I know a woman who does it. She has 4 kids and has never worked a day in her life. She's never had a driver's license either. Her BF had a high school education.
There's a trick here though... you need a woman who doesn't want for much. That's nearly impossible today.
My parents cooked every meal, we had KD more times than I can count. If we had meat it was almost always pork or chicken thighs, never chicken breasts or steak. We dad also had at one point 2 jobs, not just 1 and he worked 16 hour days. We never traveled by plane once as a family.
No one actually wants to make the sacrifices needed to raise kids like this. We want our comforts... but children and living can be dirt cheap if you're willing to live dirt cheap.
I mean theoretically possibly, it just doesn't happen because of human nature. But I do see your point. If it doesn't happen even if possible that means it's not possible. It's a fair argument. But I made my point to point out that women's expectations are ultimately the problem.
Something I never see talked about much these days is how those 1 income households lived. No cell phones, no internet, most of them no cable TV, one TV in the house, most had no game consoles, living in a 1400 square food house with 2 bedrooms and one bath room, kids shared a room and slept on bunkbeds. Phone was a land line. Home cooked meals cooked from scratch were the norm, eating out was a treat done maybe once a week.
If you live like that, now, in the midwest, it is certainly possible to live as a one income family.
My childhood was this way, in SoCal. One income all the way though high school, mom stayed home to cook, clean, raise the kids.
It isn't possible to do it anymore on the coasts, though, cost of living (primarily housing) is just waaay to high.
Something I never see talked about much these days is how those 1 income households lived. No cell phones, no internet,
And that means no employment now days so not an option.
most of them no cable TV
No need to if you just pirate.
one TV in the house
Retarded when they're so affordable, people will literally give you one if you ask around and are on even moderately good terms. They have been around for so long and become so ubiquitous that the used market is flooded with the things.
most had no game console
Again retarded to live like that when you can get a system that runs almost every game worth a damn for $250.
living in a 1400 square food house with 2 bedrooms and one bath room
Now that's the main problem. Housing like that is either in some unaffordable bughive, or some dangerous shithole. Affordable white neighborhoods no longer are a thing.
Phone was a land line.
Doesn't matter, employers don't want landline only connection so no reason to have it.
Home cooked meals cooked from scratch were the norm, eating out was a treat done maybe once a week.
You call it a treat and then say maybe once every week. I guess once a week isn't too unreasonable if you're referring to the father wanting the occasional warm meal for lunch but to me that seems pretty frequent to eat out.
If you live like that, now, in the midwest, it is certainly possible to live as a one income family.
The way you present it is really a horrible way of living in the modern day, it denies basic comforts and convenience more out of principal rather than to save money, so many conveniences and luxuries you can get for less than the price of a tank of gas.
What I'm trying to get across is that you cannot project modern society back in time and have a valid comparison, because the times were different. Back when 1 income families were the norm, that family simply had fewer bills, and to live today as a one income family that means you have to leave the coasts, and most major cities, and live more like that one income family did 40 years ago.
I've seen this said before elsewhere like it's an own.
I've been in those houses. I like those houses. If you presented me with that house, with what it was paid for at the time of it's construction, my response would be 'Hell the fuck yeah, let's fucking go'. My goal is to build a house like that, actually - arguably smaller, likely.
Problem: You can't GET houses like this anymore. Trailer houses are a fucking scam, 'tiny homes' are even WORSE, and if you want anything 'cheap' you have to jump through so many goddamn hoops for a house that's actually WORSE than those houses, and they need to be built in areas with very lax zoning restrictions, meaning you're probably looking at an hour commute to any functioning job to pay for said house.
Boomers try to argue that 'Well, you're just lazy and not working hard enough', but anyone who starts digging into the issue to work out a solution quickly comes to the realization that, no, everything has gone to shit and things really were better back then.
My first house was one of those ~1200 sq. ft houses built in massive quantities in the 1960s as Boomer starter homes. It was barely affordable to me as a young engineer when I bought it in the late '00s after the bubble burst. Now it's worth about triple what I paid for it and would have been completely out of reach if I were starting all over today.
