Gender Roles

Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen’s comment this week about Ann Romney’s lack of work experience has put the “mommy wars” back in the news. Here is a summary of surveys in recent years that explore public attitudes about issues related to women, work and motherhood.

In the last 50 years, fathers have become much more involved in the day-to-day lives of the children they live with. During that same time period, though, the share of fathers living apart from their children has risen dramatically, to 27% in 2010.

Today's mothers of newborns are more likely than their counterparts two decades earlier to be ages 35 and older, to have some college education, to be unmarried or to be nonwhite -- but not all at once.

Today's mothers of newborns are older and better educated than their counterparts in 1990, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the National Center for Health Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau. They are less likely to be white and less likely to be married.

In the past, when relatively few wives worked, marriage enhanced the economic status of women more than that of men. Recently, however, the economic gains associated with marriage have been greater for men.

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.

Fully 72% of married moms who work say dads are now doing as good a job or better than their counterparts did a generation ago.

A new survey finds that in 43% of all couples it’s the woman who makes decisions in more areas than the man. By contrast, men make more of the decisions in only about a quarter of all couples.

Who makes better candidates — moms or dads? And more broadly, what impact do both the gender and parenting status of candidates have on their chances to win an election?