Family Wage

A few weeks ago, my husband went with some of the young men in our ward to visit a local company for a career night.  As the owner talked to the boys about the different salaries the boys could make, he told them, "This is job X, it pays around $X, that is not a family wage."  He went through a few positions like that until he started getting to the higher paying, family-supporting wage jobs.  I thought how true that is!  You really do need to be aware that doing piece-work assembly just won't support a family.

Today I got to know a friend better.  I learned that her husband is a teacher, and I was impressed that he would choose the field; I'm all for men in teaching, and wish more would do it.  Then she told us that he actually works FIVE jobs, or rather has five income-generating activities to make ends meet.  Lest you think my friend's husband pulls in all the income so she can sit around watching soaps and eating bon-bons, she also works about 20 hours a week, late at night and is the mom of five.  So between the two of them, they work six jobs.

At that, my blood began to boil.  Just because my husband does make a "family wage" does that mean he works any harder than my friend's husband?  No!  What makes some people so deserving of more income (and sometimes SO MUCH more income) than the other guy or gal who works just as hard, is just as dedicated, and has had just as much education, but is just in a different field???

Don't get me wrong.  I'm fine with people having different salaries, but how I wish we would treat teachers, specifically, like trained professionals, which they usually are.  If we did, we'd probably even get more men in the profession, which would be wonderful.

Another friend commented how her husband wanted to be a teacher, but he knew they couldn't make it on that salary, so went a different direction.  I realized probably both my brothers would enjoy some form of teaching, yet also avoided the field because it does not provide a family wage.  How many men out there would be in teaching if only they could support their families?  Since when did teaching become work for pittance?  When it was a man's profession, was the pay still terrible?  Has teaching always been so undervalued?

Personally, I chose teaching because I believed it would provide me with the flexibility I'd need to be home with my kids if I needed to be working, even if the pay was lousy.  I enjoy teaching, but I don't know if I'd enjoy being a teacher as you typically think of them---in a public school setting.  However, now I also recognize the benefits of training in what is considered more men's fields/more "professional": medical, law, etc. It is neat that those professions can provide the opportunity to work less, say than a teacher, yet generate more income, and allow a person to be flexible with his/her schedule.

However, once again, I'm terribly annoyed that I might more likely choose one of those higher-paying career paths merely for the money.  What if I really, really wanted to be a teacher, but decided to be a doctor just for the money?  It's like we're giving up our personal integrity for money, and I think it's really sad, yet it also seems necessary when you're trying to support a family.

End rant.

The disintegrating family and a book with ideas to combat it

Here are a couple things I saw today on the disintegrating family.

First off, did you see the WSJ's "America's Baby Bust" from the 2nd?  It reminded me a bit of Demographic Winter and population decline and the potential effects on society.

America's fertility rate began falling almost as soon as the nation was founded. In 1800, the average white American woman had seven children. (The first reliable data on black fertility begin in the 1850s.) Since then, our fertility rate has floated consistently downward, with only one major moment of increase—the baby boom. In 1940, America's fertility rate was already skirting the replacement level, but after the war it jumped and remained elevated for a generation. Then, beginning in 1970, it began to sink like a stone.

There's a constellation of reasons for this decline: Middle-class wages began a long period of stagnation. College became a universal experience for most Americans, which not only pushed people into marrying later but made having children more expensive. Women began attending college in equal (and then greater) numbers than men. More important, women began branching out into careers beyond teaching and nursing. And the combination of the birth-control pill and the rise of cohabitation broke the iron triangle linking sex, marriage and childbearing.

. . .Conservatives like to think that if we could just provide the right tax incentives for childbearing, then Americans might go back to having children the way they did 40 years ago. Liberals like to think that if we would just be more like France—offer state-run day care and other programs so women wouldn't have to choose between working and motherhood—it would solve the problem. But the evidence suggests that neither path offers more than marginal gains.

As I read, I, too, wondered what could make people want to have more children.  My initial thought was that we're too far gone for that.  It's so easy not to have children; we're too selfish; we don't even get married anymore!  (So why would we have children??)  Our world is generally not even family-friendly.  We worship the individual.

If we're going to reverse this decline [in population growth], we'll need to reintroduce into American culture the notion that human flourishing ranges wider and deeper than calculations of mere happiness.

