Why do both parents have to work nowadays?

iguana

eviltwin wrote: »

As much as I love my kids it's no fun being a stay at home parent. It's tiring, lonely and demeaning.

Maybe that's true for you but it's not even close to true for many stay and home parents. I'm a stay at home mum and it's the most fun, rewarding and exhilarating experience of my life to date. And in my past career I worked for NGOs which I found extremely rewarding, surprisingly fun and in my last role occasionally glamorous. But being at home with my son on the worst days is like every best day I ever had working, rolled into one and then multiplied by a thousand. I wake up every morning literally thrilled by the prospect of another 13 hours hanging out with my favourite person and getting to help shape the person he's becoming. It's often tiring, extremely so, but it's the furthest from lonely or demeaning that I can imagine. I belong to the Stay at Home Parents Association Ireland the universal idea that being at home with our kids is some awful sacrifice is not the reality for huge numbers of stay at home parents. For most of us we do it because we genuinely love it and many members are parents who can't afford to stay home but wish they could.

groucho marx

Personal choice maybe, your still allowed have one as far as I know.

eviltwin

iguana wrote: »

Maybe that's true for you but it's not even close to true for many stay and home parents. I'm a stay at home mum and it's the most fun, rewarding and exhilarating experience of my life to date. And in my past career I worked for NGOs which I found extremely rewarding, surprisingly fun and in my last role occasionally glamorous. But being at home with my son on the worst days is like every best day I ever had working, rolled into one and then multiplied by a thousand. I wake up every morning literally thrilled by the prospect of another 13 hours hanging out with my favourite person and getting to help shape the person he's becoming. It's often tiring, extremely so, but it's the furthest from lonely or demeaning that I can imagine. I belong to the Stay at Home Parents Association Ireland the universal idea that being at home with our kids is some awful sacrifice is not the reality for huge numbers of stay at home parents. For most of us we do it because we genuinely love it and many members are parents who can't afford to stay home but wish they could.

Yeah I should have said that was my experience and mine only. I'm just not suited to it and it didn't agree with me and once my kids were in education I needed more. It's unfortunately true though that society doesn't value the role of a sahp, you're often made to feel like you don't work, that you've no real value. You tend to become defined by your role as parent. And government have no interest in doing anything to support a sahp.

oranje

I don't live in Ireland any more but the conditions in Holland are not really different except that there are even fewer single income families here. My wife doesn't work right now so our family is in the minority and from time to time there are critical comments from other people about this.
Anyway, I can understand how some people have no choice. However, it really does depend on how big the larger income is, whether you want to risk being dependent on one person and whether one person is willing to sacrifice their career (again, this is a choice). In our case there are many benefits. My wife is much more flexible and we have no childcare costs. Our children are very involved in gymnastics and top level training means committing anything from 12 to 20 hours in a week. Working parents do manage this as well but some things we did like moving our daughter to a club 30km away might not have been possible.
We are not very materialistic but we have anything you might need. Another thing is that the person still working might need to make choices that sacrifice happiness at the expense of income. Basically earning more can often involve doing things that might not be your childhood dream. You have to be very careful about burning bridges and jumping ship is always loaded with risks. The main financial downside for us is that my wife is not building up a pension so that will be a problem longer term. In Holland the system rewards working in a low income job, not working is penalized. Everybody is treated as an individual in the tax system because most of the historical family friendly elements have been phased out.

Victor

armabelle wrote: »

I don't understand why it is so common that both parents work nowadays? This was not the case before. Surely humankind should be advancing and we should be needing to work less to enjoy the same lifestyle?

We can still get by with one-worker families. We just need to move back to a 1970s standard of living. Walk to school / work. Make your own sandwiches. Get the bus back from the shopping. Holidays (most years) in West Cork.

On my parent's street in the 1970s, most households had one car, some had none. Now most have two or three. For a time in the 1980s, our household had a black and white portable TV and two channels, now there are 4-5 TVs in my parent's house (with fewer people living there) and as many channels as you can shake a stick at.

