The Mommy Trend
Kieran at Crooked Timber examines some data on family earning trends:
Here you can see that even in 1967, when the series starts, families where the Husband was the only earner were already a minority of all families. By the 1990s, there were almost as many families with no earners as families where only the Husband was working. The percentage of families where only the Wife was working rose from 1.7 to 5.2 percent from 1967 to 2003. The percentage of families where both the husband and wife were working peaked in 1999 (at just over 60 percent) and has fallen slightly since then. Note that this figure doesn't tell you how earning patterns change once families have children, just the absolute numbers of each type, whether they have children or not.The next figure shows trends in the labor force participation rate of mothers with children under the age of 18. (You can get it as a PDF file.) Here the trend (obviously) is one of consistent growth -- though again, even in 1975 47 percent of mothers (with children under 18) were in the workforce. Their participation rates peak in 2000, at just shy of 73 percent. By 2004 the rate had dropped two percentage points to 70.7 percent. Note that this figure doesn't tell you how participation rates vary by household income.
The timing of the declines in both dual-earner families and mothers' labor force participation look to me as though they are driven by sensitivity to prevailing labor market conditions rather than any widespread change in attitudes to work and motherhood. But what do I know? At any rate, it's good to have a resource like the BLS to hand, if only to add a bit of context to your survey of 60-odd Yale and Harvard students.
In other words, women work less when they lose jobs and the economy sucks. They work more when they can.
Check out the comments below Kieran's post to see how CT readers challenge, refine, and revise her conclusions. It's a great example of how scholars and this medium can move toward a greater understanding of a complex phenomenon without having the conversation degrade into insults. Bravo, CT.
Are NYTimes reporters so lazy or incompetent that they can't get such information rather easily? Or don't they think it's relevant if it complicates their "pander to the rich and right" message?