Why do marriages fail? Sorry...NOT!!! But i've seen the same scenario - different couples, same drama - play out, more than a few too many times.

Maybe, just maybe, if the wife didn't want to bring more than one kid into the picture, maybe the marriage would have survived.  One child is alot less expensive to provide - $100 a week for daycare, as opposed to $200.  On top of that, one child's laundry is less work (before or after work) than two, or more children.  Then there's clutter, and cleaning after it, in general - smaller family, less housework; the added benefit being, the house actually looks clean - after busting yer tail, after working all day.

But it's completely normal for wives to want atleast two children - maybe a third child.  Gramma said, back in her day, most wives wanted a boy and a girl.  Even back then - when women didn't work for a paycheck - too many kids often made mom's life very burdensome and sorrowful.  Yep, The Waltons was a television program, not reality.  Reality is, back then there were dads who preferred the barroom's company rather than his sons' companionship...teaching the boys how to fix a fence, build a shed, run a trout line...and when a bit older, talking with his sons, warning each of them to steer clear of manipulative drama queens.  

By the way, in the town where us kids grew up, there was a wife and mother of four children - and she was pregnant with number #5.  She was having an affair, but broke it off, because she preferred the father of #5 - which - yep, you guessed it - was not her husband.

Needless to say, the ... uh-hem... "lady's" husband wanted a divorce.  Thing is, being that he was just a regular working guy, getting a divorce in the early 1960s was a long, complicated, and VERY expensive process, which involved a courtroom, a (ol' patriarch) judge and witnesses.  So, i don't know if the man got free from that (for-real) ball and chain.

But anyway, back to regular families - where a man's wife is not a jezebel.  How wives managed, back then, to keep the house tidy...can't wrap my head around that one.  Houses back then were tiny, they had about half the square-footage, and twice the family-size.  Yikes, where did people put their stuff - their clothing...men, women and children, back then, actually wore under-clothing, and lots of it.   Everything needed ironed back then.  Where the heck was room for an ironing board!

More later.