"the answer may depend on whether consumers’ new penchant for self-service is temporary or permanent."

Cate suggested this post to me. From the NY Times:

"Outsourced Chores Come Back Home

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

A few months ago, as her family’s income fell, Laura French Spada, a real estate agent in Glen Rock, N.J., began dyeing her hair at home and washing the family cars herself. Her husband, Mark, started learning how to do electrical( I DRAW THE LINE HERE ) repairs.

Susan Todoroff, a personal trainer in Ann Arbor, Mich., has begun brewing espressos at home and cutting her hair and cleaning her house herself. And Tamar A. Zaidenweber, a health care market researcher in Astoria, Queens, is spending more time walking her dog instead of taking it to day care each week.

All of these consumers could praise themselves for their newfound frugality in the midst of an economic downturn. But every step they take toward self-reliance — each shrub they prune themselves, each cupcake they bake from scratch — hurts the people and small businesses that have long provided these services professionally.( TRUE )

These small, service-oriented businesses are run in storefronts on urban streets and in suburban strip malls, or sometimes just out of pickup trucks. Responsible for roughly 18 million jobs nationwide( A LOT ), according to 2006 Census Bureau data, these companies have long been seen as engines of America’s economic growth. Yet after years of explosive expansion, many beauty salons, dry cleaners, landscapers, dog walkers, nanny services and restaurants experienced slower sales growth or even decline in the final months of 2008.

Their services are suddenly, and painfully, being perceived as nonessential( THEY ARE ).

The question now for these businesses is whether demand will stabilize or, eventually, drop enough to force them to close. And the answer may depend on whether consumers’ new penchant for self-service is temporary( ME ) or permanent ( CATE ).

After all, as incomes rose and gender roles changed over the last 50 years, families have become accustomed to outsourcing more and more of their household chores. No longer was it just the very rich who had “servants,” said Jan de Vries, an economic historian at the University of California, Berkeley( GO BEARS! ).

“Household members, particularly women, have been working more in the market,” said Mr. de Vries. “They have had less time( YES ) and higher money income, and they have been spending a lot of that money income on services they once provided themselves.”

Still, he said, even before the recession, some families had already cited moral reasons( THESE ARE VERY GOOD REASONS IN MY BOOK ) for reverting to domestic self-sufficiency( I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE IN MY HOUSE ), to those good old days( WHEN WOULD THOSE BE? LIKE FIDDLER ON THE ROOF? ) when families grew their own food and burped their own babies.

“Families have been creating a discussion over the past decade about value-driven concerns that are now being reinforced by forces in the economy,” he said. As a result of this confluence of moral and financial incentives, “The way households function 20 years from now will probably be sort of surprising to us( IF I'M AROUND I'LL BE SURPRISED ).”

Indeed, after decades of spendthrift subcontracting, many consumers now say they view such specialist services as indulgences rather than necessities( WELL, THEY ARE. WHICH IS NOT TO SAY THAT SOME INDULGENCE ISN'T GOOD. ).

“A lot of the way we’d been living was all an illusion, a fantasy,” said Ms. Spada, who has also been cooking more and bathing the family dog instead of going to the groomer. “We’ve been asking ourselves: Can we replicate some of those specialized services, which normally we would outsource, ourselves?”

Even as Americans cut back on restaurant dining, pet care services, professional hair and nail services, house cleaners and landscapers, companies producing some of the do-it-yourself products are seeing higher sales.

According to Information Resources Inc., a market research firm in Chicago, sales of products used in home manicures, home cooking and home medical treatments, among others, have experienced healthy growth in the last year. Dollar sales of cold-allergy-sinus tablets, for example, increased 17.2 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, according to Sageworks, a company that tracks sales at privately held businesses, revenue at physicians’ offices fell by 0.06 percent.

“They’re reducing doctor visits, and trying to treat themselves at home,” says Thom Blischok, president of global innovation and consulting at Information Resources.

Big-box stores that sell these products have been capitalizing on the return to a self-service mentality. Target, for example, recently began its “New Day” marketing campaign, which glorifies the family-friendly, do-it-yourself alternatives to activities households used to outsource. Against upbeat lyrics about how things are “getting better every single day,” the ads show dismal economic headlines( THESE ARE SURE USEFUL ), followed by scenes of a father buzzing the hair of his smiling sons (“the new barber shop”) and a child eagerly eyeing his mother’s cookie-filled oven (“the new bakery”).

