Poor Man Survival
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A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his
own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the
individual and cannot really know freedom. – F.A. Hayek
2014 The Year of the Woman or Why Women
Should Rule the Nation
I’ve always had this theory that
women usually make better leaders. Given
my experience growing up with the
original super mom this comes as no surprise.
My mother was the neighborhood Kool-Aid mom, always ready with homemade
cookies and a pitcher of that life sustaining liquid.
She worked a full time job
too as an LPN at our local hospital and then for our family doctor. She invented TV dinners, always repacking
leftovers from big Sunday family dinners so we could reheat them if she wasn’t
able to be home.
My mother was a product of
the Great Depression and she sure knew how to squeeze a dollar from every dime
would have managed our national budget better than any one of those who has
been in charge during the last 25 years.
The Arctic blast winding its
way through the country this week and news reports of families struggling to
find daycare due to school closings prompted this. There were no daycare centers or
electronic babysitters when I was a kid.
Cultural Anthropology was my
original college major and I wrote a thesis on how life changed for the worse
once women were no longer stay-at-home mothers.
During WWII more and more women worked outside the home to help with the
war effort.
Historically, women have
always been the nurturers of the young in society. During the war, extended family (grandma, a
favorite aunt) became the nurturing element.
Not bad as they were family. After
the war, many women discovered they enjoyed the freedom and spending power of
working outside the home so many kept on doing so, often out of necessity if
the husband had been killed or injured.
During WWII the government
began withholding income taxes from paychecks to pay for the war as a temporary
measure. They liked having all that
money to spend, so this temporary measure became permanent.
Within a generation it was no
longer a grandmother or aunt who cared for the kids and by the 1960s two-income
families became the norm so we could live the ‘American Dream’ of owning a home
and multiple cars. Buying on credit
became the norm too. The days of easy
credit or as my Dad called it “the get
it now, pay for it later, just like our government” philosophy helped
fuel the go-go years of American prosperity.
Being in debt and instant gratification became
a vicious cycle and the high interest charges on credit cards made bankers very
happy. As PT Barnum once quipped, the
age of the Sucker accelerated.
These cultural trends gave
rise to the latch-key generation, often raised by TV and daycare. The strong moral guidance traditionally
provided by mothers was shrinking as it
became a necessity to have both parents working to pay for rising taxes, a
rising cost of living and the ever growing desire for more goods.
Studies at the time indicated
single parent households boosted drug use, dependency on government, juvenile
delinquency rates and other negative social behavior. By then however, most families were trapped
by high debt loads, social pressure to live beyond one’s means and overall
frustration with the cost of living.
Gone were the days typified by 1950s TV shows featuring Father Knows
Best, replaced by TV dinners and the Nanny State.
In terms of political
leadership, America by the 70s didn’t have much to go on. Nixon was a paranoid crook who took us off
the gold standard and began opening ‘trade’ (debt) with China. Female leaders such as Golda Meir and
Margaret Thatcher were exceptions and proved to be strong leaders.
Meanwhile, women in America
continued to make ends meet, raise families (often as single mothers) and
eventually became the primary breadwinner in a majority of families.
In my humble opinion, women
often make better leaders probably from the simple fact they’ve frequently had
to manage households, money and budgets with far less. Think Mother Earth or Mother Nature, a
traditional role often undermined by men (examples abound in various religions
where women are treated more as chattel or second class mates).
In so many ways I have mixed
feelings 40 years after writing my original thesis but inherently feel the
world might be a better place with more women in place as the primary nurturing
factor as opposed to video games and daycare!
(What sparked my revisit of this was a suggestion that welfare recipients
be trained to care for the children of working mothers –at a discount
rate- much like the old TVA and other
Great Depression era work programs our country had).
Yes, I know there
are some paradoxes here and there are exceptions to every rule (not sure I’d
want Mrs. Clinton or Nancy Pelosi in charge) so what do you think?
NOTE: To read my Brief History of Consumerism, go here:
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2 comments:
Hooray for another well done piece!
Yowser Man! Women should Rule! (They do in our house).
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