The changing American family -část2

By contrast, among "elderly unrelated individuals and elderly families without children, median family income rose 50%." Noting that "earnings failed to keep pace with inflation for many workers, especially those in the younger age groups," the analysts found that "adding a second earner to the workforce or increasing the second earner’s work hours was often necessary to keep family income from falling…. These altered work arrangements have resulted in parents (especially mothers) having less time with children, less leisure time, and possibly, fewer children." (italics added).

Even if the family wage concept were an actuality, the incidence of divorce (and the record of support and maintenance awards and payments after divorce) indicate to women of all ages that there are no public or private guarantees of economic support in exchange for carrying out the caretaker role. Paid employment outside the home is now the accepted form of self-insurance for women as well as men. Fringe benefits such as health insurance and social security are an almost mandatory element of self-sufficiency when increasing life spans are taken into account.

Yet while women have moved into the paid workforce in such numbers that employment is no longer gender-based, the care and maintenance of household and children generally has remained the province of women. The physical and emotional work of maintaining families, especially those with young children (who require years of almost constant supervision and nurture), is very demanding, but it is only just beginning to be appreciated by policy makers and society at large.

The changing relationship to work is also changing the pattern of rights and expectations within marriage. Despite strong cultural traditions and the need of most humans for intimate relationships, it is increasingly clear that individuals who are required to be economically self-sufficient have less tolerance for unequal familial relationships than those who are economically dependent. As women’s attachment to the paid labor force grows stronger, they are asserting their rights to power and control in family decision-making more vigorously. When those rights are not respected, many women either do not enter into, or depart from, what they consider intolerable family relationships. Men do the same.

The questions raised by these shifts are profound and disturbing. Can we still rely on families, as we have in the past, to produce healthy and effective workers and citizens when it often takes two earners to support a young family? Where will the time and effort for family life come from? Even more so for the 27% of U.S. families with children and only one adult, most often a mother: where does the time, energy and money come from to raise those children? According to 1987 Census reports, 20% of U.S. children lived in poverty in 1986 (up from 1978), with children under age six most at risk. A majority – 51.4% – of families below the poverty line were female-headed, illustrating the difficulties posed when women alone try to maintain families, assuming both the caretaking and breadwinning roles.