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.
People lived more frugally back then.
ReplyDeleteMy late mother born in 1940 grew up in a one-bedroom house with her parents and younger sister. She and her sister slept in an unheated, uninsulated attic, just the plain boards that was the house as the walls. This was in northern Massachusetts so freezing in the winter and sweltering in the summer in that attic.
My mother, sister, and I lived in that same house until I married at age 20 in 1980. For a few years we also had a female lodger live with us when I was 4-6 years old. All four of us slept in one bedroom. My mother, sister, and I in a double bed and the lodger in a twin bed. My mother was a young divorcee who worked in a factory.
My husband's family (consisting of his parents, grandfather, 2 older brothers, one older sister, and himself) lived in a 3-bedroom, one-bathroom house. They finally moved to a larger home when his baby sister was born.
No vacations. One car per family, one black-and-white tv per family, no air conditioning in the home or car, one telephone.
My aunt had a childhood friend whose family was so poor that they lived in a Quonset that had holes in the floor and you could see the ground underneath. I would hope they kept rugs over the holes and the friend removed them to show my aunt the holes. LOL
My mother's family had a party line in the 40s and 50s. For those who are younger than I, a party line was one telephone line for several families. Each family's phone had a different ring pattern so you could tell if the incoming call was for your household or not. If another family was using the phone, the other families on the party line had to wait for the line to become free to make a call. Nosy people could pick up their phone and listen in on the conversations of neighbors. It was more expensive to have a private telephone line.
When I was a child, living in the same one-bedroom house my mother grew up in, we had no phone for about 5 years. It was an exciting day when we got a phone put in, let me tell you.
My childhood home was probably about 600 square feet or 55.75 square meters.
My husband's childhood home where 7 people lived was probably 1100 square fee or 102 square meters.
My husband's family of 7 never ate at a restaurant, not even McDonalds.
My family of 3 would eat at a diner or fast food place on Thursday nights when we did the grocery shopping after my mother got home from work.
I also remember getting government cheese and other foods because we were poor. Back then the government gave out actual food instead of food stamps and now today's EBT card.
We didn't always get that so I'm assuming we went on some degree of assistance whenever my mother got laid off her job or was between jobs.