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Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 18:43:38 -0600
From: Betsy Barnum
Message-ID: <351AF63A.25DD@polaristel.net>
Organization: Great River Earth Institute
References:
To: positive-futures@igc.org
Subject: the One Income household
Byrnes, Patricia J. wrote:
> 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
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