Taking care of family

Those of us raised in the 1930s and ’40s most likely remember what it was like to have a stay-at-home mother taking care of the family, and our fathers were the breadwinners. If you don’t think that was a full-time job, try it sometime without a washer, dryer, wrinkle-free shirts, and a dishwasher. In Huttig, I remember helping my mother on wash day build a fire out back under a big black pot, filling it with water, bringing out the family wash, then filling two big tubs full of water for the rinse. The clothes had to be hung on the clotheslines to dry. In the evening, after supper, she ironed everything.

Everyone had a garden, and in the fall, we canned so that we would have vegetables all winter and into the summer. The chickens had to be fed, eggs collected, pigs slopped, and the garden weeded. Housewife is a noble profession. Employers paid the breadwinner enough to support his family.

A livable income is one that enables the breadwinner to support his/ her family. It became a human right enshrined in the Declaration of Human Rights. A housewife worked like a horse and did all the other things that mothers do raising the children. Now it takes two incomes to support a family. What happened? Who is raising the children? Employers get two wage-earners for the price of one. This is not right. One parent needs to be at home taking care of the family.

Restore the graduated income tax we had from 1945 to 1980, when our GDP grew 12.56 times, and everyone was taxed exactly the same on their taxable income. If we do this, we will recognize again how a little socialism can nurture and grow a capitalistic economy, and lift all boats. Make house husbands a noble profession also.

RUUD DuVALL

Fayetteville