Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for April 14, 2014

So, the reason she abandoned her family was because she wasn’t getting paid?

@Clark KentI guess, that last panel threw me off.

What makes you think that housing prices have outstripped inflation? They haven’t; the median home price today compared with 1972 has been dead steady with inflation. Blaming rising house prices on working mothers? Not a scrap of evidence to support it.

Plus she gets to get away from them at the end of the day.

Actually, working mothers is historically much more common than the stay-at-hime mom of the 50s. Only, in earlier eras, the economy was much more agriculturally based, so home and work were one and the same.

A working mother can be taxed. A stay-at-home mom is no good for our government overlords. Worse, it might lead to home schooling. Who will indoctrinate the children then?

Joanie did not find fulfillment caring for her own family..She DOES find fulfillment being paid to care for members of other families..Money isn’t everything.In fact, all money is imaginary.But it can be counted, measured against other money and taken as a symbol of value others recognize..I guess this is part of the reason the materialists worry so about others earning more money. It shows others are more respected in relative terms..Solutions include:Earning more money oneself — but that often includes personal expenses in less free time to enjoy life and work in difficult mental fields and greater responsibility such as what happens if the knife slips or the illness is missed or if the dosage kills.or forcing higher pay for what one is already doing — but if the pay is high enough, others move into the job and crowd you out altogether, going from low pay to no pay.or taking the higher income from the one earning “too much” — but if you do that, competent people might get out of the field and if you need those services, you might get a surgeon with shaky hands, a doctor who doesn’t know how to heal, a car that won’t run or whose brakes won’t stop or a lawyer that can’t keep you out of jail..All that from contemplating Joanie starting work at daycare

Ah, Woman’s fight for equality.

Now they are also underpaid, overworked, abused and unappreciated in the workplace – just like men have been for so long.

It’s good that they got the brass ring. It’s bad that the brass ring turned out to not really being worth having…

Hassled mother? Really?

Looking forward to Thor! (Have we seen him in the last few years?

Good one, LightBuzz. Our paper doesn’t carry Oliphant any more – I’ll have to start looking at that.

Just noticed that today’s “Jump Start” is kind of taking on this topic.

And some of us working mothers enjoyed having a roof over our heads and food on the table – so did our families

What you said.

@SKJAM: Sadly, it looks like Thor has been skipped over. I don’t believe the character appeared after the gang moved from the normal dorm into the commune.

-You aren’t at all correct in understanding what drives housing prices. The cost of land has always been a major factor, which is why the construction of roads out into what used to be remote, inaccessible farmland stimulated suburbia. -At the same time that the ‘defense national roadway system’ was being built to evacuate city residents if cities were bombed (the original reason for the roadways that created the suburbs), farmers found it a lot more difficult to continue working where a road grazing pastures or cropland into pieces while the presence of a road drove up their taxes. So they sold to developers, who could still charge less for houses in the ’burbs, since it was urban land that cost the most.-And right after World War II, the subsidized veterans mortgages were introduced to make it possible for a one income family to afford a home. The major reason behind that program was to make in unnecessary for the women who had entered the workforce while men were fighting overseas to stay employed, thus opening jobs to the returning vets. -As land near the urban area built up, though, the cost of what was left went up. At the same time, more growth meant that cheap means of providing water and sewer (onsite wells and septic tanks) no longer worked. So the cost of housing had to rise.-

Many things powered the women’s movement, not the least of which was the fact that many women born after World War II went to college instead of automatically stopping their education when graduating high school. And while not all women who went to college did that to start a career, a lot of them decided that they wanted to do something in addition to having a family.-If you prefer to be a stay-at-home mother, fine for you. But don’t dump a guilt trip about housing prices on women who want to work outside the home.

“Not enough!”

@DavidHuieGreenYou know what else is real at the end of the day? The children who call you Mom and Dad and depend on you for not only physical sustenance but also emotional and spiritual support.

That’s true, most women are way more competent than most men.

Not nearly enough!

leftwing, Well, Joanie’s children didn’t get that but the kids of the parents who paid Joanie got it. It ’s all good. Paid love is highly valued.

How much is she getting paid? Not nearly enough.

@DavidHuieGreenI am in a unique position far as Joanie’s job is concerned.My mother worked as a pre-school teacher for 33 years, during which time she acquired a Masters in Childhood Development.She also raised 3 sons, one of whom is a doctor and the other lawyer (I work in the technology area for finance).I don’t believe any of us would be where we are if it wasn’t for her. My parents will be celebrating their 52nd anniversary this week. I don’t be believe she has ever doubted how much she is appreciated or loved.

And in any other industrialized country, she would be getting paid to do it for her own children — but that’s blasphemous in the US.

this is 1972 so she might even be able to make a living with vacations and savings