Apparently one thing that has contributed to more housework is better lighting. When indoor lighting was a fire and soot was everywhere, not a lot of time was spent cleaning up. Once it became oil, more cleaning was done, but you still couldn’t see as much dirt. Fast forward a few centuries and people have good quality lighting everywhere, so every bit of dirt is easily seen.
Yes, back in the day when clothes were washed by vigorously rubbing them against a washboard, and then one-by-one cranking them through a wringer / mangle to dry them. Rugs were cleaned by taking them outside, hanging them on a line, and beating them with a carpet beater. Clothes were expensive, so any time they were damaged it was up to the wife to sew and mend them, and often she’d be sewing new ones too. Bread wasn’t something you bought at the supermarket, it was something you made at home using basic ingredients like flour and water. Eggs came from a backyard chicken coop, and the wife had to feed the chickens too. And so on, and so on…
The 1950s are a really atypical time in history. The US was the victor in a world war, and the only country whose infrastructure didn’t get absolutely smashed. Workers still had labour protections won during the great depression. And, full electrification with easily available electrical appliances was brand new.
Then the other adult fed everyone, and there was nothing left for fun or travel or higher education or personal betterment other than an hour of church one day a week.
Fantasizing about the fulfillment of hard work without the expectation of actually doing hard manual labor is an affliction of wealthy Westerners.
Maybe I dream of days when that was possible because me and my spouse work all fucking week and if we had a kid it would basically take half our income to have our kid raised by fucking strangers. Or one of us stays home for a few years until the kid is in school also costing us half our income and placing us all into abject poverty because one average wage cannot sustain a household in any semblance of comfort.
But yeah fuck me for wanting the life I literally saw my grandparents have on one income. My grandfather didn’t even finish high-school and spent his whole life doing manual labor. They weren’t rich, and they struggled, but they made it. If we tried to live the way they did on 1 income we’d be fucking homeless.
You’re longing for a life one generation enjoyed in their prime. It was a flash in time. It didn’t even last their entire lives, many people in that age group are already in a precarious situation financially, unless they’ve managed to pass away before 2007. You’re fantasizing about a specific economic climate that also largely relied on Jim Crow policies to inequitably grow resources for white people only.
A huge majority of humans ever to have lived, across all of our history as a species, suffered through subsistence farming, which you can go and experience right now today. It sucks. It ruins your body. It’s a curse you can’t help but pass along to your children unless they are smart enough to be sent away to school in a city.
My grandparents got married in the 70s my dude so maybe tone down the Jim Crow stuff before getting all the facts.
I’ll never feel guilty for wanting what previous generations had when we are currently expirencing growing wealth inequality and seeing billionaires flaunting their wealth. It’s a guided age and if we take that excess back we can all live better. Stop defending the rich
We have the resources, we have the technology, and we allow it to be used for the 1%
My child, maybe let’s both take a beat to understand that we’re a generation apart. I’m likely as old as your parents; my grandfather fought in WWII. My parents we’re married in the 70s.
I also have a masters degree in economic policy, so maybe understand, sweet child, that you have very impractical, rose-tinted glasses for some Boomer era that still relied on a boatload of racism, and was entirely unsustainable, filled with poison, and centered on profits above people. It’s a universe away from what you actually want.
I beg you to learn about economic history before you yearn for anything of the past. The future needs to be made new for a modern era, not stocked together from nostalgia.
I’m going to hope this is a cultural difference, and you are roughly my parents age. However, imagining a stranger my parent’s age calling me, a grown ass man with a mortgage and everything, “child” or “sweet child” is just weird. Respectfully you’d need to be at least 20 years older for that to be comfortable to me, or working at a waffle house.
Anyway we are funneling more and more wealth to the top. Reclaim that and we can all live just like my grandparents and your parents. Maybe even a bit better.
And don’t worry I’m quite familiar with history. Built a career out of it myself. I just see significantly larger causes for income inequality than racial discrimination and race based exploitation alone explains.
Yes western nations even today extract wealth from poorer nations. Consumers do benefit by getting “goods”. This exhange benefits the wealthy more than the consumer. I’d gladly give up cheap goods like phones or cars for affordable commodities like food, shelter, and healthcare.
I don’t yearn for suburbia, I yearn to be able to live. To have a family. To not worry day to day what horrible shit my country will do only to benefit the rich.
The cultural difference seems to be you seem to take everything literally. It’s a touch of absurdist sarcasm that is a play on the GOT phrase “my sweet summer child.” Did you really not get that?
Y’all gotta lighten up just a bit or this shit’ll kill you before you ever affect it.
I really think a lot of generational hate is rooted in simple envy that somebody else happened to win the being-born lottery. Can be about family money, historical timing, having the exact eye color Kayleigh thinks is hot… whatever.
Are you from the USA? I recall hearing that post-war USA was a huge golden era for them since the rest of the world was rebuilding, so it’s not the best thing to compare to since it will likely never happen again
Remember housework used to be considered a job that needed a full time adult to attend to
We could just go back to dirt floors
Still gotta sweep those (seriously)
I know, but I bet it would still seriously lower everyone’s standard for what it means to have a clean house
Apparently one thing that has contributed to more housework is better lighting. When indoor lighting was a fire and soot was everywhere, not a lot of time was spent cleaning up. Once it became oil, more cleaning was done, but you still couldn’t see as much dirt. Fast forward a few centuries and people have good quality lighting everywhere, so every bit of dirt is easily seen.
