The Parents Are Not All Right

The longer it goes on, the more chance there is that this novel pain shared by us lucky few will motivate some structural changes that will make life more bearable for the less privileged people for whom these kinds of tensions and juggling are nothing new.

But... I doubt it. Nothing is working. My wife's 12 person company is struggling, and will probably fail, to get a PPP loan for utterly moronic procedural reasons and saturation of the system. Extended unemployment benefits seem to have been calculated to run out around the time that the average person will be able to file a claim. Businesses are evaporating everywhere, completely undermining the bedrock of the economy. There is no sense of anything from government (any part of it) other than getting back to business as usual - why? So we can do this again in the fall? In a few years' time when another displaced wild animal spits on a market trader?

Couldn't two trillion dollars - not even a once per generation level of expenditure - have been more effectively employed to build some resilience in the system?

The city is sacked by barbarians; they leave, and the survivors hold a feast instead of building a wall.

While this is hardly an unenviable position, and may be better off than most, I don't think two people who need to work full time represents the most "privileged" position. In this case, a family with a stable and sufficient income from a single primary earner, with the other free to handle the sudden increase in demands of child care, really would be a better position.

"But it’s precisely the privilege of this vantage point that in a way makes it so stark. This is the best-case scenario?"

No, this isn't the best case scenario. It's hardly the worst, but the difficulties here are absolutely the result of the two income trap. I don't know their exact situation, but plenty of middle class people would face eviction or foreclosure within 6-12 months, maybe less, if either spouse lost their job and couldn't find another. There isn't much wiggle room left.

Granted, after year 3 (and kid 2) I was making entry level developer money, but here in the south 18 years ago that was a long way from FU money. We made sacrifices and decided that some things were more important than others. Our vacations were camp outs, our four kids wore secondhand (and third/fourth hand) clothes. I bought (and still buy) most of my clothes from Goodwill or Walmart. We have never had the newest anything. There was a period of about two years where we were a single car family.

It's doable. You will have to lower your standard of consumption, probably a lot, but in our case it was totally the better choice. YMMV.