Generational Disparities

The kids aren't all right, but they're not wrong, either

One of the common online themes I’ve seen over the past couple of years has to do with how a middle class family in the post-war United States, with only the father working outside the home, could afford so much, while a young family nowadays despairs of purchasing a home or living a life comparable to their grandparents or great-grandparents.

I’d like to discuss that, but let me get one thing clear out the gate: this will not be white-bearded old me wagging my finger at GenZ. Things truly are more expensive, adjusted for inflation, than they used to be. My parent’s first home, bought in 1978, was priced at $35,000. Adjusting for inflation, that’s around $175,000 in 2026 dollars. It was a 10 year old, three bedroom, one bath ranch with a full basement on about an acre of land.

I looked up my childhood home on Zillow, and it’s priced at about $300,000. That’s well above the inflation curve. A 3-bedroom home built in 2016 would likely include at least one more bathroom, but an additional toilet and shower does not add $125,000 or more in value.

As for transportation, my mom had a Ford LTD wagon that had a sticker price of around $7,000. In 2026 dollars, that’s about $30,000. She put two adults and five kids into that thing, mainly because the bench seats in the front and middle held up to three apiece, and the spare kid or two went into the cargo hold in the back.

Long gone are the days when you could throw the older kids in the bed of a truck or the back of a station wagon and head out on the highways. Everybody gets a seatbelt, and every kid gets a carseat or a booster. It’s a lot more survivable for the kids, but it adds a lot to the cost of having critters.

If you really want to know how little our parents cared about us, keep in mind that one of my more vivid memories of pre-school was sitting in the back of the car they had before the LTD, a Pinto, and holding the hatchback closed while my father drove down the highway. Apparently, he didn’t want to pay for the hunk of rope needed to tie it down when he bought lumber in Minot. Why should he? He had a nice little reddish-blond haired kid who thought sitting on a pile of two-by-fours and finding linear patterns in the pavement as we went down the road was an awesome idea. If something happened, well, he had two more sons, didn’t he?

Ah, memories. Where was I? Oh, yeah, cars….

A 2026 baseline Ford that seats seven costs at least $40,000. That’s 33% more than just what inflation adds. I’m sure there are less expensive options, but comparing 1978 LTD to 2026 Explorer seems to be appropriate if we’re comparing apples to apples.

So, the kids are, at least to a point, taking it in the shorts when it comes to how much things cost. A lot of the reason both parents have to work and they still struggle is because of the additional cost for all the extra doodads in newer homes and vehicles, and outright price gouging that goes on with housing and transportation.

Additionally, a 2026 family has expenses that the 1978 family wouldn’t have to consider.

First, phones. We had one, count them, one phone for the entire house. It wasn’t free, but it wasn’t overly expensive unless you made a lot of toll calls.

Kids, ask your mother or grandmother what a toll call was.

For that one line back in the Carter administration, my parents probably paid Ma Bell somewhere between $25 and $30 a month. For four cell phones and a relatively fluff-free calling plan from AT&T, I pay $250 a month. Adjusting for inflation, that’s roughly double what my parents spent for that plastic and steel brick that sat on the little table in the dining room. Paying double for four times as many phones, with a heck of a lot more features, may seem like a deal, but the expense adds to the weight on the camel’s back on stretched family budgets.

We also pay for telecommunications that didn’t exist in the before time. I pay a couple hundred a month to pipe in hot, fresh Internet. In 1978, our area of Minot didn’t have cable television, much less connectivity to all of the dumbassery the World Wide Web has to offer. Yes, you can survive without Internet, but in today’s world that cuts you off from basically everything, good and bad. Work, education, and entertainment assume that you have at least some form of high-speed Internet access.

Heck, only the richest families at our school had a computer at all, and it was rarely something kids were allowed to touch. Those slightly better off than us had a Magnavox, ColecoVision, or Atari, but those were the cool guys whose moms liked having a crowd of young kids over for sleepovers.

My son got a 3D printer for Christmas last year. He hooked it up to one of his spare laptops. I recognize how truly blessed I am that my son has spare anything, much less a spare computer.

We also tended to have a lot less junk back then. My son has two dressers and a closet stuffed full of clothing, books, and other…. stuff. That’s in his bedroom, the one I get The Look from his mother about when I go in there uninvited.

I had one shelf nailed to the wall of the room I shared with my two brothers, maybe two pairs of pants and two nice shirts for church in the closet. Because I was older and bigger, I got two drawers in our shared dresser, but I had to defend that on a daily basis.

I can’t remember the last time I saw two or more kids sharing a bedroom. I was considered odd because I put my two older sons into bunkbeds 20 years ago. A lot of families we know have separate bathrooms for each child, which still gobsmacks me every time I encounter it.

Our family had a single television, which doubled as a liquor cabinet, ornamental table, and both cover and concealment should someone break into the living room. I have two televisions, with screens quadruple in size what our Sylvania had, within arms reach right now. Irish Woman has a similar setup in her office, and we have a TV as large as the projection screen in my elementary school classroom in the basement.

Going back to vehicles, it was still relatively common for families to only have one car when I was a kid. My father worked the railroad, so mom would just get up at odd hours and take him to work, then pick him up when he got home a few days later. A lot of families had one car, although the really cool dad down the block had a 1940’s Harley that he took to work during the snow-free months.

For the families whose father went to work every day and needed the car, most of them just carpooled or planned shopping and all that for days when dear old dad wasn’t working. I remember many phone conversations where my mom was coordinating taking someone else downtown or to the grocery store when she was going.

When was the last time you saw a family with only one vehicle or grown-ups coordinating who could drive whom somewhere?

One side note, because I’ve absolutely given up on keeping this short, is the subject of children’s clothing. I was the oldest of five, but among the youngest in my father’s wider family. I got new clothes at Christmas and maybe the beginning of school. Other than socks and underwear, just about everything else I got was either hand-me-down from older cousins or bought at the Salvation Army. Most things were built strong (Remember ToughSkins, folks?). If taken care of, they could last through several owners as they progressed from dress clothes, to school clothes, to play clothes, to the material for quilts or rags.

There are still families who do this, but I see a lot more who just buy cheap, not necessarily inexpensive, clothing, then replace it when it gets old and/or worn out. Honestly, unless you’re buying top-of-the-line stuff, and maybe not even then, clothing just doesn’t hold up well enough to go through several hands in its lifetime. Having to buy new clothes for your kids more often makes those kids more expensive.

So, what we consider the necessities of life contains a lot more than earlier generations did. Every child getting their own bedroom means bigger and more expensive houses. Mom and dad having their own cars, made a lot more necessary by the way ‘communities’ are designed nowadays and the necessity for kids to be driven to and from school and the dozen or so structured activities parents put them into, at least doubles transportation costs. Add in all the other things that you must have in order to participate in 2026 life, and things get expensive really fast.

So, yes, there are some things that younger folks could cut out of their lives, such as eating out, undisciplined on-line shopping, etc. But there are also a whole bunch of built-in expenses that my generation and older didn’t have to budget for.

While we’re telling the 20-something to cut out the retail therapy and DoorDash, we also need to recognize that they’re also carrying a lot more than we or our parents did.

No wonder some of them are still living at home or waiting just a few more years to have children.