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Anybody who thinks that mobile phones add to costs relative to the past needs to rethink. I remember my parents in the late 80's and 90's dreading the phone bill, and they were dual income. It could easily exceed 100£ per month depending on how chatty teenagers (and/or my mum) got. We had relatives in the uk.

My phone bill is always €35. And that includes the phone cost but I can sell the phone. Add on Netflix and my uploaded music collection, along with a TV and Bluetooth speakers (the cost of both is < 40% of rent by the way) and that's my entertainment cost. Trivial.

But in an equivalent household today, there will be several phones, each costing €35 (or whatever) per month.

KomradeBishop

The less that goes to workers, the more corporate profits stay with the corporation (essentially, as both parents in households working became prevalent, the more that became a great opportunity for corporations to squeeze workers) - and the more that the cost of living is expanded to eat up workers income, the more a small class of people get to benefit from 'rent seeking' behaviour in the economy (easy gains, granted by holding a privileged or monopoly position in the economy, that soak up workers income - e.g. excessive property prices and rents - to the benefit of rentiers and at the expense of workers).

It doesn't have to be like this, but it just so happens that the economy is run in a way that tips the balance towards rentiers like this. They have significant political power for engaging in rent-seeking activities as well, for maintaining and expanding this power over the rest of society.

You can see evidence for the former (wages vs corporate profits), through seeing that corporations have held onto the profit gains from productivity increases, for a long time:



You can see evidence for the latter, in the way the housing market has been allowed to experience enormous price inflation, both during the boom (due to lax regulation of credit/loans), and now as well (due to inadequate social housing, inadequate infrastructure, among other areas of inadequate policymaking regarding housing).

These are all political choices which affect the distribution of income and wealth - and we're living in a time when workers are being squeezed in this regard.

The economics of this explain how it happens (TLDR squeezed wages, increased lifetime cost of living), but the politics of it explain why (tipping the balance in favour of rentiers, at the cost of everyone else).

armabelle

Slydice wrote: »

I remember watching this video where Elizabeth Warren talks about this topic. Starts 6 mins in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

It's (obviously) stayed with me as a very interesting video of note since (as it was 8 years ago)

Might be of interest to you.

This is the one. I watched the whole thing and there couldn't be a better explanation. The problem is that after watching it, I had more questions than when I started

Mainly: Why should houses be 50% or 100% (for families) more expensive than in the 70's? Also, why does healthcare take such a chunk out of the earnings of families nowadays in the USA. Can't they see there is something wrong with that and change it?

armabelle

Tazz T wrote: »

While wages have risen, the financial demands on the average household have never been greater.

Your post was good... but I still ask why? Why all these new taxes on everything and why such strain on the household... how can human beings ever be happy this way?

Wanderer78

armabelle wrote: »

This is the one. I watched the whole thing and there couldn't be a better explanation. The problem is that after watching it, I had more questions than when I started

Mainly: Why should houses be 50% or 100% (for families) more expensive than in the 70's? Also, why does healthcare take such a chunk out of the earnings of families nowadays in the USA. Can't they see there is something wrong with that and change it?

i think michael hudson explains it very well with the use of things such as orwellian double speak amongst other things, in order to confuse. you will have more questions the more you look into this stuff but you do discover some answers along the way to. you will start to realise its all a big scam though and it seems like to me, nobody really knows what to do about it but there are some good ideas out there

armabelle

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Op it's called debt peonage. I'd highly recommend the work of economists such as Ellen Brown, Bill black, ha-joon Chang and Michael Hudson for more information. It's a scam

We 're also following fundamentally flawed economic theories, mainly neoliberalism and neoclassical theory.

I can believe that somehow.. or rather I can feel it because I am not smart enough to know the inner workings of it but I do want to read more about it.. I am actually reading a ha-joon book called "23 things they don't tell you about capitalism" but it doesnt talk much about this subject. What books can you recommend?

Charles Babbage

Tazz T wrote: »

Taxes and bills.

In the old days, it was simpler. You paid taxes out of your wages. You bills consisted of mortgage/rent, electricity and food - perhaps a home phone.