And now you see me putting a 300 lumen light at a low angle to the ground to see the dust while I broom it.
Yes, back in the day when clothes were washed by vigorously rubbing them against a washboard, and then one-by-one cranking them through a wringer / mangle to dry them. Rugs were cleaned by taking them outside, hanging them on a line, and beating them with a carpet beater. Clothes were expensive, so any time they were damaged it was up to the wife to sew and mend them, and often she’d be sewing new ones too. Bread wasn’t something you bought at the supermarket, it was something you made at home using basic ingredients like flour and water. Eggs came from a backyard chicken coop, and the wife had to feed the chickens too. And so on, and so on…
The 1950s and 60s had many of our modern conveniences and yet the standard was for 1 adult to handle the household
The 1950s are a really atypical time in history. The US was the victor in a world war, and the only country whose infrastructure didn’t get absolutely smashed. Workers still had labour protections won during the great depression. And, full electrification with easily available electrical appliances was brand new.
Then the other adult fed everyone, and there was nothing left for fun or travel or higher education or personal betterment other than an hour of church one day a week.
Fantasizing about the fulfillment of hard work without the expectation of actually doing hard manual labor is an affliction of wealthy Westerners.
Maybe I dream of days when that was possible because me and my spouse work all fucking week and if we had a kid it would basically take half our income to have our kid raised by fucking strangers. Or one of us stays home for a few years until the kid is in school also costing us half our income and placing us all into abject poverty because one average wage cannot sustain a household in any semblance of comfort.
But yeah fuck me for wanting the life I literally saw my grandparents have on one income. My grandfather didn’t even finish high-school and spent his whole life doing manual labor. They weren’t rich, and they struggled, but they made it. If we tried to live the way they did on 1 income we’d be fucking homeless.
You’re longing for a life one generation enjoyed in their prime. It was a flash in time. It didn’t even last their entire lives, many people in that age group are already in a precarious situation financially, unless they’ve managed to pass away before 2007. You’re fantasizing about a specific economic climate that also largely relied on Jim Crow policies to inequitably grow resources for white people only.
A huge majority of humans ever to have lived, across all of our history as a species, suffered through subsistence farming, which you can go and experience right now today. It sucks. It ruins your body. It’s a curse you can’t help but pass along to your children unless they are smart enough to be sent away to school in a city.
My grandparents got married in the 70s my dude so maybe tone down the Jim Crow stuff before getting all the facts.
I’ll never feel guilty for wanting what previous generations had when we are currently expirencing growing wealth inequality and seeing billionaires flaunting their wealth. It’s a guided age and if we take that excess back we can all live better. Stop defending the rich
We have the resources, we have the technology, and we allow it to be used for the 1%
My child, maybe let’s both take a beat to understand that we’re a generation apart. I’m likely as old as your parents; my grandfather fought in WWII. My parents we’re married in the 70s.
I also have a masters degree in economic policy, so maybe understand, sweet child, that you have very impractical, rose-tinted glasses for some Boomer era that still relied on a boatload of racism, and was entirely unsustainable, filled with poison, and centered on profits above people. It’s a universe away from what you actually want.
I beg you to learn about economic history before you yearn for anything of the past. The future needs to be made new for a modern era, not stocked together from nostalgia.
I’m going to hope this is a cultural difference, and you are roughly my parents age. However, imagining a stranger my parent’s age calling me, a grown ass man with a mortgage and everything, “child” or “sweet child” is just weird. Respectfully you’d need to be at least 20 years older for that to be comfortable to me, or working at a waffle house.
Anyway we are funneling more and more wealth to the top. Reclaim that and we can all live just like my grandparents and your parents. Maybe even a bit better.
And don’t worry I’m quite familiar with history. Built a career out of it myself. I just see significantly larger causes for income inequality than racial discrimination and race based exploitation alone explains.
Yes western nations even today extract wealth from poorer nations. Consumers do benefit by getting “goods”. This exhange benefits the wealthy more than the consumer. I’d gladly give up cheap goods like phones or cars for affordable commodities like food, shelter, and healthcare.
I don’t yearn for suburbia, I yearn to be able to live. To have a family. To not worry day to day what horrible shit my country will do only to benefit the rich.
The cultural difference seems to be you seem to take everything literally. It’s a touch of absurdist sarcasm that is a play on the GOT phrase “my sweet summer child.” Did you really not get that?
Y’all gotta lighten up just a bit or this shit’ll kill you before you ever affect it.
Honestly it’s lemmy, I expected age based condescension more than a Shakespeare based one. Unfortunately tone is hard to convey over text
Edit: IDK why I said Shakespeare instead of GOT
I really think a lot of generational hate is rooted in simple envy that somebody else happened to win the being-born lottery. Can be about family money, historical timing, having the exact eye color Kayleigh thinks is hot… whatever.
Are you from the USA? I recall hearing that post-war USA was a huge golden era for them since the rest of the world was rebuilding, so it’s not the best thing to compare to since it will likely never happen again