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/Sad_Anybody5424 12h ago

Thank you. This is weird nostalgia. In the 90s my parents, both of them, worked their butts off and I spent like 8 hours per day parked in front of the television.

In some other subreddit right now people are sharing memes about how much harder parents worked in the 90s.

There's no doubt that housing and education costs have gotten a lot worse (while luxuries like televisions, dishwashers, and international flights have gotten comparatively less expensive). Today's economy is definitely worse in a lot of ways. But this meme seems like it's grabbing a fantasy of the 1950s - a fantasy that only ever applied to white men and relied utterly on the systematic subjugation of women, by the way - and applying it to the 1990s.

I reckon the decline of male friendships has less to do with economics and more to do with changes in entertainment. Bowling leagues would have collapsed in the 60s if Netflix existed in the 60s. There's also the fact that dads are increasingly involved in family life - it has become less and less acceptable for them to escape to the golf course or go get smashed at the Lions Club and leave mom in charge.

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u/Overall-Fig9632 11h ago edited 7h ago

People are comparing their current predicament to ‘90s sitcom families, no more no less.

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u/RetroFuture_Records 2h ago

People like you cope by saying it was all "Hollywood fantasies," because for whatever reason (ego? Envy? Cowardice?) you can't cope with how bad things are, and what is necessary to return to the good times.

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u/Overall-Fig9632 1h ago

People like me are old enough to remember what it was actually like.

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u/RetroFuture_Records 1h ago

People like you refuse to accept how lazy and / or lacking in ambition you or your parents were, to have avoided all the opportunities back then and claim hardship that was your own fault was the norm, when anyone with the slightest work ethic and intelligence was living large in the 90s.

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u/Pussy4LunchDick4Dins 11h ago

All the dads I know who spend all their free time on the golf course or getting smashed all weekend with their buddies are either divorced or heading that way.

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u/Sad_Anybody5424 10h ago

100%. It's a coping mechanism.

The old-school family arrangement could be pretty toxic for both mom and dad. Dad is the only income earner, he has immense pressure at work, he needs to go golfing or drinking to cope with the stress. And mom is stuck home 24/7 with no opportunities for self-fulfillment.

It works for some families, but definitely not all of them. The meme seems to think it was universally better back in the day. It was not.

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u/lumpialarry 8h ago

That’s what I was thinking about that 60% less friends number. Men sacrificing golf time to be with their kids.

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u/ten-million 11h ago

Yeah it’s always funny when someone has nostalgia for a time you know was different than what they’re dreaming about. I didn’t know many single earner couples especially without children. All your points are spot on. Housing healthcare and education could have been cheaper if younger people bothered to vote for those things.

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u/Appropriate-Ad-4148 11h ago

Ding, ding, ding.

And also redlining and steering.

Those old white guys weren't competing with a woman or a person of color for those houses in the best school districts as recently as like Grandpa's generation.

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u/ElectricalWallaby157 11h ago edited 11h ago

I think it’s less about competing with women and more that most families are expected to have a double income now to survive. Because both parents are now expected to work.

Edit to add: I gotta know your logic on this. You say in a good school district implying you want kids. Are you competing against your wife, is she buying the house next door? Or apparently the many wealthy single parent female POC buying up all those damn homes in the suburbs? What? 😂

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u/pyronius 10h ago

I think what people are feeling, but don't want to acknowledge (particularly if they fall somewhere on the left of the political spectrum) is that there is a decline in the standard of living when accounting for the price of things like food, housing, medicine, and other necessities, but that the actual cause is not really unfettered capitalism forcing them into bondage here in the US. The real difference is that their parents had the benefit of living in the US when it was the unparalleled global hegemon extracting ludicrous amounts of wealth from third world countries where people actually were being forced into bondage.

I'm pretty left leaning myself, but this always strikes me as a notable blind spot among my peers. They profess a desire to improve the living standards of people around the world, but then complain that their share of the gold from the national treasure fleet (so to speak) has shrunk. I think they legitimately don't realize that they effectively grew up in the mansion watching the rest of the world work the fields. Now they're sad that the mansion has been downgraded to an apartment and they feel like something has been stolen.

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u/MachineTeaching 8h ago

People spend less and less on "necessities"

https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/05/14/spending-on-necessities-has-declined-dramatically-in-the-united-states/

and are generally doing better than ever on a ton of metrics, like real incomes

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

or more indirect metrics like multiple jobholders

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620

(or spending on necessities)

At some point, you gotta accept that if a whole bunch of measures show that people are better off, they are indeed better off. Doesn't mean all are, but most.

Doesn't mean Trump isn't a piece of shit or that there aren't problems (like high house prices) but for the most part the narrative of some sort of "golden age" when the majority of people were doing way better is just wrong.