That's the same principle as ''just leave home an hour earlier and ride a bike to work''. Is it the right thing to do? sure, is it done by a nation, fuck no. An easier option exists (the engine) and it is in human nature to lean toward the easiest route.
This is where you are hitting into sociological changes that have trampled those traditions. If you care to check, most of it boils down to changes in industry that in tern change how society works. It isn't easy at all to ''pick shifts'' just so one can cook good meals. It's a valid reason to want to do it but it isn't plausible for many today. Most mothers back then stayed at home and didn't have to work, that was in part due to a more lenient system and a better cultural ethic that did not pressure parents to spend mind blowing amounts of money on commodity's for children. That is down to big company's using advertising and using very real psychological manipulation to shift an entire nation into over consuming for validation or fear of social rejection. We have little to fear in society on a nature level, but that fear exists ever more in the social network, the fear of image being bad = life over.
Same with the food industry..
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” -
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
At-least at current this could not be more true. Corporate cuts and profit margins leading to abysmal jail conditions > collapse of order in jail. This is also reflected in housing, schooling, police force, nhs and so on. It's the criminals fault for taking drugs in a 23 hour lock up with nothing else to do, it's the tenants fault for falling behind on extortionate renting. It's the low IQ kids fault the local school closed, the police officers fault he didn't attend a crime scene on an understaffed zone. And we know what it's like waiting in A&E for 3+ hours.. for those over worked under staffed idiots to get something done.
We don't have as much power as we like to think. Governments and corporations set trends directly or indirectly. The last time I seen anything close to national power was the EU vote.. but look at the mess that's in as they try to revert our ''choice''. We send our kids to school and we give the government free reign to teach them what they want.. in-fact it's law and is made extremely difficult to do your own way. That in itself is indoctrination to ''their way of life''.
Personal responsibility, when you route it to the core consists of ''be good'' ''work hard'' ''pay taxes''. That isn't responsibility, it's conformity.