Exactly what I was thinking.
We don’t qualify because I started working again.
Why am I working?
Cuz kids are really really expensive.
I wonder what the percentage is if they add working moms back in.
One of my best friends works 10 hours or so a week and most work is donefrom home. This is structured so that she keeps her skills up to date but is still able to be at home with the kids before and after school and available if they’re sick, etc.. I wonder where she falls in the spectrum....
My mother did real estate and tax work while my brother and I were in junior high and high school. It was very part-time, except during a couple of months of income tax prep.
I guess that would make us NOT part of the “traditional family” count 40 years ago.
Bingo. My wife and I fall into this category and we manage, but frankly it’s a struggle most of the time. Kids ain’t cheap. Frankly, I don’t blame a family one tiny bit for adding that extra income.
We forget that, nowadays, a single income family is a luxury. Part of the reason that we are able to make it is because I make a fairly decent (though by no means exhorbitant!) salary. When I grew up, unless your father was a serious professional, or was lucky enough to have one of the few union jobs at the Ford plant or in the steel mills, both parents worked. (The 80’s may have been great for people in the cities and suburbs, but rural, blue collar areas like mine have always faced more challenges.) And this wasn’t women’s lib, “empowerment” work, either - it was more like working the swing shift behind the counter at the gas station, or a barely-above minimum wage shift at a struggling factory. By the time you paid for babysitting and gas, you may end up clearing an extra fifty bucks a week...but that was the difference between just barely making it on your own, or going on food stamps.
In other words, June Cleaver baking cookies as the kids got off the bus was a Hollywood convention for most of us.