‘Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke’

[dArKeR]

There were over 1.6 million bankruptcy filings last year, up 7.4 percent from the previous year. And according to a new book, more people will end up in bankruptcy this year than will suffer a heart attack, than will be diagnosed with cancer or graduate from college, and it’s not who you would think. Elizabeth Warren is a Harvard law professor and bankruptcy expert and discusses these findings in her new book “The Two-Income Tap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke.” She discusses the book on “Today.” Read an excerpt below.

JUST THE WAY SHE PLANNED
       Ruth Ann smiles when she talks about the summer she was pregnant with Ellie. Those were the good days, when life was working out just the way she had planned.
       Dexter was five and learning to swim. Ruth Ann would pick him up from day care in the late afternoon, and the two of them would head for the town swimming pool. While Dexter thrashed about in the water, Ruth Ann would dangle her feet in the pool, waiting for her husband, James, to swing by on his way home from work. Dinners were late and haphazard, but no one cared. Ruth Ann’s life was exactly as she had wanted it, exactly as she had planned...

   This book will tell the story of how having children has become the dividing line between the solvent and the insolvent, and how today’s parents are working harder than ever and falling desperately behind even with two incomes.

http://msnbc.com/news/961895.asp?0cl=c2

[shrike]

1. Got a problem with this

I read the excerpt and it's very interesting, very disturbing. But I fear that right-wingers will use it as yet more "proof" that working moms are destroying society.

[Skittles]

3. um

if they are desperately falling behind with two paychecks, how would one paycheck help?

[benfranklin1776]

4. Actually the authors argue that returning to the fictional good ol days

where women working outside the home was frowned upon by the scions and champions of Ward Cleaverville is a BAD IDEA.

To quote from the article:

"Is the only solution for all the mothers to scurry
pell-mell back to the hearth? It may sound like a tidy
resolution, but it won’t work. Like it or not, women now
need those paychecks to pay the mortgage and the health
insurance bills. Their incomes are committed, and calling for
them to abandon those financial commitments would mean
forcing them to give up their families’ spot in the middle
class. No, the real solution lies elsewhere — in addressing
the reasons behind the bidding war and helping all families,
both dual- and single-income, to get some relief."

Since the study indicates that a significant source of the pressure on familes these days is to get a house in a good school district because, as they term it confidence in the public education system has crumbled, it is a strong argument
for recommitting ourselves to the principle that a good public education is every child's fundamental right and every
child no matter where he or she lives should have a solid education. Although education is a national priority it is funded primarily at the local levels, thus huge funding inequities and discrepancies in the quality of education invariably arise. The federal government can address this problem by acting to improve failing schools so that parents do not have to bankrupt themselves for their children by moving to a neighborhood they really can't afford. However such a federal committment will not occur under Junior since he is long on empty rhetoric and short on money these days.

[w4rma]

9. Those good old days of the 1950s weren't fictional

The wealthy have hoarded America's resources and we are all getting a smaller percenage of the resources than we were 50 years ago.

The top 1% wealthiest households in America own at least 38.1% of all the wealth in America. The Great Depression happened when 44.2% of all the wealth in America was owned by the top 1%.

The bottom 90% of American households own less than 30% of America's wealth.
The bottom 40% of American households own 0.2% of America's wealth.

http://www.ufenet.org/research/wealth_charts.html

Big buisnesses (owned by those in the top 1%) are running small buisnesses out of buisness. Big buisnesses are now leaving the country and taking their wealth with them. Run a small buisness and you have to pay high taxes. Run a big one and you can incorporate in the Cayman Islands, thereby avoiding federal taxes, and shop around in all 50 states for the one that will pay the board members the most to move there.

[benfranklin1776]

10. Oh no question we had stronger unions in the fifties which fought

for better wages for workers and Taft Hartley had not yet emaciated them. In the fifties there was also a strong post war economic expansion fuelled in part by that apotheosis of beneficient internationalism the Marshall Plan, and the salutary effects of the GI Bill and other New Deal legislation were paying off with a better trained work force, all of which were factors combining to allow workers to realize the American dream. The mass wealth redistribution which you correctly refer to as existing today was not yet underway and was not able to fully metastasize until Reagan set about systematically dismantling the New Deal, a process Junior is pursuing with zeal.

The unrealistic vision possesed by the right wing that a woman's role is to be barefoot and pregant and happy with that limited lot in life is what I was decrying. Clearly there was a dark side to the fifties as reflected by the stifling nature of life for many American women who battled depression and despair as a result of being consigned to a life of limited choice and opportunity.

Rather than studying astronomy, biology, physics or engineering women were encouraged to study the following drivel:

http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/film/gdhwife.htm

Nevertheless inequality of wealth is a serious problem in this nation. I wholly agree and we need to start talking candidly about the issue of class and wealth distribution. That discussion is long overdue.

[Skittles]

13. they were good old days only for white males

everyone else was really not that happy

[Ilsa]

2. The problem isn't with working moms.

it is with greedy parents absorbed in consumerism, keeping up with the Joneses, and an atttude of privilege instead of saving for a rainy day or retirement.

It is also about how real wages have not kept up with housing and living expenses.

Sometimes I think "The Millionaire Next Door" should be required reading before graduation from high school.

[RamboLiberal]

5. Actually author argues it's not consumerism

I read a couple chapters of the book and some (not all) of what she says makes sense.

What she claims is housing is taking a big chunk out of incomes because we got ourselves in to a bidding war over houses to get in to better school districts.

She claims in many cases once adjusted for inflation that families for many goods are spending less than 30-40 years ago. For instance autos and appliances last longer (of course when I grew up each kid didn't have a TV, video game, cell phone, etc.

[Snow]

7. A concern I would have is that "good schools"

is often a codeword for racism. And it's often very subtle, or class-based rather than overtly racist. Part of the reason is that good schools and bad schools are often measured and reported by standardized testing, and without going into it in any detail suffice it to say that standardized tests are affected by many things other than how well the children taking the tests are learning their classroom material.

[shrike]

6. You're all right, but

This is the kind of thing that could be easily be twisted out of context by the right wing. I don't blame working mothers. Nobody in their right mind blames working mothers. But we all know the right wing is not in their right mind.

[KG]

8. you're kinda new here, but you'll find that

most DUers don't give a flying fuck what the RW thinks. we are for the most part truth seekers. and the truth is not to be found in the company of RWers.

btw - welcome to DU.

[shrike]

11. Actually, I've lurked for months

so I'm not exactly new. I know what DU thinks of the RW, but everyone else ... I'm not so sure.

[lanlady]

12. here's a sad factoid

Each and every day, two truckloads of freshly minted bankruptcy notifications to creditors leave the US Bankruptcy court in DC.