Burnout

An old article nobody noticed when I linked to it before, small easily tackled topics like "the future of work in America," and 7 other things worth your time.

About two weeks or so ago, I linked in the “7 other things” section of this newsletter to a 1974 New York Times article about day care in the Soviet Union.

Short version: The Soviets made a show at the time of having enough quality day care for every child of working parents in the U.S.S.R., but they didn’t really come anywhere close to achieving that goal.

The reporter, Hedrick Smith (a character and a man with a long career in his own right), had a line or two in the article describing how Soviets reacted to his descriptions of life in America.

I’ve quoted it to quite a few people recently. It went like this:

“The vast majority of Soviet families require the salary of a working wife to make ends meet. Repeatedly, Soviet citizens express astonishment when they learn that an American father can support a family of two, three or four children without his wife's working.“

Well, that just sounds wildly anachronistic, and almost forgotten, doesn’t it? Were one-income families truly the norm…