Reply to Little House on the Prairie Reboot!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PP.  But weren't the debts mostly related to the farms not working out?  I don't think Charles had much other skill to offer. You will remember the many disasters they experienced with weather and crops.

As for alcoholism, I'm not going to condone it but that was pretty much the most common escapism/entertainment they had.

I've been doing my European genealogy and they were pretty much living the same life ... hand to mouth farmers with a tendency towards alcoholism.  Moved to the U.S., became factory workers, got compulsory public education, started bettering themselves and joined the white collar world.  I think this was a ubiquitous part of the Agricultural Revolution transition.[/quote]

PP here. From what I remember, there were issues where Pa would be too drunk to harvest their crops, and the whole family would have starved if not for the help of others. The debts came because he was a terrible businessman.

The real problem, though, is this idealized version of what prairie life was like. The "Good Old Days" fallacy, similar to what we do with the 1950s. It sets people up to think we need to go back to those times.

Which is why there's a growing number of men (and sadly, women) who want to revoke women's rights, because they think that they would be successful and their wives would support them and everyone would be happy if only we could go back to those times when people had zero other options. See: MAGA.

When the reality is that most men wouldn't be successful, women would be trapped in abusive marriages, children would die and be abused, substance abuse and mental health disorders run rampant, and most would be in poverty.

I would fully support a historically accurate version. Show people what life was really like and that the American Dream wasn't a reality. We want progress, not reverting back to the past. [/quote]

Can you provide a source for Pa having a drinking problem?[/quote]

+1. Pa Ingalls was not perfect, but, I don't remember any mention of a drinking problem in prairie fires.[/quote]

I don't remember any mention of him having a drinking problem either.
I mean, where is one going to get some hooch out on the prairie when you are miles from the next neighbor? At best he might have made his own but that's kind of hard in a one room cabin.

Here's what I do remember - on Laura and Mary's first day of school, they did not have a writing slate. So Mr. Olsson, the local merchant, gave them slates on credit. When they came home and told Pa about it, he went stiff and said he would not be indebted to another man and promptly paid for those writing slates.[/quote]

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