Newtown Couple Illustrates Paradigm Shift For Household Earners

By John Voket

In the space of a few days, two reports have further sealed a paradigm shift in the long-held tradition that American nuclear families are supported by the man of the house. Sure, it has been almost 27 years since actor Michael Keaton strapped on a lacy apron to play Mr Mom against Teri Garr’s character of a working mother carrying the full weight of a sole wage-earner, but this week, both the US Census and the highly respected Pew Research Center issued new data that confirms the shift away from male breadwinners, and the new dynamic this phenomenon is creating in homes across America, as well as here in Newtown.

According to the Pew study, which was released January 19, a larger share of today’s men, compared with their 1970 counterparts, are married to women whose education and income exceed their own, and a larger share of women are married to men with less education and income.

“From an economic perspective, these trends have contributed to a gender role reversal in the gains from marriage,” wrote the report’s authors, Richard Fry and D’Vera Cohn. “In the past, when relatively few wives worked, marriage enhanced the economic status of women more than that of men. In recent decades, however, the economic gains associated with marriage have been greater for men.”

The number of moms who were the only working spouse also rose for the third straight year in 2009, according to Census Bureau figures released January 15. The number of dads who were the only working spouse dropped, and the number of stay-at-home dads ticked higher in married households surveyed where there are children under age 18.

Working Out Fine

For Newtown residents Rebekah Harriman, Chris Stites, and their 4-year-old son Fisher, this “mommy works and daddy stays home” arrangement works out just fine for everybody.

“It’s kind of amazing really,” Ms Harriman told The Newtown Bee. “When you ask most 4-year-olds what they want to be when they grow up they say a fireman or a policeman. But when you ask Fisher what he want to be, he says he wants to be a daddy.”

Both parents were actively employed when Fisher was born. But as Mr Stites tells it, he and Ms Harriman sat down and came to a mutual decision for him to leave his job to be a stay-at-home dad.

“Basically, I could have stayed working,” Mr Stites said. “But most or all of my paycheck would have gone to paying for Fisher to be taken care of by someone else.”

The former retail store manager who holds a bachelor’s degree in general studies says he prefers to be a full-time caregiver for his son, but also acknowledges that once Fisher transitions from preschool to kindergarten, dad will likely seek to rejoin the workforce at least part-time.

“For us it was an easy decision because at the time, Rebekah was working for the City of Bridgeport, so her benefits and pay were both superior to what I was making,” Mr Stites added.

This scenario was in contrast to more households surveyed in the census where mom is the breadwinner, both parents were working until the husband was laid off or retired, and the wife remained in her job. In other situations, a nonworking wife may have rejoined the labor force in a growing industry such as teaching or health care to sustain the family income after the husband lost his job.

By the numbers, about four percent or 963,000 moms were the only parent in the labor force. The share of fathers as the sole worker was much bigger — 28.2 percent or 7.3 million — but still the lowest since 2001.

And the share of couples who both work stayed the same, at 66 percent or 17 million.

There were 158,000 stay-at-home dads, up from 140,000 in 2008. Still, the census data reflects less than one percent of married couples.

Recession Took Its Toll

The recession’s toll has been harder on male-dominated industries such as construction and manufacturing. There are also longer-term cultural changes at work, too, as more women earn college degrees and the better job opportunities they bring.

For Ms Harriman, who like her mate holds a bachelor’s degree, it all came down to pursuing the best financial scenario for all involved. She has since left her 9 to 5 job for the flexibility of consulting so she could have more time for family while maintaining a head-of-household’s income.

“It’s not the easiest thing to do, and it’s hard not to be there all the time with Fisher,” she said, “but knowing it’s Chris who’s there for him — it means a lot.”

The Pew report focused on US-born men and women aged 30–44 — a stage when typical adults have finished their education, married, and launched careers. The report noted that today’s Americans in this age group are the first such cohort in US history to include more women than men with college degrees.

In 1970, according to the report, 28 percent of wives in this age range had husbands who were better educated than they were, outnumbering the 20 percent whose husbands had less education. By 2007, these patterns had reversed — 19 percent of wives had husbands with more education, compared with 28 percent whose husbands had less education.

In the remaining couples — about half in 1970 and 2007 — spouses had similar education levels.

Only four percent of husbands had wives who earned more than they did in 1970, compared with 22 percent in 2007. During that span, women’s earnings grew 44 percent, compared with six percent growth for men, although a gender gap remains.

The Pew report found that unmarried women in 2007 had higher household incomes than their 1970 counterparts at each level of education, while unmarried men without postsecondary education lost ground because their real earnings decreased and they did not have a wife’s wages to offset that decline.

Unmarried men with college degrees made income gains of 15 percent, but were outpaced by the 28 percent gains of unmarried women with degrees. The shifts in earnings capacity coincided with a marked decline in the share of Americans who are married.

Among US-born 30- to 44-year-olds, 60 percent were married in 2007, compared with 84 percent in 1970. For African Americans, the rates were even lower — 33 percent of black women and 44 percent of black men were married in 2007, the report said.

More Moms Working

According to the Census data, however, the increase in the number of moms as the only worker was seen across all racial and ethnic groups.

It was most significant among black women, whose numbers rose from nine percent in 2007 to 12 percent last year as black men suffered disproportionately higher rates of unemployment. The share of Hispanic moms rose from five percent to eight percent, while the share of white non-Hispanic women rose from four percent to seven percent and the share of Asian women grew from five percent to seven percent.

Pamela J. Smock, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan, sees a continued reliance on wives as breadwinners, “particularly if we see a jobless economic recovery like we did after the 2001 recession.”

Her research on working moms found that employed wives last year contributed to 45 percent of total family earnings. That was up from 44 percent in the previous year, the largest single-year increase in the last decade.

The latest trends coincide with overall increases in women in the work force. In fact, women are close to outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time: women held 49.9 percent of the nation’s 131 million jobs last November, the most recent data available.

While the current trend seems to be working out across the country, and for the Stites-Harriman family here in Newtown, Ms Harriman does look forward to the day when she can spend more time at home.

“The long-term goal is for Chris to at least go back an seek part-time employment when Fisher is in school full-time,” Ms Harriman said. “Maybe when that time comes we can switch and I can be the one at home most of the time.”

Associated Press content was used in this report.