I have always had the feeling that the Alcotts would have been enormously better off if Abba and Bronson could have swapped gender roles, and had Abba bring in a decent salary working for an established philanthropic institution, while Bronson took care of the kids and ran a small idealistic school that only sometimes broke even. I'm basing this partly on LMA's picture of the Bhaers running Plumfield, which I think was more an idealization of what her parents' marriage might have been than what she would have wanted for herself.