Households

When people discuss family life there is often a confusion between family as kinship and family as household. The two ideas are so much part of commonsense understandings of “family” that they are elided together. Though less common in sociology, a similar lack of clarity over what aspect of “family” is being examined sometimes arises.

Dual-Earner Households

One of the most significant transformations over the past 50 years has been the growing proportion of women earning an income from paid employment after marriage and childbirth. In the 1950s, more than 70% of American families maintained a “traditional” employment structure comprising a male breadwinner and an economically inactive wife. By the 1990s, this