Who Says You Can't Go Home?

by NycWeboy

Published April 07, 2009 @ 11:19AM PT

I have a friend whose big concern about the economic downturn is “ending up like Mary Ellen Walton”; by which she means that she has a fear of winding up in plain cotton dresses, like the costumes worn on the long running CBS series.

The Waltons is long gone – indeed, it’s a cultural reference that may mean little to anyone under 40 – and I don’t think the dress problem is coming back right away… but some of the news this week got me to thinking: we might wind up more like The Waltons than we realize – returning the extended family to life under one roof.

Thinking, this weekend, about Depression-era dramas made me realize that we are returning to some of those ways of living, even without realizing it: we are re-combining family units, tightening living arrangements, providing for one another when others can’t. There’s a lot of good in that… but also, I think, something serious: we’re not entirely seeing, as a society, just how devastating our economic downturn actually is.

In Radio Days (which I highly recommend), Woody Allen recalls a home where his mom and dad shared a house with his aunt, uncle and their daughter; grandmother and grandfather, along with another aunt who was single. Such living arrangements were not uncommon in the Depression – my mom recalled several single uncles who lived with other family members in those years.

Even before we recognized this current recession we’re in – by statistics – we’ve seen indications of similar developments: lifestyle stories about kids in their twenties and thirties returning to their parents homes, for short or long periods, coming home to “reassess” next moves. The size of the average American house grew tremendously in the past twenty years; a combination, we now know, of overly optimistic building, and consumer demand for greater comfort. I hadn’t thought deeply, until this weekend, what all that space means – an excess of housing capacity that can be used to absorb some, at least, of the problems that are growing in housing and employment.

It’s good to keep this in mind, I think, when we consider the statistics of this recession: already we have unemployment nearing 9%, headed to 10, at least; already we have seen spikes in applications for all kinds of services, from food stamps to Medicaid to welfare. We know many states, already budgeting for next year, see enormous holes in their ability to pay for services. And really, what we’re seeing is the top of an iceberg that may be much bigger below the water line.

We don’t have a statistic, a measure, for the young woman who couldn’t find a job in her field after graduating from college, who works in a coffee shop, lives with her Mom. Her 30 or so hours a week job wouldn’t cover a home, food, the car she needs to get to and from work; but living with her Mom (let’s say… a nurse, also concerned about layoffs at the county hospital), our young Sally has a place to live, transportation (though it’s hard to share a car when your shifts overlap), and the comforts of a home cooked meal. Hopefully, Sally has health insurance… but probably even if she does, she’s probably relying on luck and the occasional ministrations of Mom to get by.

The question is… is Sally in poverty?

It’s great, of course, that families are able to support one another; that we can, in times of need, provide a cushion, a place, a way to go on. It’s just as easy, though, for these “emergency” arrangements to hide just how serious our economic troubles are; we don’t try to address the economic issues we don’t even see. Moreover, we can assume, often, that more people have these options than actually do – the reason for a safety net is because many people cannot go home again. Or ever. As much as we’d wish it otherwise, The Waltons, Radio Days, and other Depression dramas… are fictions, wistful romanticizing of the way it was, and wasn’t… you can’t always, go home again. But at least we know what happened then… I’m not sure we even see what’s happening, now.

(photo by freeparking)