I'm posting this so I can find it on my own blog. It struck a chord with me, now that I'm old and wiser. I always worked. We have no kids, not by design. But we always lived simply and on one income. My income paid for extras and for saving.
My neighborhood has grown into these huge homes that must take two incomes to support. Gone are middle-class homes from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. We really have grown into a society of obligations. We need credit debt, large houses, fancy autos, technology up the whazoo, college educations, fancy vacations, stress, and big divorce rates. We need our children in therapy because they can't cope. We hand them a tablet and make it acceptable to cheat in school using AI. Obligations have changed our social fabric. Obligations have set us up to accept control because we can't afford to lose everything. We cornered ourselves into a lack of options because we were too quick to say yes.