This story is very simple in my view. In the 1950's a man could have a job that provided enough income to allow his family to be middle class. My dad did that with a union job and less than a high school education. In the 1970's I could provide a middle class life style for my family until a few years before our oldest went to college then my wife had to go back to work. We were both school teachers. In the 2000's my daughters had no choice. They have worked from the beginning and they always will if they want to hang on to a middle class life for their families. They have college degrees as do their husbands.

I see men and women struggling to make ends meet and falling further behind because of our misguided economic policies that reward corporations for shipping jobs to other countries. Wealth has been shifted massively to the very top few percent of society. We have greater income disparity than nearly anytime in the history of this country.

I was lucky that my wife was a seamstress and made extra money working at home while raising three children, but her daughter wanted to have an outside job when she had her first child, so she laid the responcibility of raising her child on her mother, my soon to be be ex-wife.
Now, this cycle of irresponcible behavior has reached epic proportions as newer generations of children no longer understand the family values of just caring about each other.
Love has nothing to do with material gains which in the end, destroy relationships. The stages prevalent in a relationship never fulfill themselves because the rearing process never ends and it only takes one bad example to kill the dream.