I think about that whenever someone tries to tell me "well houses are bigger now than they were in the 60s". That's true, but that doesn't explain why a house literally built in the 60s costs as much as it does.
New tract homes, built by a builder? No. Built yourself, semi-custom, on land you own? Yep. Bought from existing homes from the plentiful supply of such houses in the midwest?
Definitely.
If you can find work in such places (important caveat, I know), you should go there.
However, when you start digging down into what you have to do to get there, you start running into roadblocks. Put aside zoning restrictions and building requirements(again, dependent on where you're located at) - have you tried buying land as of late? Undeveloped land? With nothing on it?
That entire experience was eye-opening for me, and yet another example of 'Oh, THIS is why we're fucked.'
You don’t understand, dude….the society being described above did not require a degree, or constantly working overtime, nor did it require a family to be extremely frugal with their spending to live a decent life. Most of us lived a great life back in the 80’s and 90’s compared to nowadays, even with multiple kids in a single income household, and our parents weren’t constantly concerned about not being able to cover all of the regular bills if ANY unexpected bill popped up, like the family car breaking down or whatever. Quality of life was a billion times better, decent manufacturing jobs were everywhere that didn’t require a degree or require getting through an anti-White HR department, all of our neighborhoods were pretty much 100% White with no real crime beyond domestic abuse, and everyone knew each other on the block where your house was.
And you were working 8 hour shifts, 5 days a week at the manufacturing job? No, you were working OT (which is why you didn't need a second job).
I think you're overly romanticizing things. Some people lived as you describe but a lot didn't. A lot of people were struggling to make it. My father would tell me stories of how his family starved many nights because there wasn't enough food on the table. He wasn't just telling stories to scare kids, this was his real life situation. His father was an alcoholic, who'd be gone for weeks then beat his wife when he'd come home. A classic story for the times too.
Both my boomer parents had a high-school education and both worked. I was an only child. We got by but when I graduated university 15 years ago, I had a better Quality of Life with my first job out of university than the whole time my parents were together. I remember my dad buying a truck and nearly crying when he had to return it and beg for the dealership to take it back because he couldn't afford it. I bought a BMW M3 as my first vehicle.
The situation nowadays is not great because of the housing and immigration situation along with globalization. Especially for White men because of the recent DEI stuff in the last year. The DEI stuff hurt me considerably and my income is likely 50% less than it ought to be because of it.
Still, people are vastly romanticizing the past. Kids are still possible on high-school educations if you are willing to sacrifice some of the comforts many people today have grown accustomed to but no one wants to and I don't blame them for that. I wouldn't want to give up my lifestyle for kids but it can be done if people truly wanted to. Yes, the housing situation is not the same. That's one thing that I will for sure 100% give you but you can still make things work. If you're willing to move to a cheap area of the country, work a very mediocre job (that only needs high-school), rent a rundown old house and have kids with a wife who doesn't work, you can do it. It can be done and I know a woman who is currently doing exactly that. Many low-class families do exactly this.
A lot of people were struggling to make it. My father would tell me stories of how his family starved many nights because there wasn't enough food on the table. He wasn't just telling stories to scare kids, this was his real life situation. His father was an alcoholic, who'd be gone for weeks then beat his wife when he'd come home. A classic story for the times too.
So his family was starving because his alcoholic father spent the food money on booze? How exactly does that refute his statement? By your own admission your granddaddy's family was struggling because he was a bum, not because the time period was hard.
I bought a BMW M3 as my first vehicle.
You bought an $80,000 BMW as your first car? What are you, Alec Baldwin from Glengarry Glen Ross?
I was a kid, I didn’t work. My father was a CNC machinist for decades without having a college degree. He generally only worked 40hrs a week, he got bonuses, GE (his employer throughout my childhood) would hold family parties for their workersc that company was gear backing the day….my pops only worked OT on occasion when he wanted a little extra spending cash for Christmas or whatever, but he was home fairly early on most work days, and he never missed my football games on the weekends.
She recently broke her cell phone and couldn't afford to buy anything more than a $100 used phone for a replacement. Like, absolutely could not afford anything else. She's raising 4 kids though and doesn't work.
