American families and workplaces have both changed dramatically over the past half-century.
Paid work by women has increased sharply, as has family instability. Education-related inequality in work hours and income has grown. These changes, says Suzanne Bianchi, pose differing
work-life issues for parents at different points along the income distribution.
Between 1975 and 2009, the labor force rate of mothers with children under age eighteen
increased from 47.4 percent to 71.6 percent. Mothers today also return to work much sooner
after the birth of a child than did mothers half a century ago. High divorce rates and a sharp
rise in the share of births to unmarried mothers mean that more children are being raised by a
single parent, usually their mother