Today, double and triple taxation and new services and bills equate to another wage. VAT (first appeared in 72), service charges (now even on houses), USC, broadband & TV service, health schemes, childcare, mobile phones, LPT, water charges. carbon tax on bills, excise on alcohol/cigarrettes, customs tax on imported goods... the list is endless and will soon be supplemented by sugar tax. While wages have risen, the financial demands on the average household have never been greater.

The idea that people pay more tax is largely nonsense and suggests that you have a certain agenda rather than a wish to contribute to the debate. Ok the tax is now called LPT or water charges rather than rates, but that doesn't mean that it is more. Broadband etc are items people choose to get and cost no more in real terms than a phone in the 70s. TVs have always cost €400-€500 when salaries were much lower.

The explanation is elsewhere. People enjoying a higher standard of living, holidays abroad etc. and the competition effects caused by other people having two incomes, which has driven up the cost of housing in convenient areas.

Wanderer78

armabelle wrote: »

I can believe that somehow.. or rather I can feel it because I am not smart enough to know the inner workings of it but I do want to read more about it.. I am actually reading a ha-joon book called "23 things they don't tell you about capitalism" but it doesnt talk much about this subject. What books can you recommend?

ha-joon chang is fantastic. i was lucky to see him in action at kilkenomics 2014. id highly recommend going to it in order to further your knowledge on these subject matters. i find it very helpful to understand these issues better by watching such debates. i wouldnt worry about your lack of knowledge on these topics, at least you're trying to understand it. most dont give a damn and dont be bothered trying to figure it out. this is probably the most complicated subject matter ive ever set out to understand but i realise its gonna be a long road. im not a reader myself but as i said earlier, id recommend ha-joons work along with ellen brown, bill black and michael hudson. theyre the only people ive looked into in any great detail so far. they all have a lot of stuff available on the weird wide web including youtube videos. i prefer learning by audio and podcasts, all have plenty of those available online. ellen brown does a regular podcast called 'its our money',

http://itsourmoney.podbean.com/

she can be a little quirky but her podcasts are very interesting. im currently making my way through michael hudsons work. its enough to make you angry but very educational. we ve been had im afraid. bailouts, austerity, the lot!

its great to see people like yourself trying to make an effort in trying to figure all this out. its not easy but is worth it. i just wish some of our politicians would do the same.

armabelle

eviltwin wrote: »

I'm a working parent. I work because I want to. As much as I love my kids it's no fun being a stay at home parent. It's tiring, lonely and demeaning. Working doesn't give me a lot of additional income but it's the best option for me from a mental health point of view.

So being away from your kids is better for your mental health?

armabelle

iguana wrote: »

Maybe that's true for you but it's not even close to true for many stay and home parents. I'm a stay at home mum and it's the most fun, rewarding and exhilarating experience of my life to date. And in my past career I worked for NGOs which I found extremely rewarding, surprisingly fun and in my last role occasionally glamorous. But being at home with my son on the worst days is like every best day I ever had working, rolled into one and then multiplied by a thousand. I wake up every morning literally thrilled by the prospect of another 13 hours hanging out with my favourite person and getting to help shape the person he's becoming. It's often tiring, extremely so, but it's the furthest from lonely or demeaning that I can imagine. I belong to the Stay at Home Parents Association Ireland the universal idea that being at home with our kids is some awful sacrifice is not the reality for huge numbers of stay at home parents. For most of us we do it because we genuinely love it and many members are parents who can't afford to stay home but wish they could.

This is the way it should be..your kids are lucky to have you.

armabelle

KomradeBishop wrote: »

The less that goes to workers, the more corporate profits stay with the corporation (essentially, as both parents in households working became prevalent, the more that became a great opportunity for corporations to squeeze workers) - and the more that the cost of living is expanded to eat up workers income, the more a small class of people get to benefit from 'rent seeking' behaviour in the economy (easy gains, granted by holding a privileged or monopoly position in the economy, that soak up workers income - e.g. excessive property prices and rents - to the benefit of rentiers and at the expense of workers).

It doesn't have to be like this, but it just so happens that the economy is run in a way that tips the balance towards rentiers like this. They have significant political power for engaging in rent-seeking activities as well, for maintaining and expanding this power over the rest of society.

