Work and the Family (PDF)

Work and the Family: A Study in Social Demography reports on the investigation of a variety of economic squeezes hypothesized to be characteristic of postwar American society. One is the lower white-collar squeeze where the attainment of white-collar lifestyle aspirations may be impeded by an income equivalent to that of many manual workers. The others are the two life-cycle squeezes: the squeeze of early adulthood when the desire to set up a household is hampered by the relatively low earnings of young men; and the squeeze of middle adulthood when the cost of children is peaking but increases in the earnings of husbands may be slowing down with regard to those squeezes.
The book is organized into four parts. Part I introduces the theoretical model to be used and the major objectives of the research. It also discusses important conceptual and methodological problems involved in life-cycle analysis and the use of occupation as a major analytical tool. Part II examines life-cycle squeezes-structured sources of economic stress arising out of the interaction of family and career cycles. Part III examines the nature of wives' socioeconomic contribution to the family. Part IV essentially sums up the theoretical implications of the analyses conducted in the preceding chapters and represents a more formal theoretical statement of the issues in terms of adaptive family strategies.
This study is aimed at the wide audience of demographers, sociologists, economists, and historians who are interested in family socio economic and demographic behavior. It is also intended to appeal to readers at all levels of methodological sophistication-whether professionals or graduate students.