单选题
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The greatest impact on the
family over the last 50 years has been the changing role of the wife. These
changes have affected not only her life but also that of her husband and
children. The family has changed from an economically defined unit under the
authority of the father and having minimal interpersonal emotional ties to a
unit with strong emotional ties directed primarily by the mother to her husband
and children. This meant a removal of the woman from the community into the much
more private setting of the nuclear family. One important result is greater
emotional and general psychological seclusion of the woman, which clearly
implied that the female role was culturally a secondary one.
In
recent decades it has become clear that for a distinct minority of American
women the traditional mother role in the seclusion of the home is no longer
acceptable. For many the family is of diminishing importance. The development of
education for women has been a crucial factor in this change. Today, over 80% of
all women complete four years of high school as compared to only 35% in 1940.
This is related to the fact that marriage now occurs a year later for the
average woman. The proportion of women aged 20 to 24 who are single increased
from 28% in 1969 to 40% by the mid 1970s. Childbearing is being postponed
so that, compared to the 1960s, 10% fewer women bear their first child in the
two years immediately following marriage. Furthermore, more women
today remain childless. Work, older age at marriage, and fewer children are the
basic changes that have taken place in women's roles in recent years.
The trend among women is toward increased education, and this is linked to
other role changes. The higher a woman's educational attainment, the more likely
she is to work, to stay in the labour force longer, and to have more job
opportunities available to her. This further suggests that when women are
married their work has a great impact on their marriage. For example, since
working wives contribute 25% to 40% of their total family income, their position
as decision-makers in the family is usually strengthened. A sociologist points
out that the social trends towards increased education for women not only mean
more work experience but also delayed marriage and decreased fertility.
These changes, in turn, point the way toward even greater labour force
participation throughout the life cycle.
The number of women
entering the work force is rapidly increasing. Women outnumber men in the
total population by about 7 million. When that is added to the fact that labour
force participation of males is slowly declining because of the trend toward
earlier retirement, "it may not be too long before one out every two American
workers is a woman."