Households that are able to make ends meet off of one income are increasingly rare these days.
As a very young child I was fortunate to have my mother around all of the time because she didn’t have to work outside the home. But as we grew older and started attending school she took the initiative to receive formal training and enter the working world. I believe it was her influence that partially inspired me to continue my education after high school, that and entering the real world for a few years also helped.
I never thought twice about her working and leaving us at home to care for ourselves. It’s not like we were at a helpless age. From the time a child turns 12 or 13 they should be able to heat a snack in the microwave and stay out of trouble for a few hours after school until mom or dad comes home, depending on the child of course.
While there’s no hard and fast rule to raising children, or making ends meet, it is certainly much easier to pay all of the bills when there’s more than one income.
According to usnews.com, the results of a decades long study has found that the outlook of people who reached adulthood in the early 2000s saw their working mothers in a positive light. The survey was conducted from 1976 to 2013. Those becoming adults in the late 70s were not quite as accepting of working mothers, the survey found.
Not only is a household with two working parents better able to make ends meet, to me it shows the children that the lines based on gender roles are blurred. Certainly there are differences between men and women, but outside of the physical attributes, there’s nothing stopping women from working, and men from helping with rearing a family.