As of 1999, in married-couple families with children under eight years of age, 97.6% had at least one parent employed.  Of these, 36.9% had fathers that were employed and the mother not employed, with 57.4% of these families having both parents at work.  In total, 60.7% of married mothers were employed.

(Source: The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, News, USDL 00-172, June 22, 2000, in the U. S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2000 [120th edition] Washington, DC, 1999, p. 410.)

"Behind all the hype about the massive flow of mothers into the labor force lurks one little-noticed fact: nearly half of mothers with children age three and younger are not in the labor force.  About the same proportion do not return to work after their first child's birth; they become a clear majority of mothers after the second and third births.  Often at considerable personal and professional sacrifice, these women continue to perform the socially valuable task of nurturing small children on a full-time basis."

(Source: Allan C. Carlson, Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1988, p. 134.)

When social scientists try to explain the dramatic movement of young mothers into paid employment since the 1970s, they typically stress higher wages for women, rising consumer expectations, and changing social attitudes toward female employment.  Sociologist Mark Evan Edwards of Oregon State University fears that these scientists are forgetting a couple things.  In an article recently published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, Edwards argues that the movement of young mothers into paid employment largely reflects the "dramatically changing economic situation" which young families have found themselves in recent decades.  It has been "economic uncertainty and fear of downward mobility," in Edwards' opinion, which has "inspired the adoption of dual earner arrangements."

In the willingness of young mothers to stay home with their children in the 1950s and 1960s, Edwards perceives the influence of "the promise not only of increasing wages, but the continued presence of a male wage provider."  Beginning in the 1970s, however, "men's wages began to stagnate in the midst of high inflation."  "Just when husbands' inflation-adjusted incomes began to drop," Edwards points out, "young mothers' employment rates increased." 

The growing desire of young mothers to find employment may also have reflected a second economic threat: the divorce epidemic.  "With the destabilization of marriage, the economic uncertainty of young motherhood increased in the 1970s, and young mothers faced a realistic threat."   During the 1970s and 1980s, mothers of preschoolers saw the likelihood of becoming a single parent nearly triple.  Such marital instability gave young women "good reason to continue working." 

Edwards stresses that the movement of young mothers into paid employment has created a "work-family dilemma for parents seeking to care for small children."  These parents typically find themselves trapped in "conflictive" work-family tensions. 

Is there a way out of this dilemma?   Perhaps.  Edwards sees an "absence of a work-family dilemma" in past decades when Americans saw "husbands earning a family wage."  Moreover, during these decades, young mothers did not regard their wedding vows as a risky gamble.

(Source: Mark Evan Edwards, "Uncertainty and the Rise of the Work-Family Dilemma," Journal of Marriage and the Family 61[2001]: 183-196.)