> People used to do these jobs and also own a house, have large families and happy lives.
Well, careers were for one half of the population, as determined by birth, and caring for large families and their houses and elderly was for the other half. We set it up so that the latter was the shitty end of the deal, so eventually that other half got tired of it. Then we started down the path of industrializing care, and that made doing this kind of work even shittier. So, that's where we are today.
Right. I still see comments here by people praising multigenerational housing in traditional societies. In practice that usually amounts to the wife doing unpaid labor to care for the husband's parents as they age (and constantly criticize her for doing everything wrong).
> ...(and constantly criticize her for doing everything wrong)
That parenthetical is, in my mind, an often-overlooked, but absolutely crucial aspect.
You normally see this framed in a moralising way as a critique against the selfishness endemic within the culture of the working-age generation. But there may be a flip side to that coin, namely a powertrippin' culture on the side of the now-elderly.
I actually did work in the care sector for a very short period of time.
But the problem I'm having with my aging western boomer dad, is that he never learned how to relate to family in a way where he doesn't get to dominate it all. And if I have a choice of taking care of him and never crawling out from under the thumb of his domination, or shipping him off to a home, then the home it is.
I don't want to unduly overgeneralise here, but I'm wondering if there may be something systematic or quantitatively significant going on here: There was a particular generation where young men suddenly had the opportunity for a power grab (taking power away from any intergenerational power structure) based on becoming financially self-sufficient at an early age, including owning a home for use by their nuclear, rather than extended, family. In Europe, this generation was the boomers because of the war. In North America, it might have been one generation earlier. Women wanted power too, so feminism.
If that same generation wants the next generation to stick around to take care of them, even when they have alternative options, then a precondition for that would be to renegotiate who is in charge. Doing that is hard, if the only reality you've ever known is a struggle for and steady increase of your power.
Well, careers were for one half of the population, as determined by birth, and caring for large families and their houses and elderly was for the other half. We set it up so that the latter was the shitty end of the deal, so eventually that other half got tired of it. Then we started down the path of industrializing care, and that made doing this kind of work even shittier. So, that's where we are today.