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For this note I will use the term "wife" for the stay at home spouse, for Wife is shorter to type, but I do include with the term "Wife" husband who stay at home.
There are several cost savings from having a stay at home wife other than cheaper day car costs, lets look at some:
First with the wife at home Auto Expenses can decline. Sometime this can be done by dropping off the Husband at his work while she keeps the car for the day (and picking him up at night), other times she can survive without a car do to be able to either walk, bike, or use public Transportation. Either way there is one less car to insured, to gas, to maintain, and even to find a parking space for. A car is a HUGE expense and if you can do with one instead of two you can save a lot of money.
Now many families will continue to have two cars but even here the cost can be reduced by less use do to the fact the wife is NOT driving to work everyday. Thus auto expense can be a Huge saving in having a stay at home wife.
Second, the growth of going out to eat is product of the wife working, she (and her husband) no longer have the time to cook every day. With the wife at home taking care of the kids, she can also cook and save the money a two working family has to spend on going out to eat. Now this was a BIGGER factor in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, since the 1970s the price of food (not only in the supermarket, but in fast-food, take out and even dinning out) have drop drastically. I remember the "Food Strike" of the early 1970s where American housewives protested the high costs of beef. A call went out to boycott beef do to its high prices. Gardens sprang up all over the place in the 1970s do to the high costs of food, most people stop doing gardening in the 1980s with the drop in food prices, but when the prices were high a stay at home wife could maintain a garden (while watching her Children) shop for the lowest prices possible etc. Given the drop in food prices since the early 1970s less of a factor now than then but still a factor that can save a family money if the wife stays at home.
Third the costs to the husband of having to do things a stay at home wife could do for him. Since the wife is working many a husband has to take his clothes to be dry cleaned instead of having his wife clean them, he has to take his car to be repaired (or his shoes repaired) instead of having his wife do it. This takes him off task and costs him money (from the lost time). A wife could do all of the above for him keeping him on the job to earn more money. My sister joked about this in some of her job, you could see that management assumed all of its people could work every day, for all of them had wives to take care of the little odds and ends jobs people have to have done. A stay at home wife can do all of those things, a working wife can not.
There was a Warner Brothers Cartoon that addressed this situation. It was made in the 1950s, in the Cartoon the Husband comes home and said he had a full day, and told his wife she should be happy she can stay at home and relax..... She gets upset and goes through her day doing all the little odds and end jobs mostly for him, that makes her life just a full if not fuller than his (At the end of the Cartoon she hits him with the rolling pin, it is a Warner Brother's Cartoon). The point of the Cartoon was her contribution to the household was as significant as his, even through she was a full time house wife. IT also showed many of the chores a stay at home housewife does that make life easier for her husband (and leave him stay more time on task at his job). These services a stay at home wife does are very valuable to the family, but given no "economic" value in themselves.
Fourth, extra time to spend in the community, while the husband is working the wife can keep the family connected to the community and both spouses' families. Another valuable service a stay at home wife performs for her husband and their family, but also given no economic value by economists.
Now I am not advocating stay at home spouses, it is a decision each family has to make, but I am only pointing out the costs saving such a wife provides to the family and to her husband. The main reason woman have entered the work force since 1970s (ignoring discrimination against woman in the work force prior to 1970) is that the above savings and services have been viewed as less important than cash income for the family. The need for extra income into the families of the 1980s to today to keep up the same standard of living of the 1950s and 1960s REQUIRES two income families. The drop in food prices really decrease the savings a family had with a stay at home wife, but with the increase of working wives you have costs incurred by those women working, the costs outlined above.
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