Restoring the Single Income Household

In 1967, 43% of households had a stay at home mother. Today that stands at around 27% of households. Although this is not a result of choice. The majority of households would like to have a stay at home parent if given the option. However, in today’s day and age, it is unaffordable. Many households have both parents working full time and are still struggling to make ends meet. How do we bring back this lost time? A time where a single blue collar worker working full time could support a family of four.

Many will say that I am romanticizing this time. That having two parents in the labor force is a success story of equality and women’s rights. That women are now empowered and independent as a result. But is this really empowering? In today’s world where two parents are working full time, can barely afford to pay their bills, and on top of that have to pay a childcare company thousands of dollars a month to raise their kids for them. Maybe I am missing something, but what about this is empowering? Nothing. It is the exact opposite, it’s extraordinarily disempowering. Not even having the ability to raise your own kids is tragic, not something to be celebrated. Now of course, if this truly is a dynamic that families want then I don’t think they should be barred from doing so. But I’d wager that the vast majority of families would not prefer this. So what policies would get us there? For starters, we can replace much of the welfare state with family support. What if rather than spending trillions a dollars a year on an ineffective system that traps people at the bottom, we simply sent monthly checks to families based on the amount of kids they have? For many families this would give them the security and flexibility required to rely on a single income. However, there are a litany of other policies that conservatives could embrace that achieve similar ends. Replace FHA loans with a program specifically and only targeted for families. Every family trying to buy a home would get a subsidy based on income. For those at the bottom, they would not be required to pay a down payment on a loan while moving up the income ladder a family would only need to pay a part of a down payment. Another policy would be using subsidies/tariffs to being back manufacturing to the US and be placed in struggling communities. Bringing manufacturing back to Appalachia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and so on is essential to providing families with well paying jobs that they can support families on. There are a variety of policy options that would allow families the ability to rely on a single income. As conservatives, many might worry about the cost or corruptibility of such policies. And I agree, we should do everything we can to keep costs under control and reign in abuses in these policies. But if we ever want to have a real political movement, we need to offer a real vision for the future. Not a marginal tax cut every two years. A vision for strong families, strong communities, and overall stability. Bringing back a world where families can raise their kids again should be a world in which we all want to live.