Think About It. Rosie. For a few this piece will be a real memory flogger. For our younger readers it may seem a preposterous presentation of facts and figures that bear no resemblance to their reality. My thoughts began with the possible effect of two working parents on the lack of employment for many single working parents. Result high unemployment. Inadequate job opportunity.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, both parents worked just to survive. No need for child care. Children worked also, in the fields or with mother gathering grain, until the boys were old enough to hunt. Later the young men mastered father’s craft while the young ladies were trained in home management and/or care. (That’s the part where you work hardest.)
Gentlemen who led the increasingly industrialized American nation were thought to be appropriate partners for college girls working on their MRS degree. Some women had careers outside the home, from necessity or choice. But mostly the men provided the income while their wives kept the home fires, hopefully not the dinner, burning.
Along came World War II, a distant memory to some, a simple question mark to others. Ponder these numbers. With a population of 131,028,000 in 1939, 416,000 American members of the military (mostly men) died by 1945. Actually worldwide there were 60 million deaths.
With hundreds of thousands of men volunteering or receiving “Greetings from the President”, the government launched a campaign to convince women to join the effort to stop the aggressors in two hemispheres. That’s how Rosie the Riveter was born.
And work they did. They did the heavy lifting manufacturing tanks, guns, boats, all manner of military vehicles, and more. And when the battle was over, some decided to stay on the job when we could afford the luxury and materials to make cars, washers, dryers and all the products missing during the long conflict. And they now had the money to buy them.
Is it possible that social problems result from having no family adults in the household while children are growing up? Are both parents employed because of the need to provide the basics for a family survival, or the desire to have more of the goods that money can buy?
Keeping up with the Joneses, the desire for more stuff causes more members of the family to work to get them. Result? Fewer jobs are available and wages stay lower due to “the law of supply and demand”.
Then I’m reminded that if fewer people worked, they would have less money to spend, and it would lower demand and fewer workers would be needed. What then?
However, in spite of all we hear, the system does seem to work, when unfettered by manipulative government interference. There is some reason people come here from every other nation in the world. Between 1986 and 2012 over 26 million people chose the United States over their place of birth. Over 50,000 came from each of 84 nations worldwide. Others provided our country fewer people with new ideas and culture; but they came.
And by the way, if you don’t have a job, for goodness sake don’t blame Rosie. Think About It.
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