Gender Roles

The way mothers and fathers spend their time has changed dramatically in the past half century. Dads are doing more housework and child care; moms more paid work outside the home. Neither has overtaken the other in their “traditional” realms, but their roles are converging, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of long-term […]

Two-thirds of young women ages 18 to 34 rate career high on their list of life priorities, compared with 59% of young men.

Two-thirds (66%) of women ages 18 to 34 rate career as important on their list of life priorities, compared with 59% of young men.

Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen’s comment this week about Ann Romney’s lack of work experience has put the “mommy wars” back in the news. Here is a summary of surveys in recent years that explore public attitudes about issues related to women, work and motherhood.

In the last 50 years, fathers have become much more involved in the day-to-day lives of the children they live with. During that same time period, though, the share of fathers living apart from their children has risen dramatically, to 27% in 2010.

Today's mothers of newborns are more likely than their counterparts two decades earlier to be ages 35 and older, to have some college education, to be unmarried or to be nonwhite -- but not all at once.

Today's mothers of newborns are older and better educated than their counterparts in 1990, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the National Center for Health Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau. They are less likely to be white and less likely to be married.

In the past, when relatively few wives worked, marriage enhanced the economic status of women more than that of men. Recently, however, the economic gains associated with marriage have been greater for men.