ABSTRACT
After the Second World War, the culturally dominant family model in West Germany was the housewife model although in practice it was realized only to a limited extent. The modernization of the gender arrangement taking place in the following decades was characterized by a cultural change that was much more profound than the actual change with respect to gendered division of labour. The major processes of change resulted not simply in a 'pluralization of women's private living arrangements'. Part-time work enables mothers to be gainfully employed without giving up their fundamental responsibility for their children. The modernization of the housewife model towards the part-time carer model of the male breadwinner family was initiated primarily by women and their representatives in the women's movement while the collective actors in the centre of power, in the 'corporate triangle' of trade unions, welfare state and employers' representatives, have for a long time tried to maintain the old status quo.
