What changed?
I guess I have to apologise for the lack of effort posting lately:) The reason for this is we were busy celebrating my husband's birthday and St Nicholas Day with the relatives. We did it two times already and next weekend we are planning to celebrate it with our own small family by going to the Midwinter Fair.
Anyway. We had an enlightening conversation with an elderly aunt about "good old days" when women didn't work outside home. We all know it's because everybody was awfully wealthy in the 1940s and 1950s, like in these Hollywood movies, right? Unlike now when everyone is dirt poor due to the Boomers stealing all the wealth for themselves, so they really need these 2 incomes to survive.
She was talking about some cousin who used to live in our neighbourhood. She and her husband had 4 children together and would probably have more but he died early leaving her a widow. This family of 6 used to live in a house of about 50smth m2 (square meters) which are now sold as the houses for 1 or 2.
So here's your answer. That's how they managed to survive on 1 income in those days. This and men having 50+ hours working week as opposed to modern sensitive males with back pain who only can manage to work 36 hours max. This and the wives cooking everything from scratch, hardly ever going to eat out and not demanding luxury vacations 3 times a year. Simple really.
By the way about Boomers. Folks online, especially those from the USA love to accuse them of all sorts of stuff. Now I get it, Boomers are weird in some ways and slightly irritating at times. However, IF they are guilty of something, it's really of buying into this idea that every generation is going to be wealthier than the previous one and teaching this entitlement to their children.
The truth is that post WWII era of everyone getting richer every decade was a historical aberration and it's not coming back.