The changing American family -část2

THE CHANGING WORKFORCE

A major factor affecting all these statistics has been the steady shift of women into the paid labor force. This profound shift has happened within a single human lifespan, too fast for many of our institutions and attitudes to keep pace. A large number of today’s older senior citizen women have been dependent housewives for most of their adult lives. They were raised expecting to find a husband who could support them, and for a majority of this generation the breadwinning husband/caretaking wife model worked.

Their daughters were often employed before their marriage and until they had children. After the children were in school, many reentered the workforce, demonstrating that their involvement in the workforce was not a temporary aberration. In 1965, 41.1% of women aged 35-44 were in the paid labor force. Twenty-one years later this same cohort of women (now 55-64 years old) were represented in almost the same proportion, 42.3%. (An interesting question is to what extent these were the same women being employed or whether individual women moved in and out of the labor force depending on family circumstances.)

The younger sisters of this age cohort followed their elders’ example and added momentum to the trend. In 1965, 38.5% of women aged 25-34 were in the paid labor force. By 1986 this same group – then aged 45-55 – had a 66.3% rate. These women were obviously more dedicated to paid employment than is commonly believed, but society still maintained the fiction that women were caretakers and men were breadwinners.

What’s interesting – but not often perceived or discussed – is that as women’s employment has increased, men’s employment has decreased. During the last 25 years women’s employment has increased by 30% or more in every age category up to age 55 while men’s employment has declined in every age group over age 25. This trend represents a profound shift in lifestyles and contradicts long-held cultural assumptions.

FORCES BEHIND THE CHANGE

There are strong economic forces at work behind this shift. For a great majority of younger families, it is no longer practical to think in terms of a "family wage" – enough income from one wage earner to support a family, the children’s education and the couple’s retirement. Virtually every younger family (and many older ones) now assumes that the wife and mother can – and must – be an economic contributor to the family.

Family income has dropped over the last decade and a half, unless there is a second earner. In February, 1988, the Congressional Budget Office released a report: "Trends in Family Income: 1970-1986." Staff of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families analyzed these findings and concluded that although "family income for the typical family rose during this period … income gains were not evenly distributed. Low income families with children, young families at all income levels and poor single mother families in 1986 were much worse off than their counterparts in 1970." The main reason family incomes rose was "the increased number of workers per family, not increased earnings by the typical worker. Many families with children have needed to have both parents work to avoid losing ground."