You can see evidence for the former (wages vs corporate profits), through seeing that corporations have held onto the profit gains from productivity increases, for a long time:



You can see evidence for the latter, in the way the housing market has been allowed to experience enormous price inflation, both during the boom (due to lax regulation of credit/loans), and now as well (due to inadequate social housing, inadequate infrastructure, among other areas of inadequate policymaking regarding housing).

These are all political choices which affect the distribution of income and wealth - and we're living in a time when workers are being squeezed in this regard.

The economics of this explain how it happens (TLDR squeezed wages, increased lifetime cost of living), but the politics of it explain why (tipping the balance in favour of rentiers, at the cost of everyone else).

I think if the average people were smart enough to understand all this or want to understand it, there would be a revolution

Eugene Norman

Dial Hard wrote: »

Actually that's not strictly true. Prior to the 20th century there were very few opportunities for women to engage in paid work. They worked on the land, yes, but usually on family farms where they weren't paid for the work. Poultry and pig keeping were the main sources of income for rural women and that wasn't waged work as such.

Domestic service was an option for some but it was always seen as a poor choice in Ireland and very few families could afford it here anyway.

Factory work for women in Ireland was extremely rare before the 20C. The linen trade was pretty much the only one that employed women in numbers worth talking about and they generally worked from home. But even that was in terminal decline well before the Industrial Revolution because the Act of Union in 1800 created a free market between Ireland and Britain and the market was flooded with much cheaper British imports.

Historically, paternalism very much prevented women from engaging in paid work. The ideology of separate spheres dictated that men should provide for their family and women should concern themselves only with the home, and working women were viewed with some alarm. The few jobs that were available to women were basically those that prepared them for marriage e.g. domestic service, governessing.

Mary Cullen and Ciara Breathnach have done a lot of interesting work on the role of women in the pre-20th Irish economy, for anyone who's interested.

You've muddied the waters here by admitting they worked on the land, since that is what the men did too. And women worked in service - in no sense an insignificant number of people worked in service, in the UK it was 30-40% of the population. Peasants and servants make up a lot

The rich didn't work.

It's true that many factories excluded women but not all (some included children) and they often worked in weaving factories. As work became more industrial women left the workspace with little regret I imagine.

Women weren't oppressed in the 19th C and earlier because they didn't work, they were oppressed because they did, like the working class.

Wanderer78

armabelle wrote: »

I think if the average people were smart enough to understand all this or want to understand it, there would be a revolution

ellen brown believes, if everybody knew how money was created, there would be a revolution. its an amazing scam. disturbing really.

screamer

Both parents don't have to work it's amazing how you can survive on one wage when you have to. Both work for a myriad of reasons- money status career feeling important some who'd just hate to be at home. Both parents chose to work.

JanaMay

In the past, in general, people married younger and the older generations died earlier, which often meant that young married couples (especially daughters and their husbands) stayed in the family home. The newly-married daughter looked after the house and elderly parents while the young husband worked. The elderly parents died and the house passed to the new couple.

In addition, girls and women were discouraged from pursuing education. If they got a job in the civil service they left it on marrying. Thankfully, nowadays women have access to the same education as men. They study, qualify and start a career. If they take time out for a few years after having children, they might find themselves back at the bottom rung of the career ladder. They might then realise that sending children to school and college is expensive and requires a double wage. They might think that they won't want to be at home while their children are at school for 6 hours a day. They might actually enjoy working. There aren't only short-term economic reasons to consider. And sometimes, they have no choice. Renting a house on two minimum wage jobs and providing for children's future can't be easy.

There are lots of reasons, not all economic, but we should never think that any parent takes these choices lightly. We all just do what is best for our families.

KomradeBishop

armabelle wrote: »

I think if the average people were smart enough to understand all this or want to understand it, there would be a revolution

Yea I guess I've been reading this stuff so long now, and am familiar enough with the concepts, that it's hard to explain it in a more approachable way than what I'm familiar with - it's certainly true though, that hardly anybody at all seems to care about this type of topic.

eviltwin

armabelle wrote: »

So being away from your kids is better for your mental health?