I've been thinking so much about happiness lately and have been wanting to write a post on it.  I'm even trying to have the mindset that life is NOT about happiness, but is about WORK.  I think I'm actually more content when I set my expectation lower regarding personal satisfaction/happiness.

I also found this one interesting, too:

Higher education dampens fertility in all sorts of ways. It delays marriage, incurs debt, increases the opportunity costs of childbearing and significantly increases the expense of raising a child. If you doubt that the economics of the university system are broken, consider this: Since 1960, the real cost of goods in nearly every other sector of American life has dropped. Meanwhile, the real cost of college has increased by more than 1,000%.
If college were another industry, everyone would be campaigning for reform.

OUCH!

I also read today, the intro to Fearless Parenting about actually raising our kids to become mature, responsible adults.  Maybe I can read the book someday!

It’s not that as parents we don’t try. We hover over our kids twenty four hours a
day, we protect our kids from every imaginable harm, we cry with our kids when
they’re hurting, we provide our kids with the best of everything, we run interference
for our kids when they’re in trouble, we do science fair projects for our kids
when they go to bed and we throw ticker-tape parades for them when they graduate
from second grade. We’re doing everything for our kids except the one key
thing we should have been doing all along: prepare them for adulthood.

. . .Instead of teaching them how to struggle, we eliminate struggle from their
lives. Instead of teaching them how to persevere, we tell them not to try so hard.
Instead of teaching them to do without, we teach them all they have to do is ask.
Instead of teaching them to be adventurous we make them risk adverse. Instead
of teaching them how to succeed, we teach them to be happy because we’ve succeeded.

. . .We can teach them to value honor and integrity over “cool” and “sexy.”  

With the way things our with our society, our government, our economy, sometimes I wish we could just go colonize a new country and start over, only there's no where to go.  I wonder what we're in for as no one can seem to come up with any good plan to fix "things," and then even if they do come up with a plan, no one can agree on it.

Family Friendly

Recently I had Heather from Women in the Scriptures over for lunch.  How fun to actually meet her in person!  She was telling me about how she got to take her kids swimming at a pool, but kid hours were only for 1 or 2 hours the whole day -- and those hours were right in the afternoon during nap time!  How family unfriendly is that!?

Then, I remembered a story my husband told me about our friend who lived in Germany as a girl.  At that time, in their location, some grocery stores did not allow children (maybe they still don't).  Are you kidding me?  How would you ever get the shopping done?  She and her siblings had to wait outside while their mother went in and shopped!

Are we really trying to make it more inconvenient for families these days?

I realized these problems aren't just happening in other countries and in big cities, but in my own little city!

At our local rec. center, there's quite a walk from the parking lot to the main entrance (unless you get a good parking spot). However, there's an exit door that is close to the pools that people sometimes sneak in.   One day, when I was pregnant and feeling particularly gross and light-headed, taking two kids to swimming lessons, and trying to get a one year-old to walk fast, I decided to go in those exit doors, because walking around to the main entrance would add probably 5 minutes to our travel time.  (OK, maybe it wasn't 5, but it was at least 3 that felt like 5).  An older worker lady saw us and told us to go around.  I didn't give her any flack, but just turned right around and inched my way toward the real entrance because I knew I was in the wrong.

I came home and wrote a letter to the rec center suggesting that they could be more family friendly by opening up that exit door just for swim lesson time (you don't have to show any proof that you're there for lessons, you just say you're there and they open the gate at the main entrance, so there's nothing special about going the long way).  I told them my experience of being a pregnant mother of young children and that that small thing would help me so much.  I never did hear back, and they never did open the door.  So much for making things nicer for young families during swimming lessons.


Anyway, what's my point?  I guess I just think it's sad that we're becoming more family unfriendly.  I wish I'd even remember how hard it is with little ones when I have my times where I don't have little ones.  I can't tell you how many times I've been at the store and have seen the struggling mother and thought, "Aw, she can handle it, she's used to this chaos.  She's tough, I'm sure."  But really, she's probably about ready to cry, and I need to remember how hard it is!  We all need to remember to lend a hand and ease the burdens of those struggling with containing their little children.  I wish we had more places like Toys-R-Us and our pediatrician's office that has special parking for moms with babies.

Have you seen businesses/products be more family friendly/unfriendly?  What can we do to be more helpful to families?

7/26/12 Update:  Saw this on KSL.com today about the No Kids Allowed Movement.