ABSTRACT
By the end of the 1970s combining paid work with family responsibilities became a viable lifestyle for the majority of women in the United States. Among all families, the proportion of dual-earner couples has nearly doubled since 1960 to about 55 percent, and the traditional family form of a married couple with children and with the wife not in the paid labor force declined to just 15 percent (Merrick and Tordella 1988). Over the same period, women's continuous participation in the paid labor force rose, particularly among mothers of young children, gender differences in levels of education declined, and the sex-role attitudes of women and men became more egalitarian. Furthermore, delay of age at first marriage, postponed onset of child-bearing, lower fertility, and increases in divorce and single-parent households suggested change in the organization and integration of work and family (Thornton 1989). By the 1980s, women were confronted with the balancing of commitments that follows changing involvements with the dual roles of paid work and family.
