Photoessay #1249 - One income families

Families currently struggle to maintain their income and care for their children and other family members. All adults have to work yet the family responsibilities (aka the kids) still need their parent's attention. Not enough time nor energy. It's all done with mirrors, somehow we muddle through.

My kids are grown so maybe I'm already one generation removed. At the time, I knew I cried out to the universe "If anybody has figured this out, could you let me know?"). Yet, even at that time, I never worked full time outside the home. Sometimes I worked part-time outside the home and a bunch of the time, I worked full-time for an employer in my home. Which can be easier...kinda.

Some years ago, I watched an academic lecture on the internet, (maybe somebody will be able to tell me who it was) by a Berkeley economist who suggested that starting some decades ago when women started entering the work force big time, she expected that families' economic well-being should soar. Twice as much money coming in! Families should be financially strong. That has not happened, she suggested that soaring medical and housing costs were the main culprit.

At sentimental moments and in rhetorical speeches as well, we yearn for the time when a family could survive on one income. Usually the father's income. Mom would stay home and take care of the kids. Check out my own family in 1962. I'm the oldest child. My father worked as an engineer in the aerospace industry. My mother 'stayed home'. My family was always financial secure (as far as I knew). My parents were 36 and 38 at the time of the picture.

But this morning I started poking around the family history for myself and my husband. Startling for a solidly middle class group of families.

My mother (pictured) did not work outside the home after her marriage
Dennis' mother did not work outside the home but later she had an antique business
Dennis' birthmother did take classes when her kids were small and DID work (She's a reader of this blog and will tell me if I'm wrong)

on to aunts

My aunt Ruth DID work outside the home, I remember Botwinik Brothers
My aunt Elgie DID work outside the home (sometimes for Harvard)
Not sure about Dennis' aunts but his Aunt Mary did work in her husband's photo business.
In the Hartley family, not too many traditional marriages

so the aunts did seem to work

OK, now grandmothers

My paternal grandmother Betty did not work outside the home, my grandfather was an insurance vice president and her own father was well off.
My maternal grandmother Regina DID work outside the home in a 'dry goods' store
Dennis grandmothers, his maternal grandmother was disabled, his paternal grandmother, Ellie I don't think she worked
In the Hartley family, Frances gave music lessons, maybe Ann can fill this in.

You can see where this is going. Even going back to women born around the turn of the century or in the 1920s and 1930s, quite a few DID hold jobs outside the home.

The way we never were ....