It can be done... But you just can't live the way most people want to live. I wouldn't want to live that way to raise kids either.
It's actually still 100% possible today.
I know a woman who does it. She has 4 kids and has never worked a day in her life. She's never had a driver's license either. Her BF had a high school education.
There's a trick here though... you need a woman who doesn't want for much. That's nearly impossible today.
My parents cooked every meal, we had KD more times than I can count. If we had meat it was almost always pork or chicken thighs, never chicken breasts or steak. We dad also had at one point 2 jobs, not just 1 and he worked 16 hour days. We never traveled by plane once as a family.
No one actually wants to make the sacrifices needed to raise kids like this. We want our comforts... but children and living can be dirt cheap if you're willing to live dirt cheap.
I mean theoretically possibly, it just doesn't happen because of human nature. But I do see your point. If it doesn't happen even if possible that means it's not possible. It's a fair argument. But I made my point to point out that women's expectations are ultimately the problem.
I honestly anticipated that the punchline from OP about being a poor Current Year mother with 4 kids was still possible.
But only as a female. And only due to infinite government gibs.
Agreed.
Something I never see talked about much these days is how those 1 income households lived. No cell phones, no internet, most of them no cable TV, one TV in the house, most had no game consoles, living in a 1400 square food house with 2 bedrooms and one bath room, kids shared a room and slept on bunkbeds. Phone was a land line. Home cooked meals cooked from scratch were the norm, eating out was a treat done maybe once a week.
If you live like that, now, in the midwest, it is certainly possible to live as a one income family.
My childhood was this way, in SoCal. One income all the way though high school, mom stayed home to cook, clean, raise the kids.
It isn't possible to do it anymore on the coasts, though, cost of living (primarily housing) is just waaay to high.
And that means no employment now days so not an option.
No need to if you just pirate.
Retarded when they're so affordable, people will literally give you one if you ask around and are on even moderately good terms. They have been around for so long and become so ubiquitous that the used market is flooded with the things.
Again retarded to live like that when you can get a system that runs almost every game worth a damn for $250.
Now that's the main problem. Housing like that is either in some unaffordable bughive, or some dangerous shithole. Affordable white neighborhoods no longer are a thing.
Doesn't matter, employers don't want landline only connection so no reason to have it.
You call it a treat and then say maybe once every week. I guess once a week isn't too unreasonable if you're referring to the father wanting the occasional warm meal for lunch but to me that seems pretty frequent to eat out.
The way you present it is really a horrible way of living in the modern day, it denies basic comforts and convenience more out of principal rather than to save money, so many conveniences and luxuries you can get for less than the price of a tank of gas.
What I'm trying to get across is that you cannot project modern society back in time and have a valid comparison, because the times were different. Back when 1 income families were the norm, that family simply had fewer bills, and to live today as a one income family that means you have to leave the coasts, and most major cities, and live more like that one income family did 40 years ago.
Most of the details of how they lived were due to factors that are far different now
I've seen this said before elsewhere like it's an own.
I've been in those houses. I like those houses. If you presented me with that house, with what it was paid for at the time of it's construction, my response would be 'Hell the fuck yeah, let's fucking go'. My goal is to build a house like that, actually - arguably smaller, likely.
Problem: You can't GET houses like this anymore. Trailer houses are a fucking scam, 'tiny homes' are even WORSE, and if you want anything 'cheap' you have to jump through so many goddamn hoops for a house that's actually WORSE than those houses, and they need to be built in areas with very lax zoning restrictions, meaning you're probably looking at an hour commute to any functioning job to pay for said house.
Boomers try to argue that 'Well, you're just lazy and not working hard enough', but anyone who starts digging into the issue to work out a solution quickly comes to the realization that, no, everything has gone to shit and things really were better back then.
My first house was one of those ~1200 sq. ft houses built in massive quantities in the 1960s as Boomer starter homes. It was barely affordable to me as a young engineer when I bought it in the late '00s after the bubble burst. Now it's worth about triple what I paid for it and would have been completely out of reach if I were starting all over today.
I think about that whenever someone tries to tell me "well houses are bigger now than they were in the 60s". That's true, but that doesn't explain why a house literally built in the 60s costs as much as it does.
