The Modern Marriage Test

I’m going to take a break from the acrimony of our politics and take on a nice safe topic: men, women and modern marriage. (Trigger warning: the end of this post poses a daunting math problem, so prepare to get your math brain up and running.)

What follows is my wonkish attempt to devise a formula that will help adults in families with kids see more clearly the vexing American issue of who does what, gender-wise, in the contemporary American family -- aka, the raw deal women get, aka, Honey, I Shrunk Your Week!

The question reflects obvious changes in the gestalt of the American family over the past fifty years. When I was a kid, relatively few of my friends’ mothers worked outside the home; and while this reality varied by location and social stratum, we know that the one-paycheck family was far more prevalent in the U.S. then than now. In the half-century between 1956 and 2006, the percentage of women aged 25 to 55 either working or actively seeking work rose from 40% to over 70%, and the average amount of time women in families spent doing paid work outside the home tripled.

What are the consequences of this big paradigm shift?

2 comments