Reply #68: But in the old days, only teenagers worked what little fast food there was, because there were

[Lydia Leftcoast]

plenty of blue collar jobs that a person with a high school diploma or less could get easily.

I spent my grade school years in a town that had two manufacturing companies. The fathers of most of my classmates worked at one or the other. It was highly unusual for a mother to work outside the home, but all the families lived in single-family homes and had a car. Most of the boys in the class assumed that their dad would get them a job at their plant, unless they had other ambitions.

My great uncle was a school janitor, and he owned his own house, had a wife who didn't work outside the home, and put two children through Minnesota state colleges.

The deindustrialization of America has been a great blow to the country's prosperity and morale. Sure, it wasn't so great for women's professional opportunity, but a lot of blue collar women thought it was just fine taking care of the house, since it was more interesting than their husbands' assembly line jobs.