i guess what
this brings to mind is uh um my chief complaint is then uh
the priority that's given to kids
that's what comes to mind anyway
well i don't know i guess uh i think one of the biggest changes that's taken place over the last twenty five years anyway is um uh
uh both parents working and the
um-hum
the uh mechanisms haven't really been in place to get to give kids all the attention they need
yeah
so i think that uh and i think we're so reaping the
um results of that in uh
the consequences
a lot of problems yeah i mean i don't blame people for um both going to work um both parents going to work
it's tough not to for a lot of people
but it's been i think that may be the single
biggest social change in the middle class anyway that's uh that has uh
uh had a lot more repercussion that people every thought
yeah yeah my wife and i have gone through a couple of decades together we're both on our early forties
um
um we've been married uh twenty two years
so we sort of grew up together and um just had children uh so we have a four year old and a two year old
um-hum
and uh for the first eighteen years of our marriage um we were two income carriers and all that so we had a pretty full lifestyle and
um-hum
and having the children we decided to uh to go into one income so i work and she stays home
tough isn't it
and and it's you know the
the ideal value system is is to motivate it there
our situation
because it it suddenly is something that uh
that we thought long and hard about
our situation is very much very similar
Mary we're both professionals and used to working
and we decided that when we had kids that we would uh have somebody home until they were uh well into school
um-hum
it's difficult especially it's not so much
difficult financially i don't think as it is uh culturally
in that it's um
uh kind of expected i think i think it's difficult on my wife not to be um
um-hum
professionally identified and that sort of thing
um-hum
but i really feel like it's been worth it for the kids and when i look around i think uh i'm i'm pretty glad we made the decision we did
yeah yeah we've you know experienced a lot the the turmoil of the uh sixties and seventies
and uh
i think we we were part of that um
looking for new value systems and having uh a vision of the way the world was going to be when we were you know in middle age which i guess we are now
and then all of the sudden the kids come along
yeah that too but uh i just think that uh
right now we're experiencing a lot of disappointment with uh our generation and and uh
the way things haven't really changed and i think that uh you know our personal
difficulties are reflected in a lot of the unrest right now we're seeing with respect to politics
yeah
yeah i i think uh
you have to be
um i don't want to make it uh more dramatic but you have to be kind of cultural really if you want to put your family first and uh
um-hum
um to sort of uh put a cap on things that you can really have and enjoy and just go ahead and
um do what's right by your by your family
yeah
and i don't i i don't see a lot of support out there i see
a lot of people um
voting down school taxes and um
um-hum
uh well a degree of the eighties was i think uh maybe the most disappointing social phenomena that i witnessed
yeah
because i really did see you see it in um magnified about twenty times
yeah i mean uh maybe double that again in the east coast
really
uh yeah and we're we're both from the mid west we're both from Saint Louis and uh experienced but we spent the entire eighties out here and uh
um
we're just thirty miles outside of Manhattan
um-hum
and uh it's very different than the mid west it's
i guess the i guess the the epicenter of that uh
yeah yeah i mean it you know the the kids around here
stuff in the eighties
uh you know think they're poor if they can't get a Polo shirt every week
um-hum right
it it's it's a different perspective and uh you know we got caught up in that we we we had you know a real decade of hay day
an uh now we're retrenching like a lot of the rest of the country
uh particularly because you know we chose to have a single income and um
um
also working uh in a large corporate setting and that has become unsettled in the last
