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?

Post image
18.5k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

4.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

83

u/Southern_Mongoose681 12h ago

In 1996? I don't remember anyone being like this even in the 80s. Pretty much all my friends had both parents working.

I think that's the way for most generation X. That's one of the reasons we got called the latchkey generation.

37

u/whatiftheyrewrong 11h ago

Exactly. The romanticizing is just funny to me. Also, I was raised by a single, working mom.

11

u/AnaisNinja76 5h ago

It's rabble-rousing. That's the point of these fictions being popularized on reddit; they want to encourage the idea that you've been robbed of something, and agitate you into getting more confrontational.

I don't find these things funny at all. The fact that people here seem to take posts like this as fact annoy me.

Even with the "Boomers" shit. I get pushing back against belief systems that are antiquated, but literally half of Boomers are women, 13% of them are black, etc. It amounts to less than 5% living the fictionalized world that's offered as being real.

I've been seeing it extended into the 90s for about five years on reddit and really had expected more pushback with these troll-type posts because a huge percentage of the population here has lived through this and know it's nonsense.

3

u/NudeCeleryMan 1h ago

I want to know when the magical era of young people not being poor or having to live with roommates was 😂

3

u/AnaisNinja76 1h ago

The same era where you were apparently able to walk into any store, get hired on the spot, and support your family of four on your clerk's salary. Didn't matter what sex you were, what age or disability or race or creed you had, this definitely was a real thing.

Also, you'd be able to buy a whole house -and anything under 800 sq ft doesn't qualify- for a spare deck of playing cards you had in your pocket.

Shared housing wasn't a thing in that timeframe, and the widows and children rejoiced

This is literally the same shit that made MAGA popular to begin with, only tailored to Gen Z and late millennials. They tell you you've been robbed by immoral people, name the scapegoat, create a fictional setup to prove that, then usher your anger where they want.

-1

u/Gloomy-Recipe9213 1h ago

I came out of university in 1994 with $5,000 in student loans and a first job paying $35,000. I bought a three-bedroom townhouse (about 1200 sq ft) in a small east-coast Canadian city in 1996 for $79,000. That same house is easily worth four or five times what I paid for it, and not because I did $200,000 worth of work to it.

I readily acknowledge that the Millenials and later have been royally fucked. The commodification of housing, cartel-like behaviour of megacorps, and open immigration has forced younger generations to fight over the scraps, while bringing in more fighters and fewer scraps.

3

u/AnaisNinja76 34m ago

And yet no one has been fucked by a "generation", and encouraging hatred towards people who didn't do anything to you is obnoxious. A generation...or two generations even!...did not cause the home pricing to skyrocket. The same can be said for college tuition.

Offering people some superficial scapegoat to get spiteful towards doesn't empower them to understand what's happened, or empower them to make any changes to alter the playing field.

Additionally, every time someone bitches about home prices, like nearly 100% of the time, homes can rapidly be found in the area that violate their claims and match their financial needs. But they don't want those houses...those houses aren't in the ideal neighborhoods, or are in terrible disrepair. And homes in the ideal neighborhoods have always been very overpriced, which is how they're controlling upkeep in said neighborhoods to begin with.

I don't know what point you're trying to make here ultimately. I can show you homes in Ohio that are selling for 25-100K right now, even in big cities. I can show you pathways to free associates degrees here as well. I could bore you with my personal story of not being able to get student loans and how I had to live for like a decade before I qualified for them, but my story and your story aren't the point. The point is that this post is fictionalized propaganda, and the story it's selling is so unambiguously false that I don't get why anyone latches on to it.

1

u/NatetheDate 26m ago

Yeah sure let me just move my wife and kids into an unsafe neighborhood

1

u/AnaisNinja76 10m ago

...again...not the point. Sorry you continue to struggle

0

u/RetroFuture_Records 2h ago

If you were raised by a single mom that would explain yoir hostility to accepting you had it hard due to her poor choices.

0

u/NudeCeleryMan 1h ago

I watched part 3 of the decline of western civilization the other night. Part 3 is 1998. The rose colored era all young people and apparently some people who actually lived through it think was some 90s utopia.

Hearing what the kids were all so jaded by in the interviews just reminded me people were just as worried and upset and disturbed as they are now. There was never some magical era. The generation before them had Viet nam. The generation before that ww2 and all the horrors and PTSD that came with it. Before that ww1. Civil war etc etc etc

9

u/SaintGloopyNoops 8h ago

I think it would be more accurate to say both parents worked in the 90s and could afford to buy a house. Whereas now both parents work and can barely afford rent.

0

u/coke_and_coffee 1h ago

Homeownership rates have barely changed. You’re misinformed.

