“I think we’ll know whether or not our economy is successful is when a husband is able to provide well for his family and the wife can stay home and raise her children. It used to be that way, pre-feminism. Kids had Mom and home, and there were fewer hooligans.”
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Perhaps it’s just my perspective. But expectations were less in those days. A house with enough bedrooms for each child to share with another was considered adequate. How many kids today share bedrooms. We had one very old B&W TV that was out of commission for months at a time. A family vacation might be to a location one or two states away, often camping out or staying with relatives. Maybe once in a lifetime you’d do a cross country trip. Most houses didn’t have A/C. We hauled coal for our furnace. A telephone was a party line. People made coffee at home and took it to work in thermoses or there were large communal coffee groups for offices. Eating out was rare. For us a trip to McDonalds (with an outside walk-up window) was a real treat. Soda pop was around but not even close to daily. Maybe once a week or two.
This was life in the 1960’s in an extremely middle class family in the American Midwest.