Families where both parents are working fulltime to keep their heads above water are pretty well the norm here these days (I don't know the statistics, though it'd be easy enough to dig them out via the magic Net). And of course there are a very large number of one parent families where the mother (in most cases) is holding down a fulltime paid job as well as everything else.

True enough, keeping in touch with the news, and even seeing it as relevant, can be pretty hard for overworked people.

However, my hunch is that, in spite of this, a lot of overworked people do manage to do this - while a lot of people who aren't overworked don't.

At least there is still ready access here to relatively honest and informative news bulletins on the main TV channels. Touch wood.