By Valerie Adrian, Research Intern Council On Contemporary Families Stephanie Coontz, Co-Chair and Director of Research and Public Education Council on Contemporary Families AMERICANS CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE The Hard Place: Our Housing Crisis In just 10 years, between 1996 and 2006, Americans saw the value of their houses double. As […]
Topics of Expertise: Economic Inequality / Work & Family
We believe that the transformation of marriage that has occurred in the comparatively short period of 40 years is too great a break from the past to be dismissed as a slow and grudging evolution that has not fundamentally changed family dynamics. Our ongoing studies of couple relationships reveal instead that change has been continuous and significant, not merely in younger couples who begin their relationship with more flexible ideas about gender, but also in older couples where the wife has worked long enough to change her husband’s values and behaviors.
Topics of Expertise: Division of Labor in Families / Feminism & Families / Work & Family
Americans tend to think we are better off than families in most other industrial countries because we pay lower income taxes. But when we factor in the higher amount Americans pay for health care, child care, and education, the comparison is not always in our favor. Where do American families’ tax dollars go and what […]
Topics of Expertise: Economic Inequality / Health & Illness / Health Care / Labor & Workforce / TANF & Public Assistance / Work & Family
What reduces women’s housework burden? A new study shows that on average it doesn’t have much to do with her husband’s help or his earnings, but how much money SHE earns. The more she earns, the less housework she does. The old news: For over a decade, people who study how men and women […]
Topics of Expertise: Division of Labor in Families / Gender & Sexuality / Work & Family
The employment of wives and mothers rose dramatically from 1960 to about 1990, and thereafter has leveled off. There was a small dip from 2000 to 2004, but employment rates had inched back to 2000 levels by 2006, the latest figures available. Contrary to recent press accounts, there has not been an “op-out” revolution. […]
Topics of Expertise: Division of Labor in Families / Labor & Workforce / Work & Family
In 1960, only 40 percent of women aged 25-54 years old were in the labor force. By 2000, 70 percent of women that age were employed. For married women with children aged six through seventeen, employment rates grew from 40 percent in 1960 to a peak of almost 80 percent by the new millennium. Sixty percent of married women with children under school age now work for pay, compared to less than 20 percent in 1960. Mothers are still more likely than fathers to work part-time, but they are less likely to do so than they were in the past. Wives work for pay eighty percent of the hours their husbands work for pay, a huge increase since the 1960s.
Topics of Expertise: Division of Labor in Families / Feminism & Families / Gender & Sexuality / Labor & Workforce / Work & FamilyBy Jody Heymann, Ph.D. Professor in the Faculties of Medicine and Arts McGill University Founder and Director of the Project on Global Working Families Alison Earle, Ph.D. Project Manager for the Work, Family and Democracy Initiative Harvard University Jeffrey Hayes, Ph.D. Institute for Health & Social Policy McGill University The Work, Family, and Equity […]
Topics of Expertise: Work & Family
By Heather Boushey, Ph.D. Senior Economist Center for American Progress Recent media reports claim that mothers are increasingly “opting out” of employment to stay home with their families. But according to a new study released by the Council on Contemporary Families and the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the 20-year trend has been in […]
Topics of Expertise: Division of Labor in Families / Labor & Workforce / Work & FamilyTwentieth century social policy in industrial nations was originally formulated on the assumption that one particular family model was both the most prevalent and the most desirable. A family was supposed to consist of a married couple — one male breadwinner and one female homemaker — and their children, and the wages of a man were assumed to be enough to support a wife and children. Almost all women were assumed to be housewives.
Accordingly, women and children’s access to market income was organized through marriage, as was their access to social insurance. Male workers could claim social insurance benefits for themselves and their dependents from the state, unions, employers and other institutions, but women seldom had any way to make claims independently. When husbands died, widows with children could draw pensions from the state and/or receive aid from the husband’s union, while women without husbands usually had no legal way to make such claims. At the same time, work was organized on the assumption that all men were married to women who could devote their time and labor to the care of children.
Topics of Expertise: Labor & Workforce / Work & Family
Senior Sociologist, RAND Corporation; Professor of Sociology and Policy Analysis, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Assistant Professor of Family, Health, and Policy in the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah
Director of Research and Public Education, Council on Contemporary Families; Professor, The Evergreen State College
Associate Professor, Department of Family Science & Human Development, Montclair State University
Clinical Director, Perelman School of Medicine, Dept of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania
Associate Professor and Faculty Director of the Master of Science in Social Policy program, University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice
Professor of Sociology, Florida State University
Professor of Psychology & Director of Center for Research on Families, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Professor of Sociology and Director of the Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University
