Y ou might ask why it is that women decided to go after jobs in ever greater numbers. Y ou might equally ask why not. The idea of the nuclear family, with the breadwinner father out at work and the housekeeper and child-minder mother at home, is neither as old as obvious as it seems. In predominantly agricultural societies, both father and mother worked on the land. Children saw plenty of both of them, and were expected to start helping out at a tender age. With the industrial revolution, formal work largely moved away from home, but both parents commonly had jobs to make ends meet; the children managed as best they could. It takes a fairly sophisticated society with a comfortable middle class, and a belief in an extended period of education for th e young, to devise the “traditional” family model that enjoyed such a vogue (时尚) in developed countries in the late 1940s to early 1960s.
That traditional model ran out of stream for a number of reasons. Single women, either up until marriage or up until the birth of the first child, have always worked; the novelty is that in the past few decades growing numbers of marriage women have been taking paid jobs too. One thing that has helped to make this possible is readily available contraception (避孕). Children arrive ever later in their mother’s life, and in ever smaller numbers. Except for America and some of the Nordic countries, the rich world produces far too few children to keep up its present population; in some countries the one-child family is becoming the norm, and many women remain childless.
Y et even women who do have families are working in far greater numbers than before. In America, at least three out of four mothers of school-age children have jobs. Working mothers used to be criticized for neglecting their children; now it is mothers staying at home who have to explain themselves. Combining work and family, however, makes for hectic (繁忙的) lives, despite the array of gadgets that be, but nowhere near enough. Working women’s biggest single complaint is lack of time.
But what they lose in time, they gain in spending power. Their earnings are not just pin money. For the growing number of single mothers they are essential, and in dual-earner families they often make the difference between just getting by and living comfortably. They also offer an insurance policy in the increasingly likely event of a divorce. In America, one marriage in two eventually breaks up. Elsewhere the proportion is lower, but rising.
1.According to the author, the family model in the late 1940s to early 1960s was that
the father went out working while the mother
2.In the past few decades the increasing numbers of married women taking jobs
outside home have attributed to having children
3.Although there are some modern facilities which help Mothers with housework
and sometimes Fathers give a hand, working mothers are still
4.The phrase “pin money” in Line2, Para.4 means
5.The passage is mainly about
