Who’s breadwinning? Working mothers and the new face of family support

As a result of social changes, feminism and a changing labour market, r ecent decades have seen women enter the workforce in huge numbers. This transformation has had profound effects on gender roles both at home and in the workplace, and on patter ns of household formation, income and expenditure.

It has also changed what was once assumed to be the ideal balance between breadwinning and caring. In dual-parent families, the model of the male br eadwinner and the female carer has been eroded. The rise in the rates of women’s – and especially mothers’ – employment outside the home has made dual-ear ner couples more common. Most families need two ear ners simply to make ends meet and, incr easingly, women’s earnings are a necessity. There has also been a rise in the employment rate of lone parents, which by definition means that mor e mothers are providing the sole income for their family.

The key questions we address in our research are:

• Who is breadwinning?
• How is this pattern changing?
• What are the policy implications of these shifts?

Based on new analysis of the Family Resources Survey (FRS)1 this report illustrates that working mothers – in all family types – are breadwinning in record numbers. By ‘breadwinning’ we mean both cases in which working mothers are earning as much as or more than their partner, and working single mothers. This trend towards maternal breadwinning reflects increases in women’s employment rates, shifting dynamics of family life, and changes to men’s employment patterns and earnings. This has implications for many existing policies which perpetuate outdated gender ed stereotypes of work and care, and which demonstrably fail to r espond to the daily reality of people’s lives in modern Britain.