dec 1, 1972 - WOmen start entering workforce more and more

Description:

In 1973, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) aired a twelve-part television series that followed the life of a real American family — the Louds of Santa Barbara, California. Producers wanted the show, called simply An American Family, to document how a middle-class white family coped with the stresses of a changing society. They did not anticipate that the family would dissolve in front of their cameras. Tensions and arguments raged, and in the final episode, Bill, the husband (who was serially unfaithful), moved out. By the time the show aired — setting the first standard for the later emergence of what would become known as “reality television” — the couple was divorced and Pat, the former wife, was a single working mom with five kids.

An American Family highlighted a traumatic moment in twentieth-century domestic life. The nuclear family was at the heart of the postwar ideal, but between 1965 and 1985, the divorce rate doubled. Children born in the 1970s had a 40 percent chance of spending part of their youth in a single-parent household. As wages stagnated and inflation pushed up prices, more and more families depended on two incomes for survival. The women’s movement challenged traditional gender roles — father as provider and mother as homemaker — and middle-class baby boomers rebelled against what they saw as the puritanical sexual values of their parents’ generation.

One of the most striking developments of the 1970s and 1980s was the relative stagnation of wages. After World War II, hourly wages had grown steadily ahead of inflation, giving workers more buying power with each passing year. By 1973, that trend had stopped in its tracks. The decline of organized labor, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and runaway inflation all played a role in the sudden halt to progress. Hardest hit were blue-collar and pink-collar workers and those without college degrees.

Despite the presence of millions of women in the workforce, many Americans still believed in the “family wage”: a breadwinner income, earned by men, sufficient to support a family. After 1973, fewer and fewer Americans brought home such an ample wage. Between 1973 and the early 1990s, every major income group except the top 10 percent saw their real earnings (accounting for inflation) either remain the same or decline. Over the same period, the typical worker saw a 10 percent drop in real wages. To keep their families from falling behind, more women went to work. Between 1950 and 1994, the proportion of women ages twenty-five to fifty-four working for pay increased from 37 to 75 percent, with much of that increase coming in the 1970s. American households were fast becoming dependent on two incomes


In 1968, about 43 percent of married couples sent both the husband and the wife into the workforce; thirty years later, 60 percent were two-earner families. The percentage of families in which the wife alone worked increased from 3 to 5 percent during these years, while those with no earners (welfare recipients and, increasingly, retired couples) rose from 8 to 13 percent. Because these figures do not include unmarried persons and most illegal immigrants, they do not give a complete picture of the American workplace. But there is no doubt that women now play a major role in the workforce.


The numbers tell two different stories about American life in these decades. On one hand, many women, especially those in blue-collar and pink-collar families, had to work for wages to sustain their family’s standard of living: to buy a car, pay for college, afford medical bills, support an aging parent, or simply pay the rent. Moreover, the number of single women raising children nearly doubled between 1965 and 1990. Women’s paid labor was making up for the declining earning power — or absence — of men in American households. On the other hand, women’s real income overall grew during the same period. Educated baby boom women were filling higher-paying professional jobs in law and medicine, business and government, and, slowly, the sciences and engineering. Beneficiaries of feminism, these women pursued careers of which their mothers had only dreamed.

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