The Stalled Revolution: Gender and Time Allocation in the United States

Abstract

Families have long faced a “work and family” time allocation: who will earn money to support the family financially and who will provide the caregiving children require and the support that the family earner(s) need? In mid-20th-century America, providing economically for a family largely took place within a two-parent context and macroeconomic conditions were such that (white) men could usually provide sufficient income from their one job alone to support a wife and children. Material aspirations were also lower, following a decade and a half of the lowered consumption during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the war years of the early 1940s. In addition, discrimination against women in the workplace was legal and widespread and hence, opportunities for women outside the home were limited (Casper and Bianchi 2002).