They got married in their mid-30's. Had two kids. Got their home paid off in 20 years. Lived in peace and contentment. Died debt-free, with a modest bequest to my brother and myself.
Tell me: why could they do that then, but it seems so few can do it now?
Because people had less.
You can do it if you are willing to have a garden, eat at home, one phone, no cable or internet, about one eighth of the clothes you currently have and so on and so forth.
People are just not willing.
When we were house hunting our agent warned us that the older homes we were looking at "did not have the closet space".
Our stuff fit with room to spare but one of my nieces could have filled every closet in our house and still would not have had enough room.
If your family has enough to eat, you live in a safe neighborhood, and the local schools are decent, then you are not poor.
It is harder to find that safe neighborhood with decent schools than it used to be. Some of the old ones have been wrecked. Sometimes it takes two incomes, and sometimes people want too much (a 4000 sq ft house)
But there were times when I was a child when we lived what people today would think poor - small house or apartment, no money for extras.
Decent but not great schools, safe neighborhoods, parks, library, community pool, or just the open country, no, the only poverty was comparative and self-consciousness. I might add the socialized medicine of Canada and Sweden contributed to our security.
If the fabric of the community is damaged, it’s still easy enough to conceive children, but it’s much harder to raise them and thoughtful people see that.
Youngers today do not view life as a fun ride or an interesting endeavor, rather ... it is hard and boring and full of problems that cost time, money and effort.
Marriage ?
Waddaya' KIDDIN' me ?
Even country kids don't "get" the simplicity of a place to live, something to do that pays enough money and someone to share it with.
It is not complicated.
The socialist indoctrination of public schools have their brain FILLED with crap that creeps in at all times and doesn't let go.
Kind'a like we oldsters hear a 50's or 60's song and we're off dreamin' for half a day.
THEY have Miss McGilicuddy's scratchy voice tellin' them they'd better study so they can go to college and get a job.
It's all in the mind .... the memories .... the self motivation instilled by positive dreams.
I can do all things through Christ which (who) strengtheneth me
Why do they have her sitting on an American flag?
Anyway, it is birth control
High taxes. High real estate. Cost of transportation.
But it is birth control
These people will have no one to take care of them when theyre old. Not even a spouse
It is terrible planning.
The problem is not of ability. It’s of unrealistic expectations. Feminism created that for us.
People like her will still expect MY kids to pick up the tab for her Social Security old age welfare payments even though she didn't produce any offspring herself to fund her retirement benefits.
I say if people want kids, good, have them but raise them well.
If people don’t want kids, don’t have them, spare the kids and the rest of us from doing a half-assed job.
Either way, either choice, is a selfish one, one isnt better than another from a moral point of view. When people say ‘dont you want kids to take care of you when you are older’ as justification for having kids, they cant see the selfishness of that reason.
It’s materialism. People claim to need two incomes to live in the nice suburb. Truth is they could live in cheaper housing but they don’t want to.
I’ve actually sat beside a dating couple where the guy was explaining that only rich people could afford stay at home wives.
these kids were trained in school not to have children. They carried beeping eggs and bags of rice to ostensibly teach them the heavy burdens of parenthood.
The kids at work tell me about what they thought about the whole exercise. I point out it worked. Not a baby among them.
In part, because those households in which both husband and wife work generally have a higher combined income than many or most single worker households - and this purchasing power drives up prices. There was an article last week discussing how $117,000/year was the cut-off for ‘low income’ in the San Francisco area.
Personally, I find it all very sad, as there is no bigger gift in life than to have a child and be a parent. Careers come and go, and ultimately many of the people you work with could care less what happens to you, particularly if it means you are out of their way for a promotion or larger salary. I think our priorities are generally all screwed up.
Our centrally-planned, printed monetary system, enslaving Americans in turn with debt and inflation, like all centralized systems, gives large, asymmetric benefits to insiders and first-handlers (ie. cronies)
Why can’t they do it now?
Because their buying power has been diminished since we were young.
Feminism! Women have forgotten who they are.
lack of faith might have something to do with it?
Most people do (or don't do) things because they are compelled to by circumstance.
Because women have become liberated from their status as economic prisoners for one thing. There has also been a new normal created. Most of these kids now don’t know what a real home is like so they can’t miss it. For many, what home life they have seen brings only bad memories. Why repeat that?
Answers:
Student Loan Debt
Many are saddled with insane student loan debt that rivals car and house payments, because they earned useless degrees and even lived at home while going to college (doubling the cost) to feel independent until they have to live at home to pay the payments.
The Retreat of Marriage
Except for black women, married women have more children than single women. As marriage rates decline and “shacking up” increases, the de facto single mother has just one child instead of the two she’d have if married.
The Immigration Conundrum
Most legal and illegal immigrants are low-skill. They compete for low skill jobs, pulling down wages and reducing employment rates for working class Americans. When you have trouble finding a job and earn less in real dollars from it, you can’t afford kids, or at best, one. All while immigrants have more kids here than they would have had at home because this is a step UP for them.
The Feminism Conundrum
Women’s hypergamy instinct is unchanged - the desire to marry men as good or better than them. But by privileging women in college admissions and funding, women are the majority of college admissions and even more likely to finish school. There are about a third more female college graduates than male graduates, and they still complain about it ... as a lack of suitable men to marry.
It doesn’t occur to them that feminism discriminating against men in college at every step of the way resulted in fewer “qualified” mates. Nor do they consider marrying working class men who may make as much as them, because that’s considered a step “down”.
Sacrifice Your Children for the Planet
I don’t think there are very many women who choose to have NO children for the sake of Mother Earth. Many, however, choose to have at most two children for that exact reason.
The Lies about the Price
When you tell people that it costs a quarter of a million dollars to raise a child, many opt for just one child instead of two. The fact that the poor manage two or three on a lower income doesn’t occur to the responsible people scared into having fewer children.