One of my nieces posted something on Facebook earlier this week. It was an image of a couple in 1960s style clothing with the note that in 1960, a family could live on one job and one income, and that family could afford a car, a home and even going on regular vacations. The mother could afford to stay home, and the father was able to work but didn’t have to work excessively to provide for his family.

Fast forward 65 years to today, where both parents are having to work, but even with that, they’re not able to afford rent, childcare, health insurance or the occasional respite. Yet everyone says, “This is just how life is now.”

My niece is feeling the strain, as she is in the process of getting a divorce and is currently working two jobs. Even with that much income, she struggles to make ends meet. It’s a story that’s all too common as the cost of food has skyrocketed, the cost of renting a place to live continues to rise in leaps and bounds, and fewer people can hope to become homeowners.

I recently came upon an article from SmartAsset that pointed out that the cost to raise one child in a household where only one parent had to work. My niece currently lives in North Carolina, and to allow one parent to work and one parent to stay home with a child, that working parent must earn at least $75,608.

That is almost double what I make at my job as a newspaper journalist.

In my home state of Arizona, that threshold is even higher, with a single working parent needed to make $84,573. In Wisconsin, the threshold is a little lower, but that parent still needs to make $73,507.

The most expensive state was Hawaii, where the working parent must make six figures so the spouse can raise the child at home, a staggering total of $102,773. West Virginia is the cheapest state, so to speak, to raise a family, as the threshold sits at $68,099.

Now I see why it’s called the American dream. The life you want can only happen when you’re sleeping because it doesn’t cost anything to dream. When you’re awake, it’s a different story because it’s unaffordable for many.

Unfortunately, the reality of both parents having to have jobs has been a reality for most of my life. I remember my mother starting to work after my sister was old enough to go to school. I was the poster child for a latchkey kid.

Ironically, when my stepfather passed away, my mother had to choose between her own Social Security retirement and his instead of being able to benefit from both. In a time where we need two incomes to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies.

Then I look at my current situation. My sweetheart, Todd, and I are trying to buy a home, but even with our two combined incomes—we both work full time—the loan we can qualify for to buy a home is, at maximum, $155,000.

Have you looked at housing prices nowadays? The average home price, at least in my neck of the woods, is $275,000. With this setup, Todd and I would need to bring another person or two into the house. Plural marriage is against the law, so we’d need to find a sugar daddy or start a hippy commune to own a home.

With the cost of everything going up, it has become harder for Americans to feel like they’re on solid ground. I’ve read about families being started later in life and the number of children dwindling in families, all because the cost of living is too high. People are living paycheck to paycheck. While there’s a push for people to stop eating ultra-processed foods, those products are cheaper than buying beef.

Thank goodness egg prices have come down.

I would love to see us circle back to a way of life like it was in 1960. Don’t get me wrong; we can do without the racism and the misogyny. Still, we should be able to choose whether we want to have a career for the sake of having it, as opposed to needing it to help our spouse and children survive.

Circling back to my niece’s Facebook post, the person she reposted said the system is broken. It is. There’s a solution to piecing together the broken American dream. How we fix it remains to be seen, but when we fix it needs to be now.