Q: I guess family is about the division of labor.
A: Yes. Certain things must be done.
Who does them?
A: Now, both people work.
It’s no longer the man earning the income and the woman managing the household and raising the children.
Q: Both parties do some of both.
A: They can pay for child care, they can eat take-out food, they can have latch-key children, unsupervised, after school. Family members can help them. If they will. They can have an extended family, with a mother helping. If there is a mother. If she will help.
Q: More and more, they won’t have the life insurance, the health care, the stability, the economic security their parents had.
A: But they’ll have more choices.
They’ll have to be more flexible.
More innovative. They’ll have to improvise.
As Nicholas Cage says in Raising Arizona, “It ain’t Ozzie and Harriet.”
Q: He was a bandleader and she was a girl singer.
A: With two kids.
It’s Lucy and Desi.
It’s J. D. Salinger and Joyce Maynard.
It’s William S. Burroughs and Joan.
Time for our William Tell act.
It’s Jack Kerouac and Stella.
You just do the best you can and try to get by.
It’s Cynthia Ozick and her husband, who gives her an allowance.