Dual Income Families

The Pill at 50: It's About Money, Not Sex

The title of the article aside, the author quotes that 79% of married employees are part of dual income households.  That number seems really, really sad to me.

"There is a straight line between the Pill and the changes in family structure we now see," says National Organization for Women (NOW) president Terry O'Neill in thearticle, "with 22% of women earning more than their husbands. In 1970, 70% of women with children under 6 were at home; 30% worked. Now that's roughly reversed."

Wow.  So roughly 70% of women with children under 6 now work instead of staying home.  And we applaud this?

50% of those that continue to work after having children do so because they have to make ends meet.  What's happened here?

Take the women / men thing out of it.  Let's say the woman wants to work and the man wants to stay home.  According to the link above many women out earn their husbands so it'd be possible in some cases.  How did we go from a society where it was normal for someone (a woman) to stay home to now no one can stay home and we outsource our child care?

Sure things are more expensive.  But we've become a really expensive culture, I think.  How many ipods do you have?  How many flat screen TVs?  How much is your cable bill?  When people were having babies in the 50s, I think they made sacrificies that people today just don't want to make.  They want the nice car, the two week vacation every year, the ipods, the 400 thread count sheets.  Forget kids, after buying all that who has money for rent?

And I don't buy the argument that both parents are working solely to help provide more for their kids.   The average savings rates in this country don't fit that logic.  If people weren't having kids because they couldn't afford to send 2 or 3 kids to college, the savings rates would be higher because some people somewhere would be trying to save.  Instead, no one saves.  They buy.  Ipods and iPads, usually.

I also wonder what the social impact is on this.  Men today no longer feel as if they have to provide.  How much pressure is brought to bear on a woman who has been providing income, who now has children and wants to stay home?  Is the man supportive?  Or does he say, "why should you get to retire and I work for the next 50 years to support you?"

We're outsourcing the care of our children, we have a morality crisis in this country (not as regards the pill - just in general) and the birth rate is down.  While I can appreciate those that want X children and no more ... if we don't have enough children to replace the people we have now, where exactly do we think we will be as a society in 50+ years?

This should not be a persons sole reason for procreating (I'm not sure what a good reason is) but surely, if looked at from the most natural, basest points of fact. We are animals.  Animals procreate or they go extinct.