Men Women and the Family - Working Families

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report "Employment Characteristics of Families," in 2003, 82% of families had at least one employed member. Asian families were most likely to have someone in the family working (89.1%), followed by Hispanic families (86.1%) and white families (82.3%). African-American families were the least likely to contain an employed member (77.9%).

Among married-couple families, 83.3% had an employed member in 2003, down by 0.2% from 2002. This proportion had declined each year since 1999. Both the husband and wife worked in 50.9% of married-couple families in 2003. This proportion had declined since 1997, when it was 53.4%. The proportion of married-couple families in which only the wife worked rose for the third straight year, to 6.8% in 2003. The proportion of families in which only the husband worked was relatively unchanged at 20%; however, this statistic had risen by 0.8% since 2000.

The BLS reported 35.4 million families with children under age eighteen in 2003. Of these, 90.3% had at least one parent employed, down from 90.7% percent in 2002. All of the decline was among single-parent families.

Employer Assistance for Working Parents

Parents, and particularly working mothers, look to employers to offer family-friendly benefits such as flexible work schedules and time off for certain family needs. In order to attract new employees and retain existing ones, many employers have implemented creative options to assist working parents. Consolidated annual leave plans no longer categorized available paid leave time into vacation, personal, and sick time. This gave employees discretion about how best to use paid leave time to meet their individual circumstances. Some companies offer on-site day-care centers for children of employees. Part-time work, job sharing, and flexible work schedules help parents accommodate the needs of the job and the family. Telecommuting options allow parents to perform part or all of their work from home. Employer-sponsored flexible spending accounts allow working parents to set aside part of their pretax earnings (money not subject to income taxes) to pay for specified medical and dependent-care expenses.

Economic and Financial Pressures

Changes in the cost of goods and services can quickly upset tight family budgets. Rising energy costs topped a list of national concerns in a 2001 survey by the Pew Research Center. About half of Americans listed the rising cost of gasoline as serious, and four in ten were concerned about the cost of electricity and other home utilities. Almost 40% of parents in the survey reported they had changed summer vacation plans and cut back on long-distance driving because of the increased cost of gasoline, compared to 26% of nonparents. Hardest hit were low-income families; 52% of families with incomes below $20,000 rated increased utility costs as a serious problem. Many families, especially those with children, struggled to meet basic expenses of living and worried about their financial safety.

Financial concerns drive many difficult family decisions. For 27% of those surveyed in 2001, money was

FIGURE 2.4

cited in their decision whether or not to have, or to postpone having, a baby. The most frequent financial decision for 34% of parents was whether to work or stay at home with children. Finances played a large role in decisions about attending college for 24% of families ("Decisions Because of Lack of Money," Money and the American Family, Modern Maturity Magazine, AARP, May 2000).

The high cost of a college education presented challenges for parents who wanted to attend or complete college themselves or provide for their children's college education. Private, not-for-profit four-year colleges and universities offered the greatest amount of financial aid, an average of

FIGURE 2.5

$11,600 in total aid, compared to $6,200 for public four-year institutions. (See Figure 2.5.) The differences in tuition for these two types of institutions, however, were similar. According to the August 2004 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, the average cost for tuition plus room and board at a private college in 2002 was $29,541, compared to $13,833 at a public institution. The percentage of students who received aid was less disparate than the amount of aid. In the private, not-for-profit colleges and universities, 76% of students received financial aid compared to 62% in public institutions. (See Figure 2.6.)