It Takes Two: The Impact Of Dual-Income Families Essay, Research Paper

It Takes Two

An important impact of the current economic conditions upon today’s American family is that of the dual-income family. Currently many families, mine own included, need both partners to provide economic support in order secure quality housing, childcare and living conditions. I intend to examine the conditions that create the need for two income families, the effects, good and bad upon the children of such families, and compare the overall quality of life of the average dual-income family to that of the average single income family.

Today, there are more than 52 million, married families “units” in the United States. The dual-earner family is the most common, with 60% of all married families having both spouses working outside the home. For the group to which I belong, families with children, the rate of two working parents is even higher. Approximately 70% of the 24.7 million two-parent families in the United States report both spouses working either full or part-time outside the home. (Benokraitis, 1996). Additionally, a recently released Census Bureau report (”Fertility of American Women,” 9/00) that showed that more mothers, especially mothers of infants, were in the work force in 1998 than ever before (73 percent and 59 percent, respectively).

The labor force participation of mothers has risen steadily since the Census Bureau began collecting data on the topic in 1976, so it is not particularly surprising to me that more women with infants are on the job today than in years past. Living in the suburbs has exposed my wife and I to the realities faced by today’s family, that even for most of us in the middle class, the only way to obtain our hopes and dreams is for both partners to work. Perhaps more noteworthy is the finding that for the first time, dual-income families with children made up the majority of married couples in 1998. “The traditional family, portrayed as one with an employed husband whose wife stayed home to look after the children, has changed to a family with both parents employed outside the home and with children cared for by someone other than a family member,” the Bureau reported.

The primary factor in the increase of dual-income families over the past 25 years has been the economy. Another interesting fact is that of the three main family units; married couples with the wife working, married couples with the wife not working, and female-headed households with no husband present, only the dual-income family group has have avoided a decrease in family income since 1970. (Cherlin, 1996)

Having two wage earners affects marriages in several ways. These include the quality of the marriage between the spouses, the division of household labor, and the quality of child rearing. The quality of the marriage can be strained if either spouse has a job with unsatisfactory work conditions or if the two partners disagree on spousal employment. If the two can agree then a significant lessening in tension and conflict occur in the marriage. (Schwartz & Scott, (1994).

Of course, many mothers, like many fathers, do get satisfaction from their jobs. But regardless of their feelings, few married (and fewer single) women in today’s economy can base decisions about whether to work or become full-time moms primarily on their own desires; that luxury, never widely available, has become as obsolete as Ozzie and Harriet. “Having it all” no longer refers simply to middle-class women’s reluctance to choose between kids and a career: In practical terms, it can also refer to families’ efforts to ensure economic stability at a time when the costs of college, health insurance, childcare and home ownership have skyrocketed.

“Two Careers, One Marriage,” a 1998 study by the research firm Catalyst, found that of approximately 800 members of dual-income families, 84 percent of women cited increased income as a primary benefit they reap from a two-career marriage. Only 29 percent of women surveyed named more psychological benefits, such as personal fulfillment or intellectual equality, as a major job perk (although well over half said they would work with or without financial need).

When Catalyst asked husbands the same question about the benefits of work, men mirrored women’s responses within 1 percentage point. One survey area where husbands and wives that I found to be interesting in this supposed era of the “Me” generation: Mothers were 20 percent more likely than fathers to “scale back career goals” and “step off the fast track at work.”

About half of all women who work full-time earn less than $25,000 annually, and 7 million women scrape by on the minimum wage (In These Times, 11/28/99). Certainly many women, especially those whose jobs entail a certain level of intellectual challenge and professional success, find independence and personal gratification in their careers. However, it is unlikely that many mothers in low-wage jobs, rarely benefiting from the health care and family-friendly benefits that women in corporate America receive, work outside the home simply for the love of it.

Even for families that are not low-income, a second income often makes the difference between a family’s financial growth and stagnation or worse. As research from the Economic Policy Institute illustrates, men’s real wages have fallen since the 1970s as women’s hourly wages have risen, making wives’ added salaries increasingly important to family incomes over time (The State of Working America 2000-2001). According to EPI, middle-income families who saw their income rise by 13.5 percent between 1979 and 1998 would have seen their income drop by 0.7 percent without the addition of wives’ wages.

Routine household chores is one area that research consistently finds that husbands do not make equal contributions to. For example, one survey found that women did 77% of the cooking, 66% of the shopping, 75% of the cleaning, and 85% of the laundry (Benokratis, 1996). Percentages like this have resulted in women’s work at home being labeled as “the second shift.” In contrast, wives whose husbands do an equal amount of chores at home report higher levels of satisfaction with their marriage, less depression, and less resentment. In fact, the women whose marriages lack equity in these areas have said that improvements in helping around the home is one of the most important things that would make their lives better. Anecdotally, while attending night classes at CSU, Hayward the most common complaint I heard on break and during study sessions was about the lazy husband at home not helping, and women dreading having to go home after class and clean up the house.

