How to Money · Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Contrary to the narrative that dual-income households are a modern necessity, Joseph Moore argues that women's income has historically been vital for American families' financial well-being, dating back to the 1700s. He explains that women's contributions, often through self-employment or renting out home spaces, were essential for families to not just survive, but thrive and achieve homeownership.
“Women were making insane amounts of money for the family. Like let me get an example. There was a peer when in farmers, especially farmers learning to farm, where women's butter churning was about one third of the family's income. Right, A very common method for buying a home was for the woman and the husband to both work hard save up the down payment.”
“Then they would use the down payment, which often came from both their incomes, to buy the house. Then she would quote unquote stop working. But the advice you and I've read so many of these. They're in English, they're in Polish, they're in Italian, they're like people are writing like this is how you buy a house at America. You get the down payment, you buy it. Then the wife stops working, but she then runs the house like an airbnb, and she rents out all the rooms in the house for eight to ten years.”
“So the difference between surviving in America and thriving in America was often the woman's income but we somehow it got written out of history and we decided that women started working in the nineteen sixties and seventies, and that's just not true.”