whoops..."chosing" should be "choosing". I miss my spellchecker.

Curious, isn't it? Being laid-off, becoming a stay-at-home dad and then having to choose between going back to work and having a two-income family (because the incomes were a bit lower), or remaining home with the kids has taught me a lot. Or... it has given me much fodder for introspection, and food for thought when it comes to society.

I compare what we are going through to what my great grandparents went through in the great depression, and then I think of how my grandparents' ideals were about money because they grew up in a depression era home. Well, my kids are going to be what my grandparents were; products of the great recession. I am my great-grandfather!!!

How we, as the adults, handle things is going to effect how our kids live their lives. Did our grandparents stress to our parents to marry for stability rather than love stem from their growing-up in the depression? If the market never crashed in 1929 and things kept on as they were, would love and romance been higher on peoples' priority lists because their parents wouldn't have had to listen to their parents grumble about their partners because they married for support rather than love?

I know my mother married for support and bitched and moaned about being married. She had a good job prior to being married. She kept it [her career] until she got kids (we were adopted) and then got sick after getting us, and only had my father's insurance, and lucky for that. But she could never leave my dad, because she had all of his insurance. But we had to grow-up hearing how bad marriage is. My sister is married, successful and has 3 kids. I don't know if she up is happy, but she is an example of living the American Dream, ala 1975. I've been married a bunch of times. I keep trying to get it right.I don't know what my sister and I too out of the lesson we were subjected to.

I know I've gone off on a few tangents and have digressed a bit, but I think I got back to the point, being --that the economy effects how people set-up their long term relationships. And when necessity calls for it, people will stay in bad relationships instead of suffering from other things life will throw at them.

Good subject!
RicoDad

Rico, you raise some fascinating questions (especially the Depression one). Like the way you think. If only you were a woman :)