"The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of life"
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Lasch is pointing a finger at a double-edged bargain: the economic shifts that made a single paycheck insufficient didn’t just squeeze families, they sold the squeeze back to them as “freedom.” The line works because it refuses to treat stagnant wages and hyperactive shopping culture as separate stories. They’re the same story, told from two angles: on the shop floor as insecurity, in the mall as identity.
“The family wage” isn’t nostalgia for patriarchal breadwinning so much as a signal for stability, time, and a workable domestic economy. By saying it’s been “eroded,” Lasch evokes something worn down gradually, not smashed overnight - a slow policy-and-market abrasion: deindustrialization, weakened unions, dual-income necessity, the rise of credit, and a service economy that prizes flexibility over security. His real target is the ideological alchemy that turns necessity into lifestyle. If households need two incomes and more debt to keep pace, consumerism becomes less a choice than a coping mechanism dressed up as aspiration.
The subtext is moral and political. Lasch is skeptical of a culture that promises self-realization through purchases while hollowing out the conditions that make durable commitments - to children, neighborhoods, institutions - feasible. In the late 1970s through early 1990s, as American politics celebrated deregulation and “choice,” Lasch heard a quieter message: your family will adjust, your community will thin out, and the marketplace will offer you consolation in installments.
“The family wage” isn’t nostalgia for patriarchal breadwinning so much as a signal for stability, time, and a workable domestic economy. By saying it’s been “eroded,” Lasch evokes something worn down gradually, not smashed overnight - a slow policy-and-market abrasion: deindustrialization, weakened unions, dual-income necessity, the rise of credit, and a service economy that prizes flexibility over security. His real target is the ideological alchemy that turns necessity into lifestyle. If households need two incomes and more debt to keep pace, consumerism becomes less a choice than a coping mechanism dressed up as aspiration.
The subtext is moral and political. Lasch is skeptical of a culture that promises self-realization through purchases while hollowing out the conditions that make durable commitments - to children, neighborhoods, institutions - feasible. In the late 1970s through early 1990s, as American politics celebrated deregulation and “choice,” Lasch heard a quieter message: your family will adjust, your community will thin out, and the marketplace will offer you consolation in installments.
Quote Details
| Topic | Family |
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