I have thought for some time that the default idea of two-income households (and the virtue thereof) is madness. It’s not about discussing the practicalities of how much you need to earn to pay the bills at your hourly rate or anything like that – it’s the assumption that every household of two adults should have two full-time incomes, and that not doing so is either lazy, sinful or peculiar. Or, indeed, that you need some kind of ‘excuse’ like child-rearing to step back from the world of full-time work.
To my mind, a much more sensible normal would involve a standard work week of 35 hours (yes, entire countries have done this without imploding). A childless couple might consider 1.5 total incomes as normal (either two 0.75 or one 1 and one 0.5) and a couple with children might consider 1 total income to be normal (either two 0.5 or one 1 and one 0). They would have much more ‘spare time’ (timed owned by them, not by their employer) to insource domestic tasks, thereby saving money and not requiring them to earn as much. Their lives would also be more pleasant and flexible.
It seems particularly bonkers, as the author of the article briefly mentions, that part of the population is working far too much (80-hour-a-week professionals) and part of the population is working too little (underemployed). Why not just take the 80 hours and split it between two people? Greater employment, same amount of work done, improved mental and physical health. Again, I know it’s not literally as simple as that, but I don’t see why the principle that this would be a good and sensible thing is so reviled.
However, this would all require people to accept a pay cut and to accept greater responsibility for their own lives. The service industry of hangers-on (dog washers and the like) would collapse. It would require a re-skilling of the population in things like cooking and carpentry and sewing. I don’t see how individuals could manage otherwise. But that’s not such an impossible goal if people want to learn! Home economics could certainly be reintroduced at schools if we accept that it might be more useful for 99% of pupils than learning about infighting between Tudor kings and queens.
It’s a great shame that society has decided that our time has no value unless it can be measured in monetary units. Why are we so worried about maximising pounds per hour rather than hedons per hour or per pound? Cranky though they sound, I do think we should take ideas like Gross National Happiness or happiness lessons at school seriously.
It is, however, profoundly disappointing that the majority of post-workists don’t seem to be doing much to reduce their working hours! The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and they seem to be creating recipes then insisting that someone else try them.