Queen of Swords

I can't speak for the American family, but if both my parents hadn't worked, they would never have been able to send me and my brother to college. No such thing as a free education here, or even student loans from the government, so we would not have "survived quite well".

Moreover, my mother's working meant that she was more independent and could afford her own car, so she drove me to the library every day when my dad was too busy to do so. So she brought up two children, took care of a house and had a job. Knowing her, I think she would have been bored if she had only one or two of those things to do, instead of all three.

Daleth

How strikingly naive of you. Don't bother to consider the implications or anything. I'm extremely happy you are not making financial decisions for me.

You know, you're a really all-or-nothing kind of a guy. I didn't say everybody work at home full time. I suggested employers make it possible for people to do more work at home... that is to say give the employee flexibility to choose whenever possible. When it's not possible, provide on-site childcare which gives the parent the opportunity to spend more time with their kid during the day and also means the parents can spot-check the quality of the care being given.

Why the hell am I typing this? fatherphil, we can't go back to the past. We can try to improve things for the future taking into account the reality of the present. The structure of the past has worn away for many reasons, not the least of which being that it sucked for a lot of people.

Done talking about this now. I type up a well thought out post and explain my reasoning, and you return with, "I'm sure we'd all bounce back and be jolly like the good old days." It's embarrassing me to keep making the effort.

fatherphil

dal, how did we survive when child labor laws were enacted? the free economy has a way of adjusting and resources tend to flow where needed all by themselves.

qos, the education system is a commodity like anything else. if college tuition and a car is more important than staying home with a toddler than so be it. i'm sure you could even convince the child of that fact as you drop him off 5 days a week at the day care center. but what we call survival really comes at a high price. i guess that's the curse of having such a high standard of living.

cheetah

What you'e saying is actually true, fatherphil. The thing that I think is infuriating to daleth and is certainly annoying to me is that during the adjustment period, there will be turmoil and that deserves discussion. Particularly since the adjustment period could be decades long. We COULD tough it out and have malnutrition and low higher education and saturation of smoe job markets and lack in others, but that may not be the best way to do it. Your cavaliere way of dismissing valid concerns in advocating to obtain an idealistic way of life makes this discussion worthless. If you don't want to acknowledge those issues, don't bother talking about how we should implement that way of life.

fatherphil

i'll acknowledge the hardships (and i have) if you'll acknowledge the benifits. usually things of great importance come about with great difficulty. i know first hand the things one must do without in order to have one parent stay at home. food and shelter have not been part of that list.

cheetah

You call that acknowledging the hardships? Very cavaliere of you. I will acknowledge that there are benefits, GREAT benefits, to having the choice of a one income family. However, the discussion of how to accomplish that should be a lot deeper than "it'll adjust."

And just because lack of food and shelter have not been on your list doesn't mean they wouldn't be on other people's. They would. And we might expect crime rates and homelessness to result and that would affect you, even if you and yours weren't the malnourished, homeless ones.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by fatherphil
qos, the education system is a commodity like anything else. if college tuition and a car is more important than staying home with a toddler than so be it.

If the toddler is taken care of by another person for a few hours, what's the harm in it? Whereas if my mother had stayed at home, we'd probably be looking at lives of unemployment and poverty. But hey, people who disapprove of working mothers would be satisfied. So be it.

i'm sure you could even convince the child of that fact as you drop him off 5 days a week at the day care center.

Who said anything about a day care center? I don't think we had those in either of the countries I grew up in.

but what we call survival really comes at a high price. i guess that's the curse of having such a high standard of living.

The glass appears to be half empty for you. I'm glad my parents considered it to be half full, and that they didn't bewail their inability to be with us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I think that partly because they expected us to be all right with the alternative arrangement, we were quite all right, and I certainly appreciate my college education and the role model my working mother set me.

Daleth

That's a comparison borne of ignorance. A federal child labor law was enacted in 1916, iirc, and many children were the worse off for it because nothing was done at the same time to balance out the loss of income to the family. Families didn't send their kids to work because they were selfish and wanted vacation homes by the lake. They sent kids to work because they were in desperate conditions, so those kids who suffered as a result of child labor starved as a result of outlawing it. The law was declared unconstitution by the SCOTUS in 1922.

ETA: I doubt that the economy at large was affected much by the loss of child labor 1916-9122 because only the poorest segment of society relied on child labor to survive (not all that much money taken out of circulation). A much wider range of families now rely on 2 parents' incomes and a much greater loss in family income would result.

In 1938, as a direct result of the depression, the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted. The FLSA created the child labor restrictions we know today. At the same time it provided for the minimum wage, overtime compensation, and other employee entitlements, so now the parents in these desperate families made more money and didn't need to rely on child labor. There was no mass loss of income as a result of this law, which renders it incomparable to the situation we were discussing.

First hand for YOU. Not everyone is as fortunate as you. The average net financial wealth (net worth excluding home equity) for African-Americans is around $200. $0 for Hispanics. It's quite a bit higher for whites, but we have people like Bill Gates screwing with the bell curve. Something near 20% of Americans have a net worth (including home equity) that is less than $0. Welcome to America.

Somebody PM me and tell me to stop, please. This willful ignorance of human suffering is making my eye twitch.

Ab_Normal

dang it! there was an article in the local newspaper a few weeks ago talking about a nationwide study of children's poverty. I know it mentioned the percentage of two parent, one income families that were below the poverty line, and it was a number that I found striking, but I can't for the life of me find it! (The local paper's online archives suck.) any suggestions, webmeisters? I thought throwing some numbers into the conversation might be helpful.

yguy

In great part, that suffering has been a product of the very same rationale by which traditional marriage has been undermined.

Where the hell were all the furrowed brows, where was all the circumspection and wringing of hands in solemn consideration of the consequences when people started deciding back in the 60's that marriage was meaningless? Could the fact that so many blacks are impoverished possibly have to do with the fact that they were targets of social experimentation which demoralized them to the point that their illegitimacy rate is said to be around 90%?