FREE NEWSLETTER
DOES THE RISE IN dual-income families, which started in the 1960s, mean that today it’s almost a necessity for both spouses to work? In my opinion, absolutely.
Our first child was born in 1970. That was the last time my wife was employed, apart from a brief part-time job when our youngest was in high school. But we’re the exception. Over the past 40 years, the number of couples where both have jobs has soared from about half to 70%, according to the Brookings Institution. Among families with children at home, the percentage is a bit lower at 63%.
The trend toward working wives began taking off around 1968 as younger, more educated women entered the workforce. My wife and I married in 1968. But there was never any discussion of my wife getting a job once we had a family. She had no desire for a career. My mother wasn’t employed, nor were my grandmothers.
Today, it’s a different story. I read articles about working couples balancing work and family, including their struggles to pay for child care and to carve out quality time with their children. It strikes me as sad that families suffer such stress, financially and otherwise.
Still, for most American families, two incomes are a necessity. There are many reasons both spouses work, from the desire for a career to needing the money. For me, it’s not a matter of right or wrong. But I think we should acknowledge the impact. What fascinates me: the issue of paying the bills. How did we reach the point where two incomes have become a financial necessity?
From the day we were married—or, more accurately, from the day I got home from the Army in 1969—we lived on my income alone. From August 1969 until July 1970, we saved what my wife earned, using that money in 1971 for the down payment on the first house we purchased.
It was a 1,106-square-foot home in serious need of an HGTV makeover, but—at $29,000—it was what we could afford. We’d looked at another house that was newer and larger, but cost $35,000. On my income of $8,300 a year, it was unaffordable. My wife going back to work, so we could afford the nicer house, wasn’t a tradeoff we even considered.
Today, Zillow shows that our old home is worth $564,000, which means its value has climbed 5.9% a year over the past 52 years, two percentage points a year faster than inflation. There are many factors driving housing prices, but the ability to pay for them because of dual incomes is certainly one of them.
We’ve also seen demand for larger homes. The average size of a U.S. home was 1,660 square feet in 1973. By 2015, that figure had ballooned to 2,687 square feet. Since then, homes have begun to shrink. In 2021, the average single-family home fell to 2,273 square feet, while the average family size dropped to 3.13 people. It had been 3.8 in 1940.
Over the first 30 years of our marriage, our single-income status required many choices that meant we didn’t “keep up with the Joneses.” I don’t think our children felt deprived, except perhaps being the only kids on the block without Mickey Mouse ears.
If we were in our 30s today, I wonder if we’d be making the same decisions. We might be in a bind competing in the housing market against couples earning two incomes. These days, two incomes are almost a necessity for most American families because the spending power of other households—the good old Joneses—has raised the bar for standard of living, as well as the cost of basics like housing and college. How many families today would find a 1,106-square-foot house desirable, even as a starter home?
A family of four no longer wants to travel in a mid-size sedan, but in a huge SUV or a pickup truck. A Ford F-150 is today’s most popular vehicle. The number of households with two cars or more has grown from 22% in 1960 to 59% in 2020. Those cars are now so big they often won’t fit in the garage, which—in any case—is often overflowing with other possessions.
It’s not easy for a working husband and wife to raise a family, and even harder for couples who strive to do so on a single income. We’ve created a society where what used to be the norm is barely affordable, and those who try to attain it often must spend far more time working.
We’ve also put lower-middle-income families in a bind where child care is required, but often unaffordable. Costs vary greatly from place to place. But in 2022, the average was $284 a week for one child in daycare. The calls for taxpayer-funded child care solutions are growing.
Every societal change has consequences. In this case, there are winners—financially and career-wise. But many families are losers. Have I once again demonstrated that I’m out of touch with 21st century society? Oh my, I fear this has turned into another rant.
Richard Quinn blogs at QuinnsCommentary.net. Before retiring in 2010, Dick was a compensation and benefits executive. Follow him on Twitter @QuinnsComments and check out his earlier articles.
Want to receive our weekly newsletter? Sign up now. How about our daily alert about the site's latest posts? Join the list.
I’d like to add a couple of counterexamples to the somewhat idyllic view of women staying home to raise children, both in the article and the comments below. My husband and I were both born in 1960 to young newly married mothers, both of whom stayed home to raise us and our younger siblings.
My mother did not enjoy being a stay-at-home mom. She did it, but even as a kid, I could see that she was restless and frustrated. When my younger brother started school, she went to college and got a bachelor’s and then master’s degree and starting in her late 40s, built a successful and satisfying career as a therapist, finally retiring from it at age 70. My father didn’t adjust well to her change in focus and was very hostile to it. They eventually divorced in 1990 after 30 years of marriage.
My mother-in-law didn’t mind the SAHM part–she was good at it and had no real desire for a degree or a career. My father-in-law was a career Marine who did three tours in Vietnam. My husband’s family moved around a lot, and it was a difficult life for my MIL. She had a nervous breakdown of sorts at age 25, when my husband and his sister were small children and their dad was overseas. He left her for another woman when the kids were teenagers, leaving them in poverty. She had to go into the workforce in her late 30s with no education, training, or experience, finding a minimum wage job. My husband fortunately was a great student who got an academic scholarship for college because his dad had moved on and felt no obligation to help his kids go to school and his mom couldn’t afford to help him.
The three daughters who came from these two single-income stay-at-home mom families–me, my sister, and my sister-in-law–all pursued careers, and two of us (my sister-in-law and I) raised children. We saw nothing in our family’s experience and our moms’ lives that made us want to emulate them.
As long as everyone had and made choices best suiting them, I see no issue, my original point is that does not happen these days.
I recall years ago a young couple bought the house across the street. Both worked. A year later there was a baby. As I was leaving for work each day around 6:00 am I watched the husband or wife carry the baby off to daycare to return around six PM. Two years later there was another child and in rain, snow, freezing weather the daycare scenario was repeated for a toddler and infant. That broke my heart every time I saw them in the morning.
I don’t know if both working was a choice or necessity, but I have a hard time accepting that as a choice in the best interest of those children.