Al Bundy: How Did He Afford a House on Minimum Wage?

[–]MaroonTrojan 52 points53 points54 points 3 years ago* (4 children)

Diving into the question from a different angle, is it realistic for a Chicago homeowner family with a retail worker husband to have a homemaker wife in the 1980s/1990s? The general consensus is no, but it’s fascinating to explore why this family dynamic was so popular for sitcoms in the early 1990s, and how Peg Bundy stood apart from other sitcom women of her time and those who preceded her.

Let’s take a look at the original sitcom woman: Lucy. She lived in an apartment with wall-to-wall carpeting and fresh drapes, all on a single-income from a non-white entertainer in the 1950s, while also maintaining a friendship with her landlord and his wife. Realistic? Probably not. But the show’s focus was not on the details of budgeting. Instead, it normalized the idea that men were the primary breadwinners while women stayed home and had plenty of spare time for wild schemes. Even her schemes that involved saving money were driven by personal motives. Lucy wanted fame: on television, in the club, or in Hollywood. However, she never attempted to advance herself to make money, as that was not deemed appropriate for a (successful?) woman in her era.

The next relevant sitcom wife was Laura Pietrie (Mary Tyler Moore on the Dick Van Dyke show). Here was another domestic wife, now living in a New York suburb instead of the city. She did pursue money opportunities on a few occasions, such as appearing on a game show, but the premise never suggested that the family’s economic security was in jeopardy. Instead, it was portrayed as a woman reaching for “even more” economic success in “already successful” households.

In reality, the work situation for women at this time was far from rosy or optional. Companies like Manpower and Kelly Girl were beginning to recognize the power of female “temp” workers. Why hire a full-time (male) clerk (and offer benefits and a pension) when you could easily hire a Kelly Girl as a “temp” who was “just doing this for some extra money” and did not expect to be paid or considered if she was sick, unavailable, or for any other reason. You were paying Kelly Girl, and if your usual Kelly Girl was unavailable, they would simply send a different one.

Author Louis Hyman, a labor economist at Cornell, details these aspects of women entering the workplace in his book TEMP. He makes the argument that in the post-war 20th Century, women played a significant role in establishing the concept of “temp” labor. Management consultancy firms, such as McKinsey, eventually realized how much more profitable it was to hire only temp workers, forever changing the economy.

The real changes in the economy far exceeded what we saw on TV.

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