1. For a summary of the demographic changes in American family structure and the position of women since World War II, see Kathleen Gerson, "Changing Family Structure and the Position of Women: A Review of the Trends," Journal of the American Planning Association 49 (Spring 1983): 138-48.

2. This debate is closely linked to the "decline of community" argument, which has been recently revitalized by the popular success of books such as Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah and his colleagues. This perspective argues that close-knit bonds of moral reciprocity have declined, leaving even middle-class Americans bereft of a language of commitment in which to create their moral discourse. The argument was foreshadowed by the publication of Christopher Lasch's critique of the modern family in Haven in a Heartless World . See Robert N. Bellah and others, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), and Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

3. For a refreshing analysis of how changes in gender relations have improved, not detracted from, the quality of interpersonal bonds—at least for some continue

couples—see Francesca Cancian, Love in America: Gender and Self-Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Cancian argues that egalitarian interdependence has become a third alternative to extreme individualism and unequal commitment in sexual, marital, and other intimate relationships.

4. Indeed, it is misleading to refer to "the family," since no one family form currently predominates. Instead, people coming of age today live in a diverse range of household types and family forms, and are likely to change their family circumstances over the course of their lives. For descriptions and analyses of the "patchwork quilt" of current family forms, see, among others, Andrew Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), and James A. Sweet and Larry L. Bumpass, American Families and Households (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1987).

5. See, for example, Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1983); and Lenore Weitzman, The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America (New York: Free Press, 1985).

6. See Judith Stacey's chapter in this volume for further discussion of the contours of continuity and change in what she aptly calls the "postmodern family."

7. If, as Webster's dictionary states, "tradition" means "cultural continuity in social attitudes and institutions," then there is no historically stable pattern that warrants the label "traditional family." Family structure has always changed in response to changing social-historical conditions. The male breadwinner-female homemaker household that is often referred to as traditional is actually a relatively recent, comparatively short-lived historical pattern. For an up-to-date overview of historical changes in American family patterns, see Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988).

8. Although children are profoundly affected by these dilemmas and conflicts, they will be considered only indirectly in this chapter, which focuses on the resolutions developed by adult women and men. For a closer look at the lives of children, see Gary Alan Fine and Jay Mechling's chapter in this volume. For now, suffice it to say that children will be the greatest beneficiaries of social policies that provide satisfying resolutions to the conflicts adults face between employment and parenthood.

9. Despite areas of notable change, gender inequality in wages and occupational sex segregation have persisted to a significant extent. See, for example, Paula England and George Farkas, Households, Employment, and Gender: A Social and Demographic View (New York: Aldine, 1986); Sara M. Evans and Barbara J. Nelson, Wage Justice: Comparable Worth and the Paradox of Technocratic Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and Barbara Reskin, Sex Segregation in the Workplace (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1984). Time-use studies conducted over the last several decades show mixed results concerning changes in the gender division of household labor. Although men, on average, appear to be spending more time performing housework than they were several decades ago, the gap between women's and men's time spent in housework remains substantial. While there are important substantive differences between continue

housework and child care, few surveys have disentangled these two dimensions of domestic labor. For summaries of the literature on the gender division of household labor, see Sarah F. Berk, The Gender Factory: The Apportionment of Work in American Households (New York: Plenum Press, 1985); Arlie Hochschild with Anne Machung, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (New York: Viking, 1989); Joan Huber and Glenna Spitze, Sex Stratification: Children, Housework, Jobs (New York: Academic Press, 1983); Joseph H. Pleck, Working Wives/Working Husbands (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1985); and John P. Robinson, "Who's Doing the Housework?" American Demographics 10 (December 1988): 24-28, 63.

10. Government and employer responses to the widespread changes in family structure and women's employment patterns are notable primarily by their absence. The good news is that the number of companies offering some form of child care assistance has grown from 2500 in 1986 to 5400 in 1990. The bad news is that we still lack national family and child care policies as well as widespread commitment among employers to provide supports for working parents as a right and not just a privilege. See Carol Lawson, "Hope for the Working Parent," New York Times (March 15, 1990), C1.

A widely publicized approach, dubbed "The Mommy Track" by journalists, was proposed by Felice N. Schwartz in an article entitled "Management Women and the New Facts of Life" ( Harvard Business Review [January-February 1989]: 65-76). This proposal provides a remarkably regressive response to new family dilemmas. By relegating mothers, and mothers only, to a second tier in the managerial structure of organizations, it provides an old solution to a new problem. It relieves employers of the responsibility to address the twin dilemmas of gender inequality and work-family conflicts; it reinforces an unequal division of labor between women and men; it forces women to continue to make wrenching decisions between employment commitment and motherhood; and it maintains the historic obstacles to male parental involvement.

11. Both studies are based on in-depth life-history interviews with a carefully chosen sample of adult men and women. Each study focuses on comparisons of diverse patterns within each gender group—including comparisons between "traditional" and emerging patterns of family commitment. The first study examines the process by which women coming of age during this period of rapid social change have made choices between work and family commitments over the course of their adult lives. See Appendix 1 in Kathleen Gerson, Hard Choices: How Women Decide about Work, Career, and Motherhood (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), for a full description of the study's sample and methodology. The second study analyzes men's changing commitments to family life and especially changes in the structure of male parental involvement. These findings will be fully presented in my forthcoming book, tentatively entitled The Uncertain Revolution: Men's Changing Commitments to Family and Work (New York: Basic Books, in progress).

