Parenting & Family Quote by Eric Braeden

That line lands like a shrug, but it’s really a quiet obituary for a certain middle-class promise. Braeden isn’t romanticizing domestic life; he’s pointing at the price tag. The bluntness matters: “Not too many people” frames the problem as structural rather than personal failure, while “can afford” reduces a cherished ideal - a parent at home, kids raised without childcare spreadsheets - to a luxury good. The subtext is that the so-called traditional family model now functions less as a moral preference than as a class marker.

Coming from an actor who’s spent decades inside a long-running soap (a genre built on family, betrayal, and aspiration), the remark also reads as a collision between fantasy and logistics. Daytime TV traffics in mansions and endless time; real households are negotiating second jobs, patchwork childcare, and the stress that seeps into relationships. He’s not offering policy, but he’s naming the way economics scripts domestic roles.

There’s also a faint generational hinge. Braeden, born in 1941, speaks from a world where a single income household was more attainable for many unionized, steadily employed workers. The sentence carries the implied contrast: it used to be possible enough to feel normal; now it’s rare enough to require explanation. By keeping it casual, he avoids sounding like he’s delivering a lecture - and that’s why it stings. It’s an offhand comment that exposes how thoroughly money has reorganized “family values” into “family budgets.”