Despite challenges at home and work, most working moms and dads say being employed is what’s best for them
Balancing work and family duties brings challenges for working parents. Yet many say working is best for them at this point in their life.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Balancing work and family duties brings challenges for working parents. Yet many say working is best for them at this point in their life.
Through both recession and recovery, the share of young adults living in their parents’ home continues to rise. As of 2016, 15% of 25- to 35-year-old Millennials were living in their parents’ home.
In 2014, just 14% of children younger than 18 lived with a stay-at-home mother and a working father who were in their first marriage. In 1960, half of children were living in this arrangement.
In 46% of two-parent families, both mom and dad work full time.
The share of mothers who do not work outside the home has risen over the past decade, reversing a long-term decline in stay-at-home mothers.
The rising cost of child care may be among the factors behind a recent rise in the number of stay-at-home mothers.
Women now make up almost half of the U.S. labor force, up from 38% in 1970. The public approves of this trend, but the change has come with a cost for many women — particularly working mothers of young children, who feel the tug of family responsibility much more acutely than do working fathers.
Instead of traveling across country or across town for Thanksgiving this year, many grown sons and daughters will be coming to dinner from their old bedroom down the hall, which now doubles as their recession-era refuge.
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