You are right that most families used to have one earner, while the wife would stay home with the kids. I grew up in that era.
I grew up in that era too and the statistics tell us something important. The majority of married women with children did not work outside the home than yet the unemployment rates were usually much higher than today. In the 50s, unemployment was very much different and jobs very much harder to find for the unemployed.
Today, the vast majority of women with children work outside the home which means a far higher percentage of the population are in the workforce, yet over the last 25 years, unemployment has been lower than in the 50s or 60s. Even the nature of unemployment is different today. Some people now treat it as an extended vacation because they are two income families and are in no big hurry to find another job. Others will take the time to find the job they really want rather than taking the first one offered. When my dad was unemployed in the late 50s, he did not have the luxury of waiting for his ideal job. He had to take whatever he could get and he had to do it before his benefits ran out.
Those are excellent points. I hate to sound like an old fuddy duddy (just using that word probably makes me one), but these kids today just don’t know how different life was back in the late 50s and early 60s (just like I don’t know how hard it was back in the 30s and 40s).
Our standard of living has risen amazingly even since I was young. Even those who are supposed to be poor seem to live better than many did 30 or 40 years ago. On the other hand, families are much less coherent than in days gone by. Therefore, when problems arise, many people have no family to turn to. This has affected the black community disproportionately because so many “families” start out without any father in the home, often without any identifiable father anywhere to be found. In that community it seems that either no one is related or everyone is. In any event, there is no place to go when bad financial or medical situations arise.
This may be why so many look to government to come to the rescue. Maybe we ARE doomed.