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People supported families with single incomes with less than high school education for centuries before the 1950s.

by wizee 1y ago

watwut 1y ago
All the other members of the family were active and produced useful things - both kids and women. The iddle lifestyle was limited to richer classes.
- mandmandam 1y ago
  In foraging societies - ie, most people for the vast majority of human history - people worked ~15–20 hours/week on subsistence tasks. The rest was leisure or social time (ie, time for being a human later rebranded as 'idleness'). Industrialization has pushed inequality to extremes while raising hours worked - even as productivity keeps shooting up. There's no good reason for people to tolerate this; it's just exploitation.
  - _benton 1y ago
    You can still do this now, it's just called "being homeless" and it actually sucks.
    - mandmandam 1y ago
      A, being homeless and being in a gatherer society are very different things. And B, even if you wanted to live that way you can't any more; because the commons has been relentlessly exploited past its breaking point for centuries. I shouldn't really have to explain any of this, but people generally seem to have some weird ideas and blind spots surrounding our history as a species.
      - _benton 1y ago
        In many countries the only obstacle is the legality of living on government lands. In Canada there are people living a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle on crown land. The option is totally available for many people who chose not to do it.
        mandmandam 1y ago
        > the only obstacle is the legality of living on government lands Yes, the obstacle of living illegally on land that has been systematically over-exploited for centuries (or too harsh to bother), without any community or experience. Not sure I'm seeing your point.
        _benton 1y ago
        People do it so it's definitely possible. Most people chose not to do it because it's a hard life with a horrible quality of life. Being a hunter-gatherer and living a nomadic life is not and was never easy or fun.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Those hours worked are carefully defining a lot of work away. Most things people eat need hours of preparation that isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example. When you relook at what people did most of the time you realize they had to work really hard for a lot more hours to survive.
    - mandmandam 1y ago
      Look man if you want to write a refutation of Marshall Sahlins' work, go ahead. I might even read it. But I'm not going to just take the word of a random commentator - are you even in anthropology? Like, this is a broad consensus thing. There's not really much debate; ethnographic studies have backed it up. Where are you getting your info from?
      - Avshalom 1y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#Crit...
        mandmandam 1y ago
        There seem to be two main points of critique there: 1. That there was war and war sucked; disease; and also infant mortality was high - therefore life sucked back then. None of that really factors in to the debate of how much free time people had; and those thing are all still very much with us (especially in America). 2. That food prep and gathering firewood takes time. Well, gathering firewood is also known as 'going for a walk in nature', and it's actually good for you. You can chat with your friends while you do it. It's not like your average job. It might not be technically 'idle', but it's a lot closer to 'idle' than flipping burgers in a sweatbox. Same with food prep - picking through some dried beans, or stirring a pot every 30 mins and making sure it doesn't boil over, while you tell stories around the table just isn't comparable to working in an Amazon warehouse pissing into plastic bottles. It's critique, and you can buy it if you want; but there's nothing there I would call substantial.
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  Who said anything about the idle lifestyle?
  - jimbokun 1y ago
    Implied by "single income". In reality in most families all family members were contributing something to the household income.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
      Income in this context means trading labor for cash. In the past, huge amounts of household work were done without any such exchange. Today, child raising, cleaning, cooking, provisioning, and more remain unpaid household labor. The people who do that work were not idle 800 years ago, and they are not idle today.
      - watwut 1y ago
        Women and kids would tend to animals and food came directly from the animals. They both would tend the fields when work did not required physical strength - and thre was plenty of such work too. The crafts women did were for sale or trade. They would also sell on the market whatever excess household produced. If we are talking about "centuries" quite a lot of people including men did not worked as in being employed for salary. But their work was economical - necessarily so. Being stay at home mom today is mostly battling boredom and demotivation. Or then, making up things to do. It is not the same as milking cows or making cheese.
        PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
        > Being stay at home mom today is mostly battling boredom and demotivation. Or then, making up things to do. It is not the same as milking cows or making cheese. I was a stay at home parent for my daughter. It was extremely far from battling boredom (except perhaps for first year and a half, if that, and even then anyone who is actually interested in child development will not find it boring) and it was the opposite of demotivating. Rather than speak in such broad generalizations, I think it would be better to restrict your claims to specific, real stories.
quickthrowman 1y ago
No they didn’t, read some history. ‘Cottage industry’ and ‘child labor’ are good search terms to use.
- dcow 1y ago
  Children helped support their families, I don’t see the face value problem with that. The fact remains that humans have been having kids in their teens and 20s for millennia, until very recently in western liberal societies.

