US mothers increasingly main family breadwinner

[Adsos Letter]

Source: BBC
29 May 2013

Mothers are increasingly the primary breadwinners in their families, a new report has found, marking a dramatic shift in US household finances.

A record 40% of US homes with children relied on mothers as their main or only source of income, a Pew survey found.

Of the women supporting their families, 37% were married women who earned more than their husbands, while 63% were single mothers, the report said.

In the 1960s, just 11% of families were supported primarily by mothers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22707433

[JustAnotherGen]

1. This is why

We need a Paycheck Fairness Act. Breadwinners not being paid what they are worth is really going to put us on a race to the bottom.

[uponit7771]

4. GOP voting against paycheck fairness is something to bash them over the head about seeing that...

... some of those major earners spouses are GOPers.

This seems like low hanging fruit

[fitman]

2. My wife makes 3 times what I do

and I have a decent job...I put her through vet school and supported her for the first 8-10 years when she was starting and growing her practice from scratch and she did not take out much of a paycheck. We are both early 50's now.

Don't feel guilty or unmasculine at all and she never belittles me or anything. Her friends tell her all the time how lucky she is to have me .


I would bet 40-50% of my male friends are in the same boat...times are a changin..

That being said I know some guys who can't handle it though..guess who they are? Biblical christians who think they need to be the head breadwinner and decision maker in the family..and I am being serious...have had some serious heated arguments with these idiots.

[get the red out]

6. I thought of this

Why is this all bad? Two people work, one makes more money than the other and it happens to be the woman, so what? There have to be a lot of cases like yours in this statistic. And it isn't a negative; unless somehow both partners are paid exactly the same, someone makes more money.

[SoCalDem]

3. When a husband loses his job, the wife becomes the defacto breadwinner

no matter her salary

Single Moms have ALWAYS been the breadwinner.

Wives with jobs have always been paid less (on the whole) than have men, so when a man loses a higher paid salary and has to take a lower paid job, he enters at the lowest pay rate (usually). A wife in year-10 of her lower-to-start-with job will be "ahead" of the recent entry man..

My son & his wife play "I make more than you" twice a year. Her review comes a month before his and for a while every year they "flip". For them it's just a fun game since they are both 6-figure incomes,,(and they are not parents), but there is always the possibility that on the next go-round of cannibal capitalism that their companies practice routinely, one or the other may be O U T..

[OldEurope]

5. Please read before posting.

It is not about women earning more than their husbands.

It is about this:

63% were single mothers, the report said.