At the same time, the service providers have been hurting.

“From the moment that the stock market collapsed and the TARP was being talked about, in September( YES ), it was like someone turned the switch off for nanny demand,” said Steve Lampert, the president of eNannySource.com, making a reference to the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Family subscriptions to eNannySource.com, a national nanny placement company based in West Hills, Calif., are down to 150,000, about a third of the site’s peak in 2007, he said.

James Erath, owner of Puppy Love & Kitty Kat in Manhattan, said, “Business is definitely down, about 25 or 50 percent down.” He has been offering steep discounts on grooming to attract customers who might bathe their pets at home.

Similarly, Rhonda Coop-Piraino, a hair stylist in Dallas, said about 10 percent of her clients had started coloring their hair at home to save money. Many of these clients, she said, return to her salon for color correction when their home kits disappoint.

“They do come in sometimes with some pretty orange hair,” she said. “I have a hard time charging the same amount I once charged for color correction, though. I have clients who have been with me for so many years, and it’s hard for me to charge them $200 in this economy.”

Like Ms. Coop-Piraino’s clients, some consumers say that doing things for themselves has not been as easy as they thought.

After letting their maid go last October, Chris DeCarlo said he and his partner, Chris Toland, realized they had a lot to learn about keeping their Manhattan apartment tidy. Their biggest challenge has been laundry.

“No mishaps yet,” said Mr. DeCarlo, a Web site designer, “but my partner is proud to report that somebody in our laundry room who was watching him struggle felt the need to intervene and show him the proper way to fold a fitted sheet.”

And there are some services that consumers now have trouble duplicating themselves because of technological advances.

When it comes to cars, for example, consumers might be able to refresh their memories about how to change a car’s oil — and some mechanics report a rise in such self-service. Faisal Akram, the owner of service stations in Irvington, Tarrytown and Cortlandt Manor, all in New York, said that for the first time in recent memory customers were bringing in waste oil from home.

But beyond oil changes, there is little most car owners can do themselves because automobiles have become so sophisticated.

Aaron Clements, the owner of C & C Automotive and host of a car-repair radio show in Augusta, Ga., said that in recent months twice as many customers had been calling and asking for advice on how to service their cars themselves. But usually, once they learn what equipment, training and effort would be necessary for self-service, he said, they opt to take the car to a shop.

“Two cars ago, I was able to rebuild the entire engine,” said Vicki Robin, the co-author of “Your Money or Your Life,” a book praising the financial virtues of self-service. “But back then a car was a car. Now a car is a computer with wheels.”

As their former nannies, stylists, landscapers, dry cleaners and maids languish, consumers report mixed feelings. They say they sometimes feel guilty about the ripple effects their penny-pinching is having on the livelihoods of others, but at the same time they feel unexpectedly empowered by their rediscovered self-reliance.

Many say that even when their financial worries abate, they will probably remain self-service converts. ( I SEE THIS AS GOING AGAINST HUMAN NATURE )

“After doing it yourself, it’s like, ‘Why was I ever spending $200( MAYBE THE PRICES SHOULD COME DOWN ) to pay someone else to do it for me?’ ” said Ms. Zaidenweber, who recently dyed her hair for the first time from an $8 home coloring kit. “It was kind of fun, even if it didn’t turn out exactly as I expected, and even it took a couple tries to get it done right.”

Caitlin Kelly contributed reporting."

I'm sorry, but people love leisure and indulgence and sex, where did that come in, and other comforts that make them happy. There will never be a large society of self-imposed poverty or even lean living without the economic context that would force people into it. Having said that, I do approve of people being more prudent and conservative with their money, and not valuing money to the exclusion of other pursuits in life. So, in a way, I'm torn. I really do agree with the idea of more self-sufficiency, but I don't want the social and economic context that would make it mandatory. I doubt few others would as well.

I'm glad that these people are finding a new sense of meaning and empowerment in our economic downturn, but I'd just as soon it had not happened. That's another paradox to add to my list of life's paradoxes.