It would also vastly increase the quality of life at home for couples and families, having a full-time homemaker and child-rearer. Many of our current challenges with indifferent, poorly raised children growing up and entering the workforce without having been taught even common courtesies would dwindle to statistical non-relevance.
But though the symptoms are sociological, the source of the problem is economical.
In the 1950s, a man would work all year, 40h/week AT MOST, for $5000. But that was enough for him to buy a house in a reasonable number of years, and comfortably support a wife, 2-4 children, and a maid, and to take a family vacation every year.
With inflation and the every-growing cost of housing, basic necessities, and all the rest, to enjoy the same lifestyle as that fairly typical gent of the '50s, today that man would have to make approximately $160,000 per year. At the time of this posting, the average income in the USA is $31,099 (which itself is rather skewed by income inequity, so the real average is lower).
In order to have FOOD, CLOTHING, and a ROOF, most families today have both parents working, 3 jobs between them, 60hour weeks, and the children being looked after by daycare services by other shlubs for whom this is a job, and as professional as they might or might not be, in the end have no investment at all in the quality of adult that the children they "look after" (definitely not "raise") will become once they age out... or really, just at the end of the work shift for that given day.
Let me be frank; I couldn't care less whether it were the wife or the husband staying home with the kids. In our modern social thinking, I don't even think it matters greatly one way or the other. That the common answer these days is that no one is at home, spending the entire day with the kids without any greater priority or distraction than them... teaching manners, changing the channel when a show teaching bad values comes on, correcting mistakes before they've been repeated long enough to become life-habits... and just to use a nice, real-world example, stopping a damn 9-year-old from getting addicted to BDSM porn... Yeah, "no one" is not a good answer.
...And also keeping the house clean so that the family is not living in filth and disorder, and cooking healthy balanced meals daily. Lot's of secondary quality-of-life advantages to having SOMEONE at home full-time.
Extremely few of us can afford that kind of healthy home life anymore.
How to fix it though... One interesting idea I read about was something like a Universal Basic Income, like welfare for everyone, not using the dollar, but a new, non-fiat currency (may as well follow Sci-Fi conventions and call them "Credits") that wasn't variable, but was nailed firmly to the value of basic necessities. Common, but adequate housing would be free to anyone, but to live in a NICE house, you'd have to have a job and make old fashioned $USD. Food staples and simple, nutritious meals could be had a grocery stores and modest cafeterias bought with Credits (and the limit of how many Credits each person gets a day serves as a rationing system to avoid over-consumption and pointless hoarding). If you want to take a lady out to a fancy high-class restaurant and impress her however, you'd need a job earning $USD, over and above your Basic Income Credits.
But though the symptoms are sociological, the source of the problem is economical.
In the 1950s, a man would work all year, 40h/week AT MOST, for $5000. But that was enough for him to buy a house in a reasonable number of years, and comfortably support a wife, 2-4 children, and a maid, and to take a family vacation every year.
With inflation and the every-growing cost of housing, basic necessities, and all the rest, to enjoy the same lifestyle as that fairly typical gent of the '50s, today that man would have to make approximately $160,000 per year. At the time of this posting, the average income in the USA is $31,099 (which itself is rather skewed by income inequity, so the real average is lower).
In order to have FOOD, CLOTHING, and a ROOF, most families today have both parents working, 3 jobs between them, 60hour weeks, and the children being looked after by daycare services by other shlubs for whom this is a job, and as professional as they might or might not be, in the end have no investment at all in the quality of adult that the children they "look after" (definitely not "raise") will become once they age out... or really, just at the end of the work shift for that given day.
Let me be frank; I couldn't care less whether it were the wife or the husband staying home with the kids. In our modern social thinking, I don't even think it matters greatly one way or the other. That the common answer these days is that no one is at home, spending the entire day with the kids without any greater priority or distraction than them... teaching manners, changing the channel when a show teaching bad values comes on, correcting mistakes before they've been repeated long enough to become life-habits... and just to use a nice, real-world example, stopping a damn 9-year-old from getting addicted to BDSM porn... Yeah, "no one" is not a good answer.
...And also keeping the house clean so that the family is not living in filth and disorder, and cooking healthy balanced meals daily. Lot's of secondary quality-of-life advantages to having SOMEONE at home full-time.
Extremely few of us can afford that kind of healthy home life anymore.
How to fix it though... One interesting idea I read about was something like a Universal Basic Income, like welfare for everyone, not using the dollar, but a new, non-fiat currency (may as well follow Sci-Fi conventions and call them "Credits") that wasn't variable, but was nailed firmly to the value of basic necessities. Common, but adequate housing would be free to anyone, but to live in a NICE house, you'd have to have a job and make old fashioned $USD. Food staples and simple, nutritious meals could be had a grocery stores and modest cafeterias bought with Credits (and the limit of how many Credits each person gets a day serves as a rationing system to avoid over-consumption and pointless hoarding). If you want to take a lady out to a fancy high-class restaurant and impress her however, you'd need a job earning $USD, over and above your Basic Income Credits.
Not a few of these ideas are being explored (if not in depth) by the webcomic Forward. http://forwardcomic.com/index.php