UNNATURAL EQUALITY

(with less than 100 employees). In 1988, more than 60 percent of American children under age 18 had working mothers, but as far as childcare assistance is concerned, no more than 10 percent of firms of all sizes provided any real benefits or support for childcare. However, 35-45 percent of all firms did provide flexible schedules and flexible leave times for parents with young children. “Flexitime” notwithstanding, in 1987 6.2 million working mothers in America paid for childcare. Of these 750,000 had incomes at or below the poverty line, and for them childcare expenses ate up 20 percent of their income. Though mothers with children under age 21 and no father present are entitled to government child support, often they do not get it at all or do not get the full amount. Closely related to the issue of women’s earnings and benefits in the fact that between 1970 and 1989 the number of women workers of age 16 and above holding multiple jobs increased by almost 400 percent — from 636,000 to more than 3 million. Women who worked more than one job in 1989 were more likely than men to be doing so because the additional earnings were necessary to meet regular household expenses. THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY UNDER SIEGE Sweeping as the change may be, the phenomenon of working mothers is the least of the shock to the traditional American family over the past several decades. Though married couple families still heavily predominate, that predominance has dropped from 87 to 80 percent in just two decades as “other family types” became more common. The “male householder with no spouse present” from 11 to 16.5 percent. This varies by race: among black Americans, for instance, only the barest majority of families were married couples in 1989. The overall result: in 1990, fully one quarter of all American children resided with just one parent. Already climbing in the 1960s, the divorce rate in America literally soared from 1970 to 1990. In 1990, the divorce ratio (i.e., the number of currently divorced persons per 1000 currently married persons) was at an all-time high of 166 for women and 118 for men. In that year 56 percent of American women over age 18 were married, with husband present; 3.7 percent were married with husband absent; 12.1 percent were widowed; 9.3 percent were divorced; and 18.9 percent were single (i.e., never married). Though most women continued to marry, the average age at first marriage increased from 21 to 24 years between 1970 and 1988, and marriage tended to become a kind of waystation for many, only one of several different, and now acceptable, “family types.” After entering adulthood, many women will live with a man prior to marriage. Such “cohabitation” outside of marriage, as it is called, was uncommon prior to 1970. In that year the U.S. Bureau of the Census counted 523,000 households with two unrelated adults of the opposite sex; by 1984 the number had grown to nearly two million. For most women such