No. Being in work using the skills I have and spending time with adults and earning my own money is good for my mental health. And yeah, the break from my kids is good too

Victor

JanaMay wrote: »

Thankfully, nowadays women have access to the same education as men.

More correctly, most women have access to similar educations to most men. However, societal attitudes to achievement and the use of gendered schools that prioritise different subjects means that those educations can be quite different, especially above the age of 12.

iguana

armabelle wrote: »

This is the way it should be..your kids are lucky to have you.

Not everyone loves doing the same things though. Some people are better parents precisely because working outside the home too helps them to be happier during the time they are at home. Personally I'm an overgrown child and the chance to spend days playing Avengers and Justice League, rollerskating around the livingroom, watching cartoons and going on the big slides in playcentres (because they let you do that when you're with a little kid!!!) is my idea of heaven. Some people would crack up spending their days that way.

JanaMay

Victor wrote: »

More correctly, most women have access to similar educations to most men. However, societal attitudes to achievement and the use of gendered schools that prioritise different subjects means that those educations can be quite different, especially above the age of 12.

I wholeheartedly agree with the point you're making. When, in 2016, there are single-sex schools that offer choices to pupils based only on gender expectations, it's something that we, as a society, really need to question. In my opinion it's definitely something that parents have to consider when choosing a school for their children. Maybe it's a bit OT for this thread, but very relevant, and urgent, if we are to consider the future of education and choice of careers for the next generation. (OT: I'm very interested in societal attitudes to achievement, but think it is too off-topic for this thread).

esforum

armabelle wrote: »

Can anybody who know a bit more about this share the answer please?

Evidently you have never spent an entire day with children. You go to work to get a ****ing break! :P

Lifes more expensive plus people like to live better lives than before, houses are bigger, 2 cars, lobger and further foreign holidays, paid TV, paid Broadband,

the list goes on, years ago people lived a more simple life, my wife doesnt work by the way, she stopped when we had kids, we are no longer a Sky TV, 2 car, long foreign holidays household.

esforum

JanaMay wrote: »

In the past, in general, people married younger and the older generations died earlier, which often meant that young married couples (especially daughters and their husbands) stayed in the family home. The newly-married daughter looked after the house and elderly parents while the young husband worked. The elderly parents died and the house passed to the new couple.

how did they split the family home between the 10 kids people were having back then before the evils of contraception?

ezra_pound

In terms of government policy, fianna fail/pd tax individualisation incentivised both parents working.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/tax-bias-for-double-income-couples-attacked-1.804520

Wanderer78

ezra_pound wrote:

In terms of government policy, fianna fail/pd tax individualisation incentivised both parents working.

There's actually a shift in tax globally from the wealthy onto the labour force. This has been going on for a couple of decades now with drastic effects.

pwurple

esforum wrote: »

how did they split the family home between the 10 kids people were having back then before the evils of contraception?

Emigration and the priesthood / convents.

pwurple

Speedwell wrote: »

The idea that only one parent had to work in the past is a myth. It only ever applied to a certain class of people, those whose single earner parent was a highly paid professional or happened to inherit money. Anyone else was poor and struggling, or both parents did something to contribute to household finances. You might as well argue that because families in Victorian novels employed a cook and housekeeper that we're deprived today.

That is certainly the case in my family. Every woman on my side and my husband's side worked at something as far back as we can trace.

Farming, taking in laundry into the house, cleaning the priests house, seamstress, milliner, working in the family shop, participating in whatever business the family had. It may not have been official 'employment' but ut was work other than childcare. My mother worked in the bank until she was chucked out because she got married. Luckily my father had a business by then, so she worked for him after that.

My grandmother had ten children and managed a farm. They had a cook and a someone to mind the children. Their laundry was sent to the bessboro laundries. I still have the old receipts.

And remember the children also worked, from about the age of 8-9 in some cases, but almost all by the age of 12. Primary education was the norm for a lot of people up to very recently. It's what my father and both my husband's parents have.

Supporting children until they are nearly 30 in full time education is only one generation old.