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Matt16_18
Guest
In the 70’s, women suddenly had the option of sterilizing themselves with birth control pills and entering the workforce. Many women took this option, and they entered the workforce in record numbers. This massive influx of labor into the marketplace ultimately led to a devaluation of the worth of their husband’s labor. The average male’s income has much less purchasing power than it did before families started opting for sterilization and two incomes.
My father, a hard working man with a high school education, supported six children in the sixties on a single income - and he was able to carry the mortgage on a modest house while he did this. We never owned a new car growing up, but we always had a used car, and we always went on vacation (even if it was only camping in the mountains). I went to a private Catholic grade school, as did the other children in my family that were of grade school age. Most of the men in the working class neighborhood where I grew also had high school educations, and they supported their families on one income while they bought their own homes. Divorce was almost unheard of in that era, and it was normal for wives to stay at home to raise their children. Banks typically would not lend money on a home if the homeowner’s combined mortgage payment/property tax amounted to more than one week’s pay. I believe that this bank policy was typical throughout most of the US in the sixties. (Typical that is, for white males - institutional racism was also the norm throughout the US in the fifties and early sixties, and “redlining” was the status quo).
In the sixties, the dad of a neighborhood friend supported his family on the income he earned as a postal carrier. It would be impossible for a young postal carrier today to live in the neighborhood where I grew up, and on a postal carrier’s income, support a wife, three children, carry a mortgage payment, a car payment, and put two of his children into the same Catholic school that my friend and I attended as children. I would be surprised if a postal carrier’s salary would even cover the mortgage and the car payment in a such a neighborhood.
The biggest problem that families are struggling with is the devaluation of the worth of labor caused by adult women in the workplace. Three things that are major expenses for most families are the cost of a mortgage, the cost of health care, and the cost of education. The man with an average income today would have to pay as a percentage of his income far more for those three items than the average white male living in the fifties and sixties. The ONLY reason that average families can even afford these three items is because they have a second income available to offset normal household expenses.