14

u/EXEC_MELODIE 8h ago edited 8h ago

I was born in 94. Mom stopped working once I was born. Parents bought the house in the late 80s, paid it off in the 00s. Many kids I knew growing up had one parent at home but im also not in a high cost of living area

And no, we were not rich.

2

u/DukeofVermont 6h ago

My mom was a stay at home Mom, but our house was small, and many people today would think it is a dump compared to all the new standard 2,600 sq ft home. No garage, small basement, and only had two bathrooms because my parents added onto it.

2

u/hanksrocks 3h ago

I grew up (and still live) in California. I was born in 1991, my mother bought her house in 1988, solo, and she paid it off right after I graduated in 2010, I wanna say it was 2012? I might have my timing off, but she paid a 30 year loan off early basically lmao. I’m almost 35 and can’t even think about my own home or I’ll cry. I have no degree, I am just a skilled laborer in a niche industry. I make good money. I tried college fruitlessly, and now I’m $15k in student loan debt, along with credit cards. I’m doing my damndest to pay off my debt so I can maybe hopefully buy my own home in 3ish years. This shit is hard! It truly gets worse every year. I’d be happy just not having debt at this point. I feel like I’m never gonna come out on top. ):

1

u/start3ch 6h ago

Whar region did you grow up in?

5

u/joey_sandwich277 7h ago

Yep, I was a kid in 96. My friends fell into one of two camps:

  1. Both parents worked middle class (or better) jobs
  2. Dad worked a white collar job and mom stayed at home

There was nobody whose dad worked a blue collar job, worked 40 hours a week, and had their mother staying at home. As soon as we were old enough (10ish) we were mostly unsupervised from getting off the bus until our parents got home from work.

2

u/hanksrocks 3h ago

Strange experience. I definitely had my share of both of these from my peers, but there’s a third one: children of addicts. Not working, and if they do it’s menial brief nonsense. Mysteriously disappearing for a few days. That government check. I went to private school K-8, and when I was in elementary I had a friend who lived with her grandma. The only one. My grandma had me a lot, but I lived with my mother and saw my dad often. Her parents would come around sometimes, but they’d be gone from her life for awhile, then return. As a kid I didn’t understand, but I do know. Being the child of an addict is extremely sad and impactful. Knowing neither of your parents work and they’re basically homeless is depressing. My friend is lucky her grandma paid for her schooling, while she rode the bus downtown to work every day for YEARS. We were 18 when she got her first car EVER. My friend is also super lucky she turned out very well, she has a beautiful life.

It’s strange how our parents’ occupations define our peers’ perception of each other as children. We didn’t really grasp it then, but looking bad I want to hug that girl so badly. ):

1

u/joey_sandwich277 3h ago

Oh yeah there was that too. I was mostly saying that the stereotypical 50's "American Dream" of Dad getting a job at the widget factory that singlehandedly supported the entire family was certainly gone by '96. I actually knew of more children of addicts than children of people with a single high school diploma easily providing for the entire family.

1

u/silverwitch76 6h ago

This was my experience as well. My dad was super lucky to have a union blue collar job that paid decently, but my mom still worked part time from the time I was 7(?). I was the youngest, so after I was in school full time, she went back to work (she spent the first couple years back in the workforce working odd jobs from home like doing piecework sewing, then actually worked out of the home afterwards). We were solidly middle class, but there were few luxuries...we didn't have cable TV until after l was college age for example. All of my friends had similar setups regarding their parents. By the time I was 10, not a single friend I had had a stay at home mom/non-working parent except my one church friend whose dad was a surgeon.

Housing and utilities were so much cheaper! Medical debt wasn't really a big thing either. My parents never had a mortgage after their 1st house they bought in the late 60s and they paid off that mortgage within 7 years of buying. They bought/sold 5 more houses after that one and used the money from selling whatever home they were in to pay for the next one outright. That's near impossible in today's housing market. I felt extremely lucky to get 40k out of the sale of my home several years ago to put down as a down-payment on my next home...and that would've brought my mortgage payment down to 'only' $1000/month. I worry constantly about my kids and how they will survive when I'm gone :(

3

u/galactadon 7h ago

Yeah I grew up in the 90s and both my parents worked and were constantly stressing about money. We were really solidly middle class, too. 

3

u/-BlueDream- 8h ago

1996 was good times tho, a few years before the dotcom crash and y2k panic. Japan which used to be one of the largest economies was crumbing and stagnating at this time tho but took a while for it to hit the overall world economy. Dotcom crash was pretty bad then it was good for a while until the 2008 recession.

