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Townhall
Working
Moms and Unemployed Dads
By Suzanne Fields
Jun 07, 2013
Between
the baby boomers on one
hand and Generations X, Y and Z on the other, cultural and economic
changes
have transformed the landscape of our culture. It's difficult to wrap a
description around what sociologists call a "cohort."
"I'm
not a real person
yet," says a 27-year-old college graduate in the movie "Frances
Ha," the latest and hippest of the contemporary coming-of-age
scenarios.
She has no credit card and explains that she even has to look for a
cash
machine to pay a dinner check. But if she doesn't yet feel mature
enough to
assume "personhood," at least she has enough cash in the bank to live
an independent life. Many modern young adults never leave home.
The
latest generation to arrive at
adulthood is not only economically adrift, but many of the privileged
among
them are adrift without time-tested values to anchor them. Sex is
readily
available, but the most creative among them complain there's no thrill
of a
romance and the joy of falling in love. Bonding takes place in
friendship, but
smartphones dominate communication -- there's a lot of looking at flat
screens
but not so much looking into a beloved's eyes.
Sociologists
say that becoming an
adult no longer begins where adolescence ends. The age of 20 to 30 is
more
"post-adolescent" than grown-up. Young adults put off moving past the
traditional benchmarks -- a job with benefits, marriage, and the
responsibilities of motherhood and fatherhood.
As
young singles seek to "know
thyself" through connections on iPhones, Twitter, Facebook and other
destinations on the Internet, the traditional next stage -- marriage
and family
-- is undergoing radical change, too. New arrangements in raising
families
arrive with fundamental alterations in male-female relationships.
A
study released last week by the
Pew Foundation, putting numbers to these trends, is drawing heated
discussions
among sociologists, psychologists and economists about the impact of
the changes.
Nearly 40 percent of mothers with children under the age of 18 are
either the
primary or sole breadwinner of the family, up from 11 percent in 1960.
This
statistic covers another more troublesome change: While 5.1 million, or
37
percent of these mothers, are married with a higher income than their
husbands,
another 8.6 million mothers, or 63 percent of the female population,
are
raising children alone…
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the rest of the article at
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