roof -- it was new trusses, beams, the whole structure). My job, as a community newspaper editor, paid nowhere near enough to cover the additional several hundred dollars a month for this loan payment, so Dennis went to work again at a job he hated. (We also didn't have insurance because my employer's program was ludicrously expensive, and my salary was increasingly inadequate even aside from the cost of the roof.)
As I see it, the reasons for the two-income family are complex, and it is important not to blame the people making this choice for somehow having wrong values. Believe me, as both a stay-at-home mom and a working professional who had to leave young children at home and in day care, I have been on both sides of this sometimes emotional issue, and I think it's important that neither side think they have command of the higher moral ground.
The key is a transformation of people's attitudes toward money and toward the Earth. Somehow, they need to see the hollowness of the messages they've been accepting, and to connect their own unhappiness to those very messages, those false pictures theu've had in their heads of what it means to be a human being and live on this jewel-like planet. Whatever each of us is doing -- living as centered a life as we can and thereby generating positive energy for change and a model for others to see, talking to friends and neighbors, writing letters to the editor or calling on talk shows, working in *any way* to spread the message of slowing down and thinking about what we're doing -- is helping to move the change. I think, as I said, a lot of folks are starting to make these connections, and as more and more do so, the cultural transformation that is already under way will grow stronger and more visible.
Betsy
--
Betsy Barnum
http://www.oocities.org/RainForest/1624/
************************************** There are those who are trying to set fire to the world. We are in danger. There is time only to work slowly, There is no time not to love. --Deena Metzger
![]() |
![]() |
This is: http://www.oocities.org/Athens/Delphi/3142/BBfamily.html