Boomer Hater?

In opening up this dialogue I understand that some may call me a boomer hater. They’ve hurled that nickname at Dr. Paul Kershaw (http://gensqueeze.ca/) and are potentially going to paint me with the same brush. The truth however is quite the opposite.

My parents are boomers and have admittedly enjoyed a life that was built on hard work and blessed with a mix of opportunity and good timing. They are both incredibly smart and cautious and loving and politically active and now enjoy the high quality of life that they have earned.

They eloped in 1969 on New Year’s eve. My dad says the reason they rushed to marry on that day was that in doing so he was able to claim my mom as a dependant for the whole of 1969. This resulted in a tax return large enough to pay for their honeymoon. Mom had been a flight attendant and was able to get free tickets to Turks and Caicos so they stayed the first night in a fancy hotel, got to know all the staff, then moved to a cheap hotel and snuck back to the fancy one during the day to enjoy the pool. Their ‘wedding’ and honeymoon is so remarkably different to the current trend of $30,000 debt-inducing ‘dream weddings’ and is a tribute to the way things were back then. Gen Squeeze is coming of age in a time when marketing forces are more powerful than ever and we need to see that it wasn’t always like that. While we lament the difficult economy in which we are raising our families we must admit that we could learn a thing or two from the spending habits of young boomers.

While my parents made the smart choice to have a wedding that was within their means they were then able to buy their first house, just a few short years later, for $19,000. They were able to do so on a single income while raising three young children – something that is next to impossible for today’s Gen Squeezers. They started their married life without any debt (not even student debt) – something that is increasingly rare for the Gen Squeezers. They had no child care costs whatsoever – an expense that now cripples most of todays parents with fees up to $1,000 per month for one child. In short times were different!

Is the deck stacked against young Canadians?

As we discuss the then vs now data we must be careful not to vilify those who benefitted from then any more than we can blame those who are struggling now. I look to the Boomers as a source of inspiration, guidance and mentoring as they had the wherewithal to be cautious financially and active politically. In return I’d like the boomers to look at my generation with a sense of understanding and compassion. While Gen Squeeze could stand to be more frugal we are not blowing our money the way you think we are….we are just paying way more for our basic necessities like housing, food and gas and have the added unbearable burden of paying for child care and student loans on top of it all.

All we ask is for open dialogue and understanding about what it’s really like to raise a family in 2013. Once we stop pointing fingers and laying blame we can get to work building social policies that reflect the needs of today’s Canadian family.

Child Care is NOT a choice. It is a necessity.

According to Dr. Paul Kershaw there are two things that the generation raising kids has that no other generation raising kids has had and that is CRUSHING DEBT and necessary child care.   Part of the reason for this is that our household incomes have not gone up in the past 30 years (if adjusted for inflation) but our cost of living has gone up like crazy.  If it now takes two people to make what one could in 1976, and the cost of housing has gone up as much as 120% then most families have no choice but to become two income households.  This means that child care must be factored into the monthly budget as a necessity alongside housing, food and clothing.  Kershaw likens to cost of having one child in full-time child care as equivalent to a second mortgage! Two children in full-time care costs more than university.   When I was a child my parents had a cabin – I have child care.

It’s sad but true – child poverty in British Columbia is the second highest in Canada and has been for far too long.  When families must choose between living in poverty on a single income or spending a fortune paying for daycare sometimes what gets cut from the budget is food and clothing.  This difficult decision is faced by parents all the time and causes a huge amount of stress in the home.

Is there a way out of this cycle of poverty and stress?  YES.  We need to realise that child care is not a choice. With dual income families as the norm child care is now a necessity.  It’s time to see child care as a right and demand that our proud social fabric reflects that.  Please take a look at the  Community Plan for a Public System of Integrated Early Care and Learning here http://www.cccabc.bc.ca/plan/ and consider endorsing it.  By doing so you are saying NO to child poverty in BC, NO to the inequality of  Early Learning and Care opportunities for our children and YES to a Canada that supports our families.

      

Then and Now – why it is not just in my head.

I am an educated 38-year-old woman. My husband and I travelled all over the world for nearly a decade before returning to Canada to start a small business. We are competent, caring, hard-working Canadians. In 2005 we started our family with a healthy incredible baby boy, then added to it with the arrival of another incredible little man in 2008. We were excited to relive some of the magic of our childhoods and share the love and sense of family that our parents gave to us.  The reality of how difficult it is to support a growing family on a single income hit us hard and we found ourselves wondering why we couldn’t make it work.

Raised in the 70s and 80s it seems I got in on the last generation of stay at home moms.  My dad was the sole breadwinner for our family and my mom cared for our home and us kids.  She had a career as a flight attendant but gave it up to stay at home and in so doing she was able to save the family lots of money and provide an environment in which thrived.  When I found out I was pregnant my husband and I determined that I would stay home and he would work.  Despite owning a very small townhouse and running a thriving pub we found it hard to do more than just make ends meet.  This financial stalemate carried on and on and caused us to both grow concerned that we were doing something wrong.  Why couldn’t we enjoy the same level of success our parents saw when they were our age and had young kids?  What is the problem?

Take a look at this diagram created by Dr. Paul Kershaw, associate professor at the University of British Columbia….now take a look again.  What does this mean to the average young family? How does it make you feel?

No wonder it seems so much harder!

OHHHHHHHHHHH SO IT’S NOT THAT WE ARE HOPELESS LOSERS!  It’s not that we’re lazy bums who spend too much and work too little.  What an incredible and powerful and forgiving revelation this was to me and I have determined to share this message with as many people as possible so that things can change.

How have we adapted to this change in family economy?  We’ve become dual income families, we live at home with our own parents much longer than ever before, we have much more debt than ever before and our children are now increasingly spending their first 5 years in daycare.  What changes in social policy have been made to reflect this massive shift – NONE!

As politically uninvolved citizens we just struggle, pay our taxes and quietly lament how difficult it is to have young children.  It hasn’t always been this hard.  It can change.  We need a NEW DEAL FOR FAMILIES!  http://blogs.ubc.ca/newdealforfamilies/