Poor women worked jobs and kept house in the past. Washer women and spinsters [women who spun cloth] worked from home.
Second, after WW2 and up until the Arab Oil boycott of 1973 most working class/Union jobs in the US paid enough for the wife to stay home. It wasn’t until the economy started to crater that large numbers of women started looking for work.
In 1968, when Nixon was elected, ‘middle class’ was one job supporting a family of four with a stay at home wife. In those days $1 million was a vast fortune. By 1992, ‘middle class’ was two incomes’ and $1 million was what a rich guy spent on a party.
I didn’t get that connection to “spinsters” until this comment, so thanks for that.
Second, after WW2 and up until the Arab Oil boycott of 1973 most working class/Union jobs in the US paid enough for the wife to stay home
Note that that’s only a 30 year window. Before WWII was the great depression. Before that, working couples couldn’t make ends meet without both partners “working”. In some cases the women were doing unpaid or informal labour at home rather than working in a factory or something. But, they were definitely doing a lot of labour.
The post-WWII period was an anomaly rather than the norm. The labour protections from the New Deal were still in place, and unions were still strong. Plus, the US manufacturing sector was the only one that had come out of WWII unscathed. Every other country from Germany to France to the UK was having to rebuild their factories after they’d been smashed in the war. So, to get back to a post-WWII economy you wouldn’t just need strong labour protections and high marginal tax rates like you had after WWII, you’d also need a devastating world war somewhere else in the world that the US could join halfway through.
You’re wrong about pretty much everything.
Poor women worked jobs and kept house in the past. Washer women and spinsters [women who spun cloth] worked from home.
Second, after WW2 and up until the Arab Oil boycott of 1973 most working class/Union jobs in the US paid enough for the wife to stay home. It wasn’t until the economy started to crater that large numbers of women started looking for work.
In 1968, when Nixon was elected, ‘middle class’ was one job supporting a family of four with a stay at home wife. In those days $1 million was a vast fortune. By 1992, ‘middle class’ was two incomes’ and $1 million was what a rich guy spent on a party.
I didn’t get that connection to “spinsters” until this comment, so thanks for that.
Note that that’s only a 30 year window. Before WWII was the great depression. Before that, working couples couldn’t make ends meet without both partners “working”. In some cases the women were doing unpaid or informal labour at home rather than working in a factory or something. But, they were definitely doing a lot of labour.
The post-WWII period was an anomaly rather than the norm. The labour protections from the New Deal were still in place, and unions were still strong. Plus, the US manufacturing sector was the only one that had come out of WWII unscathed. Every other country from Germany to France to the UK was having to rebuild their factories after they’d been smashed in the war. So, to get back to a post-WWII economy you wouldn’t just need strong labour protections and high marginal tax rates like you had after WWII, you’d also need a devastating world war somewhere else in the world that the US could join halfway through.