I grew up in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley—the quintessential American suburb, built on the postwar fantasies of men like my father, a GI who'd trained in the California desert to fight Rommel and never forgot the first time he saw orange trees and swimming pools. For $500 down, you could buy a ranch house in one of the Valley's new tract developments and start a family—maybe even live out your dreams of Hollywood stardom. Such was the life that Joseph Jefferson hoped to create when he moved to California to study acting and married a fellow student. But Dad found acting to be a cruel mistress: he wound up spending more time tending bar than in front of the cameras. It was no way to support his wife and two kids, and his marriage was a shambles. So he found another mistress: my mom.
They met at an actors' hangout called the Masquers club, and fell in love while Dad was starring as Jesus in a...
kenny wrote: The divorce rate in America went up as the number of women abandoning their homes and children to enter the work force went up.
Amen, Kenny.
This is a HUGE problem, reinforced by stupid shows like Mary Tyler Moore and Murphy Brown. I have literally dozens of female co-workers with young kids at home alone while mommy satisfies her greed and conformity to modern female standards by leaving them for their daycare or GRANDPARENTS to raise.
Every day I drive to work I go by a local park where virtually ALL strollers are being pushed by an man or woman in their 60s or 70s. Where the @#$$%! is MOMMY--Oh...she's too busy helping daddy bring home the bacon. It's mind-bogglingly foolish and bad for the family in the long run.
The divorce rate in America went up as the number of women abandoning their homes and children to enter the work force went up.
When I was growing up in the 1960s, a divorce in the community that I lived in (typical middle class suburbia) was considered scandalous. By the 1980s, it was rare to meet someone who had not been divorced.
On the street(Which is a dead end street and thus only a half a block) that I grew up on and where I still reside in my late parents house(that I will be buying out my brother's half and thus I will become the owner) there were no divorced families when I was growing up in the 1960's and 1970's. I was born in 1962.
In the early 70's I remember walking down my own street with two of my friends who pointed to virtually every other house and saying "they're divorced...they're divorced..."(etc.). I thought they were exagerating but they weren't.
The real kicker came when I applied to California colleges back in the early 80's. The registration form asked NOT for the names of my "parents", but rather the name of the "parent" or "guardian" with whom I was presently living.
THEN I realized that the divorce rate for parents of college-aged kids was well over 50% in California...even in the early 80s.
The fact that my own parents never even contemplated divorce made me feel very blessed indeed, compared to what was going on around me.
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