The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren [8]
The Two-Income Trap is thick with irony. Middle-class mothers went into the workforce in a calculated effort to give their families an economic edge. Instead, millions of them are now in the workplace just so their families can break even. At a time when women are getting college diplomas and entering the workforce in record numbers, their families are in more financial trouble than ever. Partly these women were the victims of bad timing: Despite general economic prosperity, the risks facing their families jumped considerably. Partly they were the victims of optimistic myopia: They saw the rewards a working mother could bring, without seeing the risks associated with that newfound income. And partly they were the victims of one another. As millions of mothers poured into the workplace, it became increasingly difficult to put together a middle-class life on a single income. The combination has taken these women out of the home and away from their children and simultaneously made family life less, not more, financially secure. Today’s middle-class mother is trapped: She can’t afford to work, and she can’t afford to quit.
A Mother’s Story
Both mothers and fathers are trapped in the same sinking boat, but it is mothers who have been the special targets of change over the past generation. It is mothers who left the home en masse, transforming generations of family economics. It is mothers who must do it all, tending to home and children while managing full-time jobs outside the home. And it is nearly always mothers who preserve the remnants of the family in the aftermath of divorce.
Even for a married couple, financial failure is disproportionately a woman’s problem. A husband and wife who have been struck by financial disaster look more or less the same on paper. They share the same assets, they owe the same debts, and they have the same black marks on their credit reports. But behind the curtain of marriage, there are important differences.
In this age of nominal equality between husbands and wives, in the most intimate aspect of their lives—family finance—couples reveal a surprising traditionalism. Research shows that on average, a husband is three times more likely than a wife to take primary responsibility for managing the family’s money.14 But as a couple sinks into financial turmoil, this responsibility tends to shift. As families fall behind on their bills, it is wives who roll up their sleeves and do what must be done. Wives who deal with foreclosure notices, wives who plead with creditors for more time to pay, and wives who insist on seeking credit counseling or legal help. And, like Ruth Ann, it is wives who ultimately decide when it is time to file for bankruptcy. Among couples who seek credit counseling or file for bankruptcy, the split over who was responsible for dealing with the bills was exactly reversed from that of secure families: three-quarters of the wives were exclusively responsible for trying to extract their families from their financial quagmire.15
This shift is not merely a mundane realignment of responsibilities within the household, a simple variation on the routine decisions that he will mow the lawn while she folds the laundry. Rather, it is a signal of serious discord within a marriage. In financially troubled families, women who managed the money alone were twice as likely to describe themselves as very dissatisfied with the arrangement than the men who took on that task. Many women, exhausted and frustrated by all that accompanies the descent into financial ruin, find that just when they most need help, their husbands have disappeared.
Men, for their part, often feel that