Cynthia F. Epstein, in Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender, and the Social Order (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), and R. W. Connell, in Gender and Power (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), both argue persuasively for analyses that move beyond the assumption of "dichotomous distinc- soft

tions" to explore the socially constructed, historically variable "varieties of masculinities and femininities."

12. The proportion of employed women who work year-round, full time, and who define employment in terms of career commitment is considerably smaller than the total percentage of women in the paid labor force. Although about two-thirds of mothers with children under six are now in the paid labor force, about one-third of this group is employed part-time. In terms of their family priorities, women with intermittent or part-time employment may have more in common with nonemployed women than with women committed to full-time, long-term careers. Both nonemployed and part-time employed women represent the persistence of older patterns amid the nevertheless indisputable trend toward increasing labor force attachment among women as a whole.

13. Drawing a distinction between "domestic" and "nondomestic" orientations necessarily oversimplifies a complex array of world views and behavioral strategies among women. While wide variation surely exists within each of these groupings, they nevertheless represent useful categories for understanding women's political outlooks and personal choices. See Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), for an insightful analysis of how the abortion debate has been fueled by the emergence of two opposing groups of women.

14. In confronting a gap between what they want and what they feel they should want, these women must also engage in what Hochschild calls "emotion work" in order to create some cohesion between what they are doing and what they feel they should be doing. See Arlie R. Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983).

15. Recent estimates from the Census Bureau suggest that about 15 percent of baby-boom women will remain permanently childless. This figure is below earlier estimates, but still above the childlessness rates of earlier generations of American women. See Felicity Barringer, "U.S. Birth Level Nears Four Million Mark," New York Times (October 31, 1989), A18.

16. The recent increase in the number of births does not represent an increase in the number of children per woman. Instead, as baby-boom women move through their childbearing years, more women are having children, but not a lot of them. Even as the number of births has risen in recent years, the average number of children per woman of childbearing age has remained below the replacement rate of 2.2 children per woman (ibid.).

17. A vivid example of this "cultural contradiction" in women's status is the current move to require poor mothers to work at a paid job in order to qualify for welfare while politicians and journalists simultaneously lament the increasing numbers of latchkey children among the middle and working classes. Clearly, the dilemmas women face span the class structure, affecting both domestic and work-committed women in the middle, working, and poorest classes.

18. See Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men , for a discussion of the growth of the first group and Weitzman, The Divorce Revolution , for an analysis of the rise of the second. For insightful discussions of the emerging range of patterns among contemporary American men, see Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., "Good Dads, Bad continue

Dads, Bad Dads: Two Faces of Fatherhood," in The Changing American Family and Public Policy , ed. Andrew J. Cherlin (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 1988), 193-218; and Joseph H. Pleck, "The Contemporary Man," in Men's Lives , ed. Michael Kimmel and Michael A. Messner (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 591-97.

19. In addition to Pleck, Working Wives , see also William R. Beer, Househusbands: Men and Housework in American Families (South Hadley, Mass.: J. F. Bergin, 1983), and Kyle Pruitt, The Nurturing Father: Journey toward the Complete Man (New York: Warner Books, 1987).

20. For an analysis of the differences between women's and men's work-family choices, see William T. Bielby and Denise D. Bielby, "Family Ties: Balancing Commitments to Work and Family in Dual Earner Households," American Sociological Review 54, no. 5 (October 1989): 776-89. For data on the decline of the male "living wage," see, for example, Frank Levy, Dollars and Dreams: The Changing American Income Distribution (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1987).

21. The argument that women will lose from equality was used by female opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment in their successful campaign to block its ratification. For penetrating analyses of the social and political bases of anti-feminism among women, see Dierdre English, "The Fear that Feminism Will Free Men First," in Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality , ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983); Rebecca E. Klatch, Women of the New Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), and her chapter in this collection; Ethel Klein, Gender Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984); and Jane J. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

22. See Rosanna Hertz, More Equal than Others: Women and Men in Dual-Career Marriages (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), for an insightful analysis of the dynamics of dual-career corporate couples. Scott Coltrane shows significant parental involvement among a sample of fathers in dual-career partnerships (see "Household Labor and the Routine Production of Gender," Social Problems 36 [December 1989]: 473-90). John P. Robinson reports a modest rise since 1965 in the average amount of time all men spend doing housework, but this average masks important differences among men and does not include measures of child-rearing involvement ("Who's Doing the Housework?").

23. Although one-parent families headed by men remain rare, the percentage of male custodial households has grown from 1.9 percent in 1970 to 3.1 percent in 1989. See "Households Still Shrinking, but Rate Is Slower," New York Times (December 10, 1989), A47. The percentage of joint custody arrangements among divorced couples is growing at a much faster pace than male custody alone, but the exact statistical breakdowns are difficult to ascertain.

24. There is a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" aspect to everyone's choices. Working mothers are castigated for harming their children; childless women are accused of being selfish and unfulfilled; and homemakers are considered uninteresting. Similarly, involved fathers who withdraw from work are considered "wimps"; childless men are seen as irresponsible; and men who are primary breadwinners are "male chauvinists." break