Some Surprising Findings on Boomers, Work, and Family
Frederick R. Lynch, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Government
Faculty Affiliate, Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children
I am researching a book on the sociological impact of aging Baby Boomers, the 76 million persons born between 1946 and 1962. I am especially interested in studying the social bases that may encourage Boomers to become an organized political or social movement as this generational tidal wave confront common problems of retirement, health care and other aging-related barriers. Indeed, Baby Boomers have already challenged or transformed most of the social institutions through which they have passed: especially the institutions of work and family.
One of the signal characteristics of the Boom generation is that large numbers of Boomer women entered and remained in the workforce, establishing careers and identities outside the home like their male counterparts. Boomers made two-income families the nation's norm-and they consequently pressed for policy changes to better integrate work and family including: flex-time, job sharing, family leave, and expanded day care.
A summer research grant from the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children enabled me to examine the newly emerging literature on the intended and unintended consequences of work-family changes set in motion by the Boom generation. I will provide here a brief sampling of some surprising findings from three studies.
In her book Birth Quake (2003), University of Chicago economist Diane Macunovich argues that changing sex role attitudes and the entry of Boomer women into long-term labor force participation were driven, in large part, by the relative decline in male earnings during the 1970s and 1980s caused by surging numbers of male Boomers competing for entry-level jobs and career advancement. (Indeed, as more Boomer women entered labor markets, they, too, reduced one another's wages in female-dominated sectors.) Fertility declined sharply as Boomer men and women delayed marriage and postponed childbirth, struggling to maintain or surpass the standard of living they'd enjoyed as children in their parents' homes. Marriage rates fell and divorce rates rose in tandem with the long cycle of decline in relative male income. Paradoxically, Macunovich observes, the two-income family further reduced male productivity by eclipsing the "two-person career," the more traditional family division of labor in which at-home wives-and-moms made possible their husbands' single-minded pursuit of high-powered careers.
Though relative male incomes may have been declining, the family income boosts of working wives triggered an escalating bidding war for middle-class lifestyles, especially houses with the best neighborhood schools. Amelia Warren Tyagi (who will be a Berger Institute-sponsored speaker at CMC's Athenaeum on March 1st) and her mother/co-author Elizabeth Warren studied this phenomenon and resultant work-family strains The Two-Income Trap (2003). Once seen as a choice, the two-income family has become a near-necessity. Though family expenditures on clothing and food actually fell during the past 20 years, families with children, encouraged by relaxed credit standards, stretched budgets to pay for homes ("cement life rafts"), second cars and college tuition. The result is that two-income families are more economically vulnerable than the "Ozzie and Harriet" family of the 1970s and more likely to divorce than their single-income contemporary counterparts. The results of family job loss, illness or divorce have proved especially harsh for women. In twenty years, there has been a ten-fold increase in women filing for bankruptcy and "having a child is the single best predictor a women will file for bankruptcy." A rising number of women and couples, the authors glumly note, are resolving work-family risks by choosing to remain childless. (University of Michigan demographer William Frey--a CMC Athenaeum speaker on April 20th--and I estimate that perhaps one-third of all Boomers are single or in no-child or one-child unions.)
And yet half of all Boomers surveyed in an AARP-sponsored study, "Boomers at Midlife" (2003) were actively raising children and most Boomers were optimistic about the present and future. Of seven life areas, "relationships with family and friends" were regarded as "most important" for 44% of Boomers and most satisfying (63%). The next most important life areas were "Religious or spiritual life" (22%) and "physical health" (19%). Surprisingly, "work or career" was regarded as most important by only 2% of supposedly work-obsessed Boomers. Perhaps this was because nearly 60% remained confident that they were "very likely" to reach work/career goals, while another 53% thought they would reach financial goals. Based on this survey, however, a potential Boomer social/political movement emphasizing changes in society will have to overcome not only subgroup differences by race, class and education (surprisingly few gender divides, however) but also a resilient, individualistic, can-do ideology emphasizing personal factors (lack of motivation, confidence, and willpower) in achieving goals and overcoming barriers.