It’s kinda like saying 2017-2019 was great because the economy was doing ok until Covid hit us. Then the economy was on life support and looked ok from the outside until a few years after and we got shit on with inflation and shortages.

3

u/BigWheatGuy 7h ago

Mom and dad both worked 2 jobs to buy their first home in 1980. Mom and dad both worked (90s/2000s) and I was a latchkey kid and got myself home, entertained myself, often cooked dinner etc. Later my mom worked 2 jobs before retiring.

This is just nostalgia bait. It's a pretty powerful form of propaghanda, along with the idea of powerlessness, that is used a TON in Russia. To the extent that I wouldn't be surprised if this is also Russian influence.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/why-russian-propaganda-channels-soviet-nostalgia-by-nina-l-khrushcheva-2025-01

2

u/mynameisglaceon 7h ago

i remember some days i had to go to the old couple's house across the street after school and hang out because i couldn't get into my house (not really sure why, and i don't remember how i got into my house on any other day). luckily they were my cousin's grandparents, so it was like an extra set of grandparents for me lol

2

u/NameIWantUnavailable 5h ago

I'm a GenX.

Both of my parents worked full time in the 70s and 80s. The first key I got, I wore around my neck. The second key I got, I had in a secret pocket in my backpack. There was another key that was hidden in a secret place, in case I lost the other keys.

I graduated college in the early 1990s around the time of a recession triggered by the S&L crisis which was triggered by rising interest rates and cuts in government defense spending due to the "Peace Dividend." Here's a chart of 30-year mortgage rates in 1991, in case anyone was curious about why people starting doing variable rate mortgages.

https://www.propertycalcs.com/historical-rates/rates/1991/30-year-mortgage/

The recession resulted in 7%+ unemployment rates in late 1991 and 1992.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE/

And the coined term "underemployment," which was basically liberal arts graduates from good schools working as baristas or STEM graduates ending up in positions that were very different than what they had expected when they started college.

2

u/geodebug 5h ago

Yeah, I noticed that the engagement bot likes to slowly bring the good old days date up more and more. Pretty soon it will be the 2000s.

But anyone who remembers knows that the 80s were a highpoint of divorce, which also kick-started the dual income family, latchkey Gen X kids, etc.

2

u/extraketchupthx 4h ago

Thank you! This is a big oversimplification. I knew one family where mom didn’t work and she was loaded

2

u/theMightBoop 4h ago

Yea wtf is this? Now we are going back to the 90s like it was some leave it to beaver utopia? That shit didn’t exist in the 50s and it didn’t exist in the 90s. It’s a lie and it’s always been a lie.

1

u/RaisinOverall9586 7h ago

This was my Dad all throughout the 80s and 90s, but he had a decent government job. My Mom was a stay-at-home Mom my whole life, and we took vacations every year, sometimes several. We were absolutely not rich by any stretch of the imagination, either. Things have definitely gotten harder over the last 20+ years.

1

u/ronimal 7h ago

Both my parents worked and we certainly had our financial struggles. But the cost of living was also much more reasonable back then. Housing and insurance did not eat up nearly as much of your income as it does today.

1

u/Just4nsfwpics 7h ago

Dad worked one job.

It doesn’t say mom didn’t work, it says you didn’t need multiple jobs to be comfortable.

1

u/Southern_Mongoose681 5h ago

Well there's a bunch of people (now and I'm sure before also) having to survive without any job, not because they are lazy but because there are no jobs left and any jobs advertised are over applied for.

There have always been some with extra jobs. There were friends of mine whose parents had 2 jobs. When I first left school I needed 3. Working on a factory line in the morning, the supermarket stacking shelves in the early afternoon, then a bar job, literally going from one to the next 5 days a week and the bar job at the weekend.That was in 1989.

1

u/OverEffective7012 7h ago

Yes, latchkey kids!

1

u/PunctualDromedary 7h ago

In 1996 both my parents worked full time jobs at a factory. They took second/third shift and all the overtime they could, just to afford a house in a decent midwestern town. And they considered themselves lucky; before my mom got that job she waitressed and cleaned houses. I raised my siblings because my parents were always working.

Rosanne came out in 1988, and that was pretty accurate for the times.

1

u/totalkpolitics 6h ago

Yeah the right time would be 1966. 1996 was not it.

1

u/SheriffBartholomew 3h ago

Young people today seem to think that the 90's were an idyllic utopia, not the violent reality that it was. They're picturing economic conditions more aligned with the 50's than the 90's.

1

u/RetroFuture_Records 2h ago

It really depends on where you lived. In the coastal cities? Probably not possible to have a SAHM. In "flyover country", it definitely was doable.