My granddaugter is in her 3rd year at Brown (Full Scholarship +) going for her PHD in Bio/Pharm/etc.
My grandson will start at Electric Boat (General Dynamics) which makes submarines.
My daughter and her hubby are a team...and that's what it takes whether both are working or not.
Kids are better off working and earning their way through college.
But no solution is right for everyone. Those who would prefer to raise their families with a mother/parent at home ought to be able to do so. But everytime Ivanka gets another childcare subsidy win that makes it harder for the traditional family to compete and survive.
The extraction of US wealth, systemically and consciously have made it impossible for most families to maintain the standard of living of their parents let alone grandparents on a single income.
Since 1970 the median household income for the most part has remained flat when adjusted for inflation, but now most housholds are 2 income families whereas in 1970 this was the vast exception not the rule.
So in other words on average it’s taking 2 people working to maintain the same income that one did 50 years ago.
> “One paycheck would not put my grandchildren through college ...”
Two generations ago. American families with one paycheck could raise a child to work to a skill in engineering or journeyman/master in a professional trade. Children with high scholastic aptitude would be found and enabled to attend university by whatever means.
Elite universities had two main admissions categories, the high aptitude and the very rich. The other category that started small but has grown into a major category is that of minority class.
In the one paycheck generation, not every child was expected to go to college as the vast majority do today. Why is that? Because parents today are too busy working at arranged corporate careers where they learn office politics that foster fakery in character, clever liar ability, song and dance corporate presentation capability dressed with paid written CVs. The only real way to get to the top in the vast majority of the incestuous military, political, industrial, social justice, pharma, eugenicist, climate change complex is $$$ and if you ain’t got it or if you ain’t in bed with it, then you ain’t gettin’ there.
And if one of our children is a prodigy and is awarded a patent of powerful innovation, then there’s marketing and collaboration to follow and a slew of barriers to get to market. Chances are it ain’t happening unless you’ve got or are next to $$$ (OR HAVE A PARENT AND COMMUNITY THAT HAS YOUR BACK). This was cynicism in the one paycheck generation, it’s reality in today’s two paycheck generation.
The Virginia engineer from a one paycheck family who invented and obtained push-email had it stolen by Canada’s RIM (Blackberry mfg) and died while suing them. His estate lawyer took years and years to win the case for $667,000,000. That kind of $$$ opens corporate doors treating the $$$ person like a king until they can see whether the person has the mettle to know how to keep it because they are masters at stealing it.
But what made RIM? The same that made GD, HAC, BA, SAIC, Booz, and dozens of other government revolving door corporate extensions. RIM was boosted by Wall St because push-email would land on a RIM server in Canada where US constitutional protections didn’t apply and snooping could take place unabated. See how that works? All was a pig party until NSA developed surveillance ability that rendered RIM obsolete. And now we have the unmasking scandal before us with corporate media covering it up. Is that the ‘corporate’ world we want to send out kids into? Not too worry, most such kids will never get to the top where they see the corruption. But they can be tainted by it and pick up bad habits from it.
Even when one wins life’s $$$ lottery, the corporate office doors will open to reveal slimy characters you really don’t want to be associated with. General Dynamics is one of these. I know, I was a member of a DOD safety review team that canceled one of their biggest defense programs in the 1980s. And they don’t develop submarines, they do what thy are told. GD wouldn’t exist without Admiral Hyman Rickover. The Navy directs submarine development programs and uses GD as gophers to get workers without having to expand the bloated federal workforce. And now GD is controlled by the same slime that sits on boards of dozens of other defense leeches.
> “ ... or give them stimulating activities.”
One paycheck parents that take their child to Church or Synagogue regularly where members instruct the child in biblical wisdom and history. This is all the stimulation a child will ever need because it leads to lifelong friends who will hike together, bike together, climb together, and grow together with integrity.
But the two paycheck family will find more often than not such religious participation as a waste of time. The side effect of such ignorance has been 24 years of shifting social mores raising slimy, unethical, criminal characters to prevalence and prominence, all because the two paychecker class think they can buy ‘stimulating activities’ and can’t be bothered with cultivating age old wisdom which entails real work and can’t be bought off Amazon.
> “My granddaugter is in her 3rd year at Brown (Full Scholarship +) ...”
Congrats to her. Sounds like she didn’t need a two paycheck family, Countless make it on their own, even many from poverty.
Just so it’s known, and several here know it already, I was interviewed and accepted by Rickover as one of his officer candidates, served in his Navy (yeah, HIS Navy), served in the corporate spook world, developed a corporate resume that was a masterpiece work of art ready for framing in the Smithsonian /s, went to an elite PhD program fully paid for in every aspect after acing the GRE and publishing prior to interviewing. Yes, I had a high IQ and was ‘found’. Went on-leave from academic based research and made millions on the outside.
And did my millions open doors to the large corporate boardrooms? No, because millions aren’t much these days, hundreds of millions will get you a board seat and some preferred stock, and billions will get you a seat in the ruler’s circle but chances are you won’t like being at the ruler’s table because others sitting there are repulsive pits of slime.
So there I was smart, rich, accomplished, all based on a one/zero paycheck family with parents, one from a Jewish family and another from a Christian family, but having lost them as a teenager to an accident, I accomplished it all as an orphan from a Zero paycheck lost family left only with the memory and conscience of honorable parents whose ethics and integrity were very high.
And did all my ‘gifts’ make me ‘smart’? Did all this ‘success’ and money somehow make me ‘superior’?
NO!
What ‘made’ me?
What made me was the wisdom imparted me by Rabbis from my Jewish family, inspiration of belief and faith from pastors and priests from my Christian family, ethics and perseverance left in my conscience by my parents.
All the rest of education, elitism, money, fame, corporate careerism, ‘stimulating activities’, all of that is ‘here today - gone tomorrow’ but the eternal truth of God and His Son remains and are all that natters.
Stimulating ‘bucket lists’ don’t matter.
A one paycheck family that can impart the Word of God to their children will make them ‘rich’ and ‘stimulated’ for life. This is what matters.