cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3624234
A family wage is a wage that is sufficient to raise a family. This contrasts with a living wage, which is generally taken to mean a wage sufficient for a single individual to live on, but not necessarily sufficient to also support a family. As a stronger form of living wage, a family wage is likewise advocated by proponents of social justice. Family wage campaign was aiming to maintain the traditional family structure, as a concept connecting economics and family structure it is one of the examples of how economic structure of family, which is a subject of the field family economics, affects overall economy beyond the family.
The term “family wage jobs” has occasional contemporary use in American political rhetoric and is most associated with Catholic intellectuals, in the Catholic social teaching tradition
The debate about “living wages” vs. minimum wages ignores structuring jobs for the needs of the family and (traditionally male) breadwinners
Why would we want to structure jobs around the needs of nuclear families instead of the needs of everyone?
Because to effect positive change, you need to build support in the masses, and it’s far easier to build support for a single, simple idea that moves us one step in the right direction, than a complex web of ideas that more accurately reflects reality.
It’s regressive. Language shapes cognition. Read some George Lakoff, and drop the “family” stuff if you don’t want to reinforce basic paradigms the right depends on for legitimacy. There’s some deep sexist stuff in that language of which I’m unsure if you’re aware.
