Which “old days” do you mean? I love to discuss further the pattern of working mothers, at various jobs, over, say, the last 300 years.
Sorry but I find that hard to believe. Salaries didn’t go down, prices went up. Just compare real estate prices today to 20 years ago. Even after the market crash in the US, prices today are still up from where they were 20 years ago. Population and demand fuels the rise of real estate prices, not women working. And another factor is inflation.
I am an expert in World War II history and the immediate post-war period. I know why the war started and I grew up with people who were there. I reject the current sound bite culture.
Well stevevusmagnus does have a point to a certain extent though. There are families where the mother does have to work out of necessity in this economy, but there also exists the mother that does not have to work but chooses to because they want a certain lifestyle. We use to live in a much more affluent parish where the Catholic families would never dream of living the lifestyle such as my husband and I do, we would be considered poor by their standards. If we’re going to make generalizations, there is a need to admit that there are mothers/wives that work to afford a much more lavish lifestyle than they really need to have.
I was born in the mid 1950s. My mother worked and paid cash for our home. At times, the only money she had left over each week was a nickle. My father worked five and a half days a week. He took a bus when that was still possible. We SAVED money so we didn’t have to pay useless interest to anyone. We kept everything clean and did not abuse it. We did not have to upgrade our appliances every few years to impress anyone.
So you are saying that I’m the expert, so I don’t have to provide reasons, evidence, or sources for what I say. You should just accept it because I’m the expert.
I have never found any of Ed’s arguments that convincing. He condemns change itself and longs for the ‘Good Old Days’ too much.
Logical fallacy called the “Appeal to authority”. One of the more dangerous logical fallacies because it sounds so convincing.
I’ve heard enough through the years to know Ed isn’t making it up. Blue collar America was exactly as he describes it after the second WW.
Your first two sentences already define the problem today. There is no way anyone (newlyweds aged 20-35) can pay for a home in cash unless:
I only see Ed’s posts when someone else quotes them, so I saw the one you quoted. Ed may reject sound bite culture, but he sure engages in short exchanges on the internet! How old school is THAT? Maybe he uses a telegraph button!
The baby-boom generation was an aberration in social history. I was born the same time and can testify to its many warped features. But I know better than to generalize from the limited perspective of my own experiences. Suffice it to say that that period in American culture does not represent the cultural reality of the rest of the world nor of the rest of Catholics of the world, and nor, especially, the cultural reality of what women have done for work over the history of the various cultures of the planet.
What delight do you folks seek in gang banging Catholics ?
It seems to suit you to only believe bits and pieces of what I write. That’s fine. I don’t present my authority as an argument in itself but it should be self-evident: I lived through most of the time period in question. I watched the long and difficult conflict between the perverts and those who opposed them. While we protested, they only had to get a few lawyers and judges to agree with them to open stores selling filth and strip clubs and topless bars. I was there. I watched it happen. It was 100% wrong.
Do you mean that as a sexually vulgar remark? I’d like to know what kind of poster I am responding to.
My mother had a sixth grade education. She came here from a foreign country. She had no high school diploma. The same with my dad except he had a seventh grade education.
No, not sexual. I think you know what I meant.