The third area where families are affect by work is the area of childcare. Research shows that having both parents work is not automatically damaging to kids (Benokraitis, 1996). Instead, what is most important seems to be the quality of the care given to the children by the parents and caregivers.

The news media has concentrated on the difficulties working mothers face when they try to “have it all”; tales of strained “Superwomen” can serve to reinforce a notion that I resent, that unlike for fatherhood, motherhood and work outside the home are naturally in conflict. Media have been less likely to dig beneath the surface symptoms of women’s workplace problems–for example, working mothers’ stress levels–to the root causes of such problems. But these root causes shouldn’t be hard for journalists to find. It is no secret that working parents are increasingly strapped for time; according to EPI, married workers with children labored an average of 354 more hours per year in 1998 than they did in 1979. This time crunch is particularly hard on women, since childcare arrangements tend to be handled more often by mothers even when married partners both work. And the 1999 Council of Economic Advisors reported highlighted the fact that parents have twenty-two fewer hours per week to spend at home, as compared with the average in 1969.

The media never questions why fathers want careers, and rarely if ever imply that their presence in the workplace is bad for their children. Yet for years, media outlets have often spread the idea that working mothers who leave their children in childcare services are abandoning their kids in order to pursue their own interests. By taking data about working mothers out of economic context, by profiling primarily white-collar professionals, and by focusing on the ages of women’s babies when they returned to work (”just a month old”!), the media uses what the LA Times called “a subtle bashing of working moms as maternally lacking”. Whether mothers work out of financial necessity, personal desire or a combination of the two, they deserve better.

It has been proven that children who spend time in quality day care do at least as well and often better in psychosocial development, intelligence, and academic achievement as opposed to children raised at home by both parents (Sullivan & Thompson, 1994). Also children exposed to quality day care perform equally well in verbal and cognitive skills, creativity, social competence, and cooperation. Unfortunately, the supply of quality, affordable childcare in California does not match the demand. The result is that families like mine pay $1000.00 a month or more for quality service.

The overwhelming majority of Americans say two things about the much-discussed “time-bind” dilemma: that they would arrange things so that they can take care of their own kids if they felt it were a viable option; and that if they have to depend on nonparental care for whatever reason, they would prefer not to have to rely on commercial daycare. The survey data and polling numbers are revealing: Public Agenda, a nonpartisan polling agency based in New York, released an survey last September showing parents preferring, by 70 percent to 6 percent, one parent at home to a “quality” daycare center as the best arrangement for children under five years of age; 71 percent agreed with the statement that “parents should only rely on a daycare center when they have no other option” (Necessary Compromises, 2000).

Additionally, a nationwide survey published by Parents magazine and the I Am Your Child Foundation in May of 2000 showed that 77 percent of mothers wish they could stay home full-time to rear their children, a dramatic increase from 29 percent in a similar poll conducted just four years ago (The Parent Trap, 2000).

A detailed Los Angeles Times poll in June 1999 revealed that 68 percent of California fathers and 69 percent of mothers agree that “it is much better for the family if the father works outside the home and the mother tends to the children.” The same poll showed that 50 percent of all fathers and 81 percent of mothers said that, if circumstances allowed, they would rather stay home with their children than work. When asked to identify the greatest difficulty facing parents, the highest percentage responded that it was a lack of time for their children (Finding Quality Childcare, 1999).

To keep our family and careers in balance my wife and I set priorities about family goals, keep family and work separate, organize and share domestic responsibilities and plan a family and a “just us” outing twice a month on alternating weekends. These small, but important steps helps us insure that our can continue to cope with the stresses of being a dual-income family.

Bibliography

Work cited

Benokraitis, N.V (1996). Marriages and families: Changes choices, and constraints (2nd ed). UpperSaddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Schwart, M.A., & Scott, B.M. (1994). Marriages and families: Diversity and change. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Cherlin, A.J. (1996). Public and Private families. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Sullivan, T.J., & Thompson, K.S. (1994). Introduction to social problems. New York: Macmillian

“Families and the Labor Market, 1969-1999: Analyzing the ‘Time Crunch,’” A Report by the Council of Economic Advisors, May 1999, pp. 13.

“Necessary Compromises: How Parents, Employers and Children’s Advocates View Childcare Today,” Public Agenda, August 2000.

“The Parent Trap”, Parents, March 2000, pp. 125-129.

Cathleen Decker, “Finding Quality Childcare a Tough Task,” The Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1999, pp. A1.

Two Careers, One Marriage, The Catalyst study. 1998, http://www.catalystwomen.org/home.html

Public Agenda Polling, Family Issues,

http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/factfiles.cfm?issue_type=family

“In These Times”, Public Agenda, November 1999.

“The State of Working America 2000-2001” A Report by the Economic Policy Institute, March 2001, pp 21.