Reply to Boomers' Billion-Dollar Bonanza: The Unseen Hoarding Behind Millennial Struggles

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To the person above:  where I live, there are a lot of older boomer women who have literally never worked a day in their lives.  they spend their days going to bible studies and out to eat, swimming at the y and bragging about their grandchildren.  I had never read an obituary before for someone who had never worked.  They are strange.

So yes, I do think it's wrong that the government provides free healthcare to women who have never worked a day in their lives, while children go without.  I don't buy the argument that everything every boomer has is because they earned it, and that they have earned so much more than the rest of us.

and suggesting that since they suffered we should suffer to sounds a bit like those people that try to justify fraternity hazings.  Just make the system better.  don't think that because you put up with it, we should put up with it too. [/quote]

[b]How is that different from wealthy Millennial women who don't work because their husbands make a great deal of money.[/b] They do exist all across the affluent spectrum of DC.

I must say your post reeks of jealousy. I can read between the lines. Which is funny given that swimming at the Y and going to Bible studies is very middle class, not affluent. And I'm sure there's a regional factor at play, especially if in the South.

And when you say you have never read an obituary before of someone who'd never worked,[b] I find it surprising given it was the *norm* for middle class women not to work until the 70s and even in my 80s-90s childhood, a good percentage, typically around 25% if not a bit more, of married women with children didn't work.[/b] [/quote]

+1  
None of the college educated moms I knew growing up worked until they got divorced.  
[/quote]

If you look into the history of social security, when it was enacted there were a lot of destitute elderly women who basically relied on their families for support. Men used to die much earlier and women couldn't work (my grandma was fired from being an accountant in the 1950s when she got pregnant and never again could get hired once they knew she was married and had kids).

But now??? I'm angry that women who don't work are eligible for half their husband's social security. I understand that they'll get his SS when he dies, but why should they get anything that they didn't put into. Working 40 quarters isn't much. If you didn't need money to survive on when you were working age, why should you need more when you're older? [/quote]

I think you don't understand what the social contract was in the near past.  I grew up in a small town, and no woman I knew who had no children or grown children worked.  I can think of two of these women who taught for a year because the school system found it self suddenly was caught short and hired them to fill in the gap. But that is it.

Basically, women took care of the home and men worked outside the home.  In our particular small, town, this applied across all classes--no hired help from the less well off, for example.  It was just not a thing.[/quote]

OK but it's not a thing now. SAHMs are making the choice to stay home. It's very valid, but I don't think everyone else should fund their SS. If you don't need money to work, you don't need money to retire on. [/quote]

I'm a working parent, but find it disheartening that caretaking kids/elderly parents and a home is still so undervalued in our society.  And there are many moms that choose to SAH because the costs of quality childcare are equal to or more than what they make.  Maybe in your circle it's all rich families that have a SAHP but that is not the case for many.

Also, times HAVE changed- most SAHMs I know in my generation (Gen-X) worked for a few years before having kids, it's not like they went straight from HS/college to being a SAHM.  [/quote]

This. I am Gen X and I worked for 14 years before becoming a SAHM, did so for 2 years, and now work part time. We aren't rich and me staying home, and now staying part time, is absolutely a function of the cost of childcare -- this makes more sense for our family financially. Covid also forced our hand on this a bit, which is true for other families I know too.

One of the most stressful things about becoming a SAHM and even now working part-time is knowing I cannot save for retirement, personally, in the same way I was before. You really have to trust your spouse in this situation, and be in it for the long haul, because it is a financial risk to stop working. And when you stop working *in order to* work in the home, providing childcare and housework and other unpaid work to enable your family to function, you become very critically aware of what protections you have and what you don't have. I am fortunate that my DH has always taken the perspective that the money he earns is earned jointly, since if I wasn't doing what I do at home, he would have to hire someone in order to continue working. Someone has to take care of children.

So the idea that someone would be resentful of a SAHM for claiming her spouse's SS, as she's legally entitled to do? It's just ignorant. You think someone who raised kids and took care of a home for 30 years should just be destitute, and should have no claim to the money her spouse was able to pay into the SS system because he had a SAHM who took care of his kids and home? Sorry, you're wrong.[/quote]

I don’t think most people are disputing the legality of it. I think most people who are against the concept think the law should be changed. And I think, for a lot of us, the cost of childcare doesn’t carry a lot of weight (I had my first child in my senior year of college, so trust me I sympathize with the cost). I think there can be exceptions, like significant care for a child with disabilities, not otherwise I think social security should be earned through paid labor. I do not think the historical reasons for allowing a spouse to get social security apply in today’s society. Or if it does, let the working spouse who does the majority of the household work apply both as an individual and a spouse.

FWIW I also find this argument about household labor [b]a bit at odds with the argument I also see from SAH spouses that the role of a SAH spouse is to raise kids, not maintain the household.[/b] [/quote]

If you think that attitude is emblematic of SAHMs, it just means you only know wealthy SAHMs. Who don't need the SS to begin with. It sounds like you know a few entitled SAHMs and can't stand the idea of them getting this benefit, so you assume the whole program is broken.

I don't really get your objection. Spousal benefit is only available to people with so little working history that they don't qualify for SS on their own. That's honestly not that many people at this point. And it would include people who got pregnant before they could get a college (or sometimes even high school) degree and who may have been discouraged from working. It also covers people who may live in depressed areas with poor job prospects, and who may SAHM because they simply cannot find a job that pays enough to cover childcare. It also covers people who may be in abusive relationships where their spouse will not allow them to work. And so on.

The number of high net worth couples who would qualify for the program is very low because they would need to marry really young. Most SAHMs with wealthy DHs I know are college grads who worked in reasonably high paying jobs before becoming a SAHM. I'd be find saying that if your household income is above a certain amount, you don't qualify, but I'd guess that rich people would object and they are more politically powerful.

I'd rather a few rich SAHMs get the spousal benefit than remove it altogether. It protects vulnerable people, mostly women. And it acknowledges that in a family where one spouse works and the other stays home, most of the time the one staying home is also working, just not for a salary. Most SAHMs are not outsourcing all their household tasks.[/quote]

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