Capitalism hits the fan & we always stood on our own two feet

I really enjoyed reading Stephanie Coontz, We Always Stood on our Own Two Feet: Self-reliance and the American family because it unmasked a huge myth. We all in one way or another have been helped in order to get where we are today. I liked that she incorporated history by using the example of the Native Americans. Americans have always needed help and will always need help getting to where they want to be however they neglect to acknowledge this because society has drilled in our minds that asking for help is shameful. Asking for help has a negative connotation because it indicates the person is lazy, uninterested in better him/herself and wants every handed over to them. This however is untrue which is what Coontz argues; even the middle class needed help in one way or another to get to where they now are. I must admit, I had never thought of this idea that middle class people also required help to move from working to middle class, so it was an interesting fact to think about and analyze things. The lecture video “Capitalism Hits the Fan” provided some very interesting facts on the economical issues in the last 100 years. Richard Woolf discusses how in one way or another we are all reliant on another, meaning we all help one another. The working class people help the middle class remain middle class by producing more, getting paid frozen wages and working more hours. The middle class, provide the working class with job opportunities so they can provide for themselves and their families. Now, I’m a little hesitant to call this “help” because it really is not help, rather reliance. The middle class rely on the working classs to make them more money (profit), while the working class rely on the middle class for a pay check at the end of the week to make their rent payments, pay bills and support their families.

Both the article and video touch a little on gender roles. The article says that dependency lied within the family back in the day and that is seen by how the man went out to work and the woman was just a house wife that cooked, cleaned and took care of the kids. That family with the working dad and stay at home mom didn’t go out looking for help, they worked for what they had and did it “alone”, however this is unmasked and it says families relied on “ a large network of neighbors, church institutions, courts, government officials, and legislative bodies for their sustenance” The video talks about how women are forces out of the home and into the workforce because of the freeze in pay wages. How is a family supposed to function with just one income?

I learned a lot from this reading and the video which have opened my eyes to things that I had never really put much mind to.