People supported families with single incomes with less than high school education for centuries before the 1950s.

by wizee 1y ago

People supported families with single incomes with less than high school education for centuries before the 1950s.

All the other members of the family were active and produced useful things - both kids and women. The iddle lifestyle was limited to richer classes.

mandmandam 1y ago
In foraging societies - ie, most people for the vast majority of human history - people worked ~15–20 hours/week on subsistence tasks. The rest was leisure or social time (ie, time for being a human later rebranded as 'idleness'). Industrialization has pushed inequality to extremes while raising hours worked - even as productivity keeps shooting up. There's no good reason for people to tolerate this; it's just exploitation.
- _benton 1y ago
  You can still do this now, it's just called "being homeless" and it actually sucks.
  - mandmandam 1y ago
    A, being homeless and being in a gatherer society are very different things. And B, even if you wanted to live that way you can't any more; because the commons has been relentlessly exploited past its breaking point for centuries. I shouldn't really have to explain any of this, but people generally seem to have some weird ideas and blind spots surrounding our history as a species.
    - _benton 1y ago
      In many countries the only obstacle is the legality of living on government lands. In Canada there are people living a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle on crown land. The option is totally available for many people who chose not to do it.
      - mandmandam 1y ago
        > the only obstacle is the legality of living on government lands Yes, the obstacle of living illegally on land that has been systematically over-exploited for centuries (or too harsh to bother), without any community or experience. Not sure I'm seeing your point.
        _benton 1y ago
        People do it so it's definitely possible. Most people chose not to do it because it's a hard life with a horrible quality of life. Being a hunter-gatherer and living a nomadic life is not and was never easy or fun.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Those hours worked are carefully defining a lot of work away. Most things people eat need hours of preparation that isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example. When you relook at what people did most of the time you realize they had to work really hard for a lot more hours to survive.
  - mandmandam 1y ago
    Look man if you want to write a refutation of Marshall Sahlins' work, go ahead. I might even read it. But I'm not going to just take the word of a random commentator - are you even in anthropology? Like, this is a broad consensus thing. There's not really much debate; ethnographic studies have backed it up. Where are you getting your info from?
    - Avshalom 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#Crit...
      - mandmandam 1y ago
        There seem to be two main points of critique there: 1. That there was war and war sucked; disease; and also infant mortality was high - therefore life sucked back then. None of that really factors in to the debate of how much free time people had; and those thing are all still very much with us (especially in America). 2. That food prep and gathering firewood takes time. Well, gathering firewood is also known as 'going for a walk in nature', and it's actually good for you. You can chat with your friends while you do it. It's not like your average job. It might not be technically 'idle', but it's a lot closer to 'idle' than flipping burgers in a sweatbox. Same with food prep - picking through some dried beans, or stirring a pot every 30 mins and making sure it doesn't boil over, while you tell stories around the table just isn't comparable to working in an Amazon warehouse pissing into plastic bottles. It's critique, and you can buy it if you want; but there's nothing there I would call substantial.
PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
Who said anything about the idle lifestyle?
- jimbokun 1y ago
  Implied by "single income". In reality in most families all family members were contributing something to the household income.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    Income in this context means trading labor for cash. In the past, huge amounts of household work were done without any such exchange. Today, child raising, cleaning, cooking, provisioning, and more remain unpaid household labor. The people who do that work were not idle 800 years ago, and they are not idle today.
    - watwut 1y ago
      Women and kids would tend to animals and food came directly from the animals. They both would tend the fields when work did not required physical strength - and thre was plenty of such work too. The crafts women did were for sale or trade. They would also sell on the market whatever excess household produced. If we are talking about "centuries" quite a lot of people including men did not worked as in being employed for salary. But their work was economical - necessarily so. Being stay at home mom today is mostly battling boredom and demotivation. Or then, making up things to do. It is not the same as milking cows or making cheese.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
        > Being stay at home mom today is mostly battling boredom and demotivation. Or then, making up things to do. It is not the same as milking cows or making cheese. I was a stay at home parent for my daughter. It was extremely far from battling boredom (except perhaps for first year and a half, if that, and even then anyone who is actually interested in child development will not find it boring) and it was the opposite of demotivating. Rather than speak in such broad generalizations, I think it would be better to restrict your claims to specific, real stories.

quickthrowman 1y ago

No they didn’t, read some history. ‘Cottage industry’ and ‘child labor’ are good search terms to use.

dcow 1y ago
Children helped support their families, I don’t see the face value problem with that. The fact remains that humans have been having kids in their teens and 20s for millennia, until very recently in western liberal societies.