The salaries were not more competitive than they are now. Families who raised children on one income back then quite simply expected and did with much less than single income families do today, not to mention with how much two income families make today.
I'm on my phone and I'm having a hard time finding a single source that shows this, and it's possible that I can't find it because it doesn't exist, but I have found that housing prices have outpaced wages, car prices have outpaced wages, and tuition prices have outpaced wages (though tuition prices is a whole different issue). Real Wages, which accounts for inflation, have barely budged.
It seems like both parents work to pay for child costs that exist because both parents work.
Real Wages, which accounts for inflation, have barely budged.
If real wages have barely budged, it means precisely that it is exactly as affordable to buy a basket of goods as it used to be. You can't argue both that all costs have outpaced wages, and that the real wage hasn't budged, because this is just logically contradictory.
It seems like both parents work to pay for child costs that exist because both parents work.
Yes, it is often the case that the income of one parent is just about enough to cover the cost of child care necessary to enable this work. This is usually justified by positing that this is necessary for the career growth of the second parent. This makes perfect sense, but my point is that people used to expect less in the past, and one of the things that they didn't expect was good career growth of both parents.
