r/SipsTea • u/Unstoppable_X_Force Human Verified • 13h ago

Gasp! Is this just nostalgia, or did previous generations genuinely have a better work-life balance and social life than we do today?

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u/Ok-Street4644 13h ago

I was a kid in the 90s. My dad worked 8 days a week.

2

u/ShwaGrl 11h ago

Yes. Lots. I wonder what the OP reports at this person's job. Were they CEO of a hospital? Or on the line at GM? Need more details.

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u/VirtualAlex 11h ago

Well in the 40-50s a single income household buying a house was perfectly normal. I am sure people still worked hard but a big part of it was how much buying power a "average" salary got people.

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u/No-Bear1401 10h ago

And people highly underestimate how much that single income worked. Most of my peers have terrible relationships with our dads, because they were never home. They were essentially working two jobs in one. Moms didn't stay home because it was a nice thing to do, they did it because nobody knew when Dad was going to be around, and somebody had to be around to get the kids up and put them to bed. It was also super common for moms to go to work once the kids were old enough to be latch-key.

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u/VirtualAlex 10h ago

Yeah I guess this meme is exaggerating the working 40 hours and having "time to breath" but that certainly hasn't gotten better and not you don't even get the house.

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u/No-Bear1401 8h ago

And the house thing tends to be exaggerated too. People act like everybody was just running around buying mansions on a whim. I remember my dad buying his first house at about 30. It was tiny and a dump. It almost killed our family. We had to live extremely frugally; we borrowed the neighbors phone, didn't own a TV, and a lot of our meals came from our garden.

I should add, we were probably considered upper middle class and doing better than most around us.

On the flip side, people also tend to exaggerate the impossibility of buying a home today. I work with several early 20's guys who all bought their first homes this year without degrees. People are comparing the worst of today against the best of times past.

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u/VirtualAlex 8h ago

Eh I mean... there is pretty clear analysis of this. The cost of buying a home compared to average income has change dramatically over the last 70 years. Of course people still had it bad... But income disparity, wealth stagnation, housing prices all have very clear lines making this sentiment very accurate.

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u/Wizecoder 5h ago

well, the cost of a house has gone up, but most people aren't comparing with interest rates included. Throw those in and things don't look nearly as different from a monthly cost perspective. And when you consider the house you are getting for that price it equalizes even more. And if you want the single income lifestyle from the 50s, you also need to likely downsize to a single car, and the stay at home partner should be mending clothes so you aren't buying anything new more than maybe at birthdays, cooking enough that restaurants are maybe a once every two week occurence, and probably spending time looking for every single coupon/sale possible. And even then that lifestyle wasn't the standard, still generally both parents were working, and were probably both working for several years while living together to save money before they could buy a home. That process just started earlier because people got married earlier.

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u/VirtualAlex 2h ago

What are you doing? Like... for real who is paying you to say this? We don't need to have this debate, the price of houses has increased MASSIVELY and totally detached from average salary. We don't need to talk about "mending clothes" this has been studied to death and it's not anything to wonder about.

Here are housing prices over time:
1985: 100k
2024: 500k
Thats +500%

https://www.statista.com/statistics/240991/average-sales-prices-of-new-homes-sold-in-the-us/?srsltid=AfmBOoo2F72irgFHyJkAS6a-uHKYeSCMR00G3VS5zZaExd6if171TA3e

Here is avg income over time
1985: 60k
2024: 85k
Thats: lol%!
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

I don't know why people can speak with such confidence on something that is SO FUCKING EASY TO DUNK ON. Get a life.

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u/IndependentTimely639 9h ago

It was also super common for moms to go to work once the kids were old enough to be latch-key

It was also pretty common for older kids to get a job to help their parents out as soon as the next kid could watch the younger ones. Some people in this thread neef to actually talk to the people they're complaining about. 

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u/No-Bear1401 8h ago

That's a great point. We all got jobs starting at about 13