New tract homes, built by a builder? No. Built yourself, semi-custom, on land you own? Yep. Bought from existing homes from the plentiful supply of such houses in the midwest?
Definitely.
If you can find work in such places (important caveat, I know), you should go there.
Yup. That's the dream, right there.
However, when you start digging down into what you have to do to get there, you start running into roadblocks. Put aside zoning restrictions and building requirements(again, dependent on where you're located at) - have you tried buying land as of late? Undeveloped land? With nothing on it?
That entire experience was eye-opening for me, and yet another example of 'Oh, THIS is why we're fucked.'
You don’t understand, dude….the society being described above did not require a degree, or constantly working overtime, nor did it require a family to be extremely frugal with their spending to live a decent life. Most of us lived a great life back in the 80’s and 90’s compared to nowadays, even with multiple kids in a single income household, and our parents weren’t constantly concerned about not being able to cover all of the regular bills if ANY unexpected bill popped up, like the family car breaking down or whatever. Quality of life was a billion times better, decent manufacturing jobs were everywhere that didn’t require a degree or require getting through an anti-White HR department, all of our neighborhoods were pretty much 100% White with no real crime beyond domestic abuse, and everyone knew each other on the block where your house was.
What we had then is NOT possible anymore.
And you were working 8 hour shifts, 5 days a week at the manufacturing job? No, you were working OT (which is why you didn't need a second job).
I think you're overly romanticizing things. Some people lived as you describe but a lot didn't. A lot of people were struggling to make it. My father would tell me stories of how his family starved many nights because there wasn't enough food on the table. He wasn't just telling stories to scare kids, this was his real life situation. His father was an alcoholic, who'd be gone for weeks then beat his wife when he'd come home. A classic story for the times too.
Both my boomer parents had a high-school education and both worked. I was an only child. We got by but when I graduated university 15 years ago, I had a better Quality of Life with my first job out of university than the whole time my parents were together. I remember my dad buying a truck and nearly crying when he had to return it and beg for the dealership to take it back because he couldn't afford it. I bought a BMW M3 as my first vehicle.
The situation nowadays is not great because of the housing and immigration situation along with globalization. Especially for White men because of the recent DEI stuff in the last year. The DEI stuff hurt me considerably and my income is likely 50% less than it ought to be because of it.
Still, people are vastly romanticizing the past. Kids are still possible on high-school educations if you are willing to sacrifice some of the comforts many people today have grown accustomed to but no one wants to and I don't blame them for that. I wouldn't want to give up my lifestyle for kids but it can be done if people truly wanted to. Yes, the housing situation is not the same. That's one thing that I will for sure 100% give you but you can still make things work. If you're willing to move to a cheap area of the country, work a very mediocre job (that only needs high-school), rent a rundown old house and have kids with a wife who doesn't work, you can do it. It can be done and I know a woman who is currently doing exactly that. Many low-class families do exactly this.
So his family was starving because his alcoholic father spent the food money on booze? How exactly does that refute his statement? By your own admission your granddaddy's family was struggling because he was a bum, not because the time period was hard.
You bought an $80,000 BMW as your first car? What are you, Alec Baldwin from Glengarry Glen Ross?
I was a kid, I didn’t work. My father was a CNC machinist for decades without having a college degree. He generally only worked 40hrs a week, he got bonuses, GE (his employer throughout my childhood) would hold family parties for their workersc that company was gear backing the day….my pops only worked OT on occasion when he wanted a little extra spending cash for Christmas or whatever, but he was home fairly early on most work days, and he never missed my football games on the weekends.
Like I said, it was nothing like it is now. .
My parents story was similar. They didn't have much extra money in the 90s but the big difference was white institutions they could rely on.
This included something simple like a local library or a post office. Those suck now.
Fake Story.
Fuck Off!
She recently broke her cell phone and couldn't afford to buy anything more than a $100 used phone for a replacement. Like, absolutely could not afford anything else. She's raising 4 kids though and doesn't work.
It can be done... But you just can't live the way most people want to live. I wouldn't want to live that way to raise kids either.