{"id":55967,"date":"2013-06-26T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T17:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=55967"},"modified":"2013-06-25T18:24:27","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T23:24:27","slug":"relax-the-rise-of-so-called-breadwinner-moms-does-not-portend-a-coming-matriarchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/06\/26\/relax-the-rise-of-so-called-breadwinner-moms-does-not-portend-a-coming-matriarchy\/","title":{"rendered":"Relax, “Breadwinner Moms” Do Not Portend a Coming Matriarchy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Family Inequality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The other day when the\u00a0Pew report<\/a>\u00a0on mothers who are breadwinners came out,\u00a0I complained<\/a>\u00a0about calling wives \u201cbreadwinners\u201d if they earn $1 more than their husbands:<\/p>\n

A wife who earns $1 more than her husband for one year is not the \u201cbreadwinner\u201d of the family. That\u2019s not what made \u201ctraditional\u201d men the breadwinners of their families \u2014 that image is of a long-term pattern in which the husband\/father earns all or almost all of the money, which implies a more entrenched economic domination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To elaborate a little, there are two issues here. One is empirical: today\u2019s female breadwinners are much less economically dominant than the classical male breadwinner — and even than the contemporary male breadwinner, as I will show. And second, conceptually breadwinner not a majority-share concept determined by a fixed percentage of income, but an ideologically specific construction of family provision.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go back to the Pew data setup:\u00a0heterogamously<\/a>\u00a0married couples with children under age 18 in the year 2011 (from Census data provided by\u00a0IPUMS<\/a>). In 23% of those couples the wife\u2019s personal income is greater than her husband\u2019s \u2014 that\u2019s the big news, since it\u2019s an increase from 4% half a century ago. This, to the Pew authors and media everywhere, makes her the \u201cprimary breadwinner,\u201d or, in shortened form (as in their title), \u201cbreadwinner moms.\u201d (That\u2019s completely reasonable with single mothers, by the way; I\u2019m just working on the married-couple side of the issue \u2014 just a short chasm away.)<\/p>\n

The 50%+1 standard conceals that these male \u201cbreadwinners\u201d are winning a greater share of the bread than are their female counterparts. Specifically, the average father-earning-more-than-his-wife earns 81% of the couple\u2019s income; the average mother-earning-more-than-her-husband earns 69% of the couple\u2019s income. Here is the distribution in more detail:<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This shows that by far the most common situation for a female \u201cbreadwinner\u201d is to be earning between 50% and 60% of the couple\u2019s income \u2014 the case for 38% of such women. For the father \u201cbreadwinners,\u201d though, the most common situation \u2014 for 28% of them \u2014 is to be earning\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0of the income, a situation that is three-times more common than the reverse.<\/p>\n

Collapsing data into categories is essential for understanding the world. But putting these two groups into the same category and speaking as if they are equal is misleading.<\/p>\n

This is especially problematic, I think, because of the historical connotation of the term\u00a0breadwinner.<\/em>\u00a0The term\u00a0dates back to 1821, says the Oxford English Dictionary.\u00a0That\u2019s from the heyday of America\u2019s\u00a0separate spheres<\/a>\u00a0ideology, which elevated to reverential status the woman-home\/man-work ideal. Breadwinners in that Industrial Revolution era were not defined by earning 1% more than their wives. They earned all of the money, ideally (meaning, if their earnings were sufficient) but, just as importantly, they were the only one permanently working for pay outside the home. (JSTOR has references going back to the 1860s which confirm this usage.)<\/p>\n

Modifying \u201cbreadwinner\u201d with \u201cprimary\u201d is better than not, but that subtlety has been completely lost in the media coverage. Consider these headlines from a Google news search just now:<\/p>\n