The Fact
BLS family-employment data summarized in the Home Economics research show that about 39% of married-couple households with children had both spouses in the paid labor force in 1970. By the 2020s, that share was about 65.4%.
What This Means
A household that once commonly had one adult with substantially more time available for household production increasingly became a household in which both adults were committed to paid work. The cooking, childcare, cleaning, errands, scheduling, maintenance, and caregiving still had to happen; the family now had to fit that work around two jobs, buy replacements, use relatives, automate it, or let some of it go undone.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment Characteristics of Families (annual release). Accessed October 2, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm