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'The economy is different now': Parents pay grown-up kids' bills with retirement savings
(finance.yahoo.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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I wonder how much of this can be traced back to unrealistic expectations caused by the post-WWII boom in the US.
The US and Canada were the only 2 major developed countries that came out of WWII essentially unscathed. The economy was doing incredibly well. Not only was it possible for a family to survive when only the father was working, they could make it work while buying a big home in a suburb with a new car, a radio, a TV, etc.
The generation before that was the one that went through the great depression which led immediately into WWII, so they didn't have a solid basis for what was normal. Before that was the "roaring 20s", which we know was unusual because you don't call a period "roaring" if things were normal.
Before that was the 1910s, maybe the last "normal" period before 1950 or so. At that time, things were very different. For example, there was no old age security, and it was mostly the children who took care of their elderly parents. When those elderly parents had been having kids (say the 1860s) the norm was about 5 kids per couple. That meant that only one of the kids had to take care of their elderly parents, living in a household with 3 generations. The other kids were able to live in a nuclear family household with just the kids.
So, while things are getting worse now, it may be that we have an unrealistic idea of what's normal. Instead of the period starting in the 1950s as being the period where things were "normal", maybe it was a period where things were unusually good. That would mean that at least some of the "things are getting worse" is just things regressing toward the mean.