Myths About Later Motherhood Summary

Project 1: Council on Contemporary Families The Council on Contemporary Families Fact Sheet: “Myths about Later Motherhood” written by: Elizabeth Gregory Ph.D. explores typical myths surrounding the topic of women having children later in life and how they are largely untrue. With women gaining better levels of education and incomes, it is easy to see how waiting to have a child seems financially smarter than having a child at a younger age with less money and less employment experience. Women are now having children more frequently in their thirties than in their twenties as it was in the not so distant past. Fertility rates are still high for women in their thirties with about only ten percent of all the pregnancies needing help from outside

in The Council on Contemporary Families Online Symposia explores the delicate balance of women working in and outside of the home.

Placing work above family is still hurting the household, even in 2016. It seems many Americans feel women taking on the domestic chores while not working outside the home and the man being the breadwinner is the ideal living scenario, even in today’s day and age. This may be for the reason that employers have not caught up with women’s needs, nor the family’s needs.

Despite how our textbook speaks of families formed in different ways, women and children seem to always get the shorter end of the stick. Single ladies, single mothers, married ladies with and without children all struggle. Wages that do not equal a man, and employers who do not understand that a woman needs work hours that correlate with daycare services seem to be a great problem in America. The need for a gender revolution still awaits and women will need more powerful positions to overhaul a system clearly still ran almost solely by

demonstrates how this is really a one sided increase.

It is apparent from the article that since the late 80’s and earlier, women have reported more housework was the norm after marriage with about a four hour increase of housework every week per child present in the home. However, after the 80’s and currently, women have described about six hours worked fewer a week per child when it comes to housework. This is a significant drop, leading Kuperberg to conclude that marriage from 1990 on to not make couples more traditional unlike their older married generations before.

Interestingly enough, while reading this article led me to notice how each child added to a married family’s household increased housework considerably for the woman only. The men’s housework level has barely changed since the early