Story Highlights
- Analysis of Census Bureau data reveals a revolution in traditional roles
- The role reversal has freed moms who prefer to work and dads who like to nurture
She's a soldier. He's a stay-at-home dad.
She works at a booming software company. He's starting a graphic design business.
She's a business executive and electrical engineer. He's quit many jobs to move for her career advancements.
These are real-life examples of how changing gender roles and an evolving economy have reshaped American society in barely a generation — from an Ozzie and Harriet nation found in the classic 1950s sitcom to one in which Harriet is increasingly the breadwinner while Ozzie stays home with the kids.
A USA TODAY analysis of Census Bureau data reveals a revolution in the traditional roles of men and women that extends from college campuses to the workplace to the neighborhoods across this nation. Today, when one spouse works full-time and the other stays home, it's the wife who is the sole breadwinner in a record 23% of families, the analysis finds. When the Census started tracking this in 1976, the number was 6%.
Just as telling, wives outearn their husbands 28% of the time when both work, up from 16% 25 years ago. This means the wife is bringing home the bacon — or at least more bacon than her husband — in more than 12 million American families.
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg (author of Lean In, which explores workplace biases) and Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer (who limited the company's telecommuting policy) have stirred debate about the complex choices occurring as women push themselves higher and higher up the economic ladder. The earning superiority of women over men isn't the rule, but it is increasingly common.
What does this mean in everyday life, not just in the executive suite? To find out, USA TODAY interviewed a dozen female breadwinners and many of their spouses about the role reversal — and how it's working. Several themes emerged:
Education. In nearly every case, the woman is better educated than the man. The wife and husband don't generally consider one smarter than the other. But the men often prefer doing things with their hands or outdoors, while the women excel in school and working at a desk.
Parenting. The role reversal has freed moms who prefer to work and dads who like to nurture. "Patience" — when Dad has it naturally and Mom doesn't — is the attribute both men and women cite for flipping traditional roles.
Health insurance. Who has it? Professional women generally have this precious commodity. Blue-collar men often don't. When kids arrive, the couple's decision is often a matter of familial responsibility.
WHERE EDUCATION MATTERS
The college gap is driving startling changes in financial equations between women and men. Women earned 57% of bachelor's degrees, 60% of master's degrees and 52% of doctoral degrees in 2010, the Education Department reports.
Tiffany Townsend, 36, of Nashville is a college-educated fundraiser. Her husband, Todd, 40, is a carpenter. They discussed having a second child. Financially, it would make sense for her husband to stay home rather than to use day care.
"I'm kind of wistful, wishing I had that option," Townsend says. "I even worry how others would judge me. Women who work are sometimes perceived as sacrificing family for career."
In most cases, the higher-earning working women interviewed by USA TODAY came from households in which their mother was a role model, working long and difficult hours outside the home.
Jill Kennel, 51, of Gresham, Ore., was raised on a Virginia farm. Mom worked in a grocery while Dad farmed. So it didn't seem radical when she became the family's sole breadwinner after her husband lost his landscape irrigation job during the economic downturn and his unemployment benefits ran out in 2011.
She's a software trainer and teaches part-time at community colleges. Her husband, Donald, 55, does the laundry and keeps house. Their children, a son and a daughter, are 17 and 20.
"He makes a wonderful househusband. If I had to sit at home, I'd go nuts," she says.
Donald Kennel is finishing his associate's degree, made affordable by the tuition benefits from his wife's teaching job. He hopes to start on a four-year college degree in the fall and become a civil engineer.
Contributing: Paul Overberg
Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/24/female-breadwinners/2015559/