I've always thought about how it was with previous generations. When you think of the 1950s you think of the nuclear family in a modest but tidy house. The father goes to work full time to provide materially for his family, the mother tends to the children and the home. These families were able to live off of one full time income. Both my parents grew up that way, and neither of their families were wealthy either.
So why is it so necessary that both parents work full time now? Is earning power that much lower, that one man's income can't provide for an entire family anymore? I think Lady Virginia has the right answer, the difference is that people live above their means now while thinking it's the standard.
I think now that we are into the fourth or fifth decade of modern feminism, a lot of women have discovered the utter lies they were fed about being able to "have it all". A lot of them are realizing that the traditional domestic role wasn't the prison the feminist revisionists have claimed. And a lot of them have realized that the workplace men went to every day actually kind of sucks. For a long time women had a statistically lower rate of heart disease, but have rapidly caught up with men. I think you can't discount the rat race for this, the stress, the lack of sleep, the poor diet associated with working life.
Why is it even controversial to point these things out? Is it now so controversial to acknowledge that children are meant to be raised by mothers? And that mothers are able to devote themselves to that because fathers see to the material provisioning?
