I don't know how much it takes these days for a family to pay the bills, but I have a good friend who teaches middle school music which doesn't pay a great deal, and his wife stays home with their two toddlers. This can't be easy, but I think they do without a lot. Much less than that, and I don't think you could do it on one income.
On the other hand, this generation (and I include my own kids in this- not necessarily yours, whom I don't know at all) seems to believe that large screen tvs, the best video equipment, new cars, dinners out, vacations, should be the immediate result of getting out of school. Not a lot of delayed gratification. WE gave them too much maybe, I dunno.
As for Iktomi's letting her kids die, I think you misunderstood her posts on that- but here is what I think, fwiw.
It is a mistake to try to force people to retract something by devising some extreme scenario using emotional factors from their personal life. It's like that question of "would you kill your own child to save a whole village?"
It's meaningless. Meaningless in the same way dismissing Jefferson's excellent writings on fiduciary responsibility because he couldn't handle his own finances would be.
We have ideals; we do our best to live up to them and make decisions based on them. But if we formed our general rules using only the most extreme situation, a situation that quite possibly would force us to act contrary to our ideal, we would never be able to stand for anything. So we set the ideal, and then we guard it as best we can. Most of us believe these ideals are worth dying for. It's why we fight, but it's also why we guard against anything that might be an insidious erosion of them. And I think that's part of what the conflict is on this- some see erosion; some see necessary defense.
Anyway, that's my take. |
