Three of the most remarkable trends in the past two decades have all had a direct effect on the phasing of what was traditionally considered the main portion of a woman's life cycle-namely, marriage and childbearing. Specifically, women are postponing marriage, postponing childbearing within marriage, and reducing their family size expectations.
Take marital patterns, for instance. The median age at first marriage for women has risen from 20.3 in 1950 to 21.1 in 1974. Furthermore, in the age group in which most men and women traditionally marry (20-24), the percentage of women remaining single has risen from 28 per cent in 1960 to 39 per cent in 1974-an increase of one third. In general, while the percentage remaining single is up sharply for persons under 35, it continues to decline for persons 35 and over (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1974d). The long-term effect of the trend among the 20-24 cohorts to remain single may be a later marriage age, or it may be a growing commitment to lifelong singleness: it is too early to say.
There are many explanations for this dramatic change in marriage patterns in the last 25 years. First, the expansion of educational opportunities for women has provided them with alternatives to their traditional life choices, and they are postponing (sometimes indefinitely) parental roles in favor of occupational careers. Second, there is increasing acceptance of nontraditional living arrangements; couples who might have bowed to social pressure to marry no longer feel compelled to do so. Third, the 1960s saw a dramatic rise in the number of young marriage-age men inducted into the armed forces, and thus made relatively inaccessible to the marriage market. But, in addition to these and other explanations for delayed marriage, demographers have given us one other: the marriage squeeze. Since women tend to marry men two or three years older than themselves, the women of the baby boom reached marriage age before the comparably large male marriage cohort. Or, to put it another way, there were not enough men in the appropriate age groups for the marriage-age women. For some women, then, the postponement of marriage may have been involuntary-the demographic fallout of the baby boom (Glick and Parke, 1965; Parke and Glick, 1967).
In part as a consequence of postponed marriage, in part for other reasons, women are postponing childbearing. For instance, 70 per cent of white women married between 1955 and 1959 had their first child in the first 24 months of marriage; 10 years later (that is, among women married between 1965 and 1969), only 60 per cent had had their first child within 2 years of marriage. The same trend is seen for later-order births as well. It should be noted, however, that in the same 10-year comparison for black women, the trend is reversed (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1974c).
Not only are women having their children later, they are also having, and planning to have, fewer children. This phenomenon has given us another term in the popular lexicon on the changing life cycle: - the birth dearth. Between 1960 and 1974, the percentage of ever-married women between the ages of 15 and 19 who were child free increased by 25 per cent (from 44 per cent to 56 per cent); for ever-married women 20-24, those child free rose by two thirds (from 24 per cent to 41 per cent); and forever-married women 25-29, the rise was close to 60 per cent (from 13 per cent to 20 per cent) (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975a). It is interesting to note that this drop in births since 1960 will produce a reverse marriage squeeze in the next five years or so: young men will be locating mates from a smaller cohort of women.
In 1974, the birth rate in the United States reached a point lower even than the level reached during the 1930s Depression: 14.8 per 1,000 population. Not only the birth rate but the fertility expectations of women have dropped dramatically and quickly. In 1955, 38 per cent of women aged 18-24 expected to have four or more children (U.S. Department of Labor, 1973); between 1967 and 1974, the proportion of women in this age group who expected to have four or more children dropped by more than two thirds: from 26 per cent in 1967 to 8 per cent in 1974. At the same time, the number of women anticipating two children rose dramatically: from 37 per cent of the women 18-24 in 1967 to 56 per cent in 1974-an increase of 50 per cent. For women in the 25-29 age range, the increase in the number expecting only two children was even more dramatic: from 29 per cent in 1967 to 52 per cent in 1974 (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975).
At the same time that family size expectations are decreasing, there is an increasing proportion of childless women who expect to remain childless: in 1974, 11 per cent of childless women 14-24 and 27 per cent of childless married women 25-29 did not expect to have any children. These figures represent an increase of 23 per cent in just 3 years in wives under 30 who do not plan to have children (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975).
In short, then, women have been entering the traditional family cycle more slowly, and because of their smaller families, they have been spending less time in that phase of their life.
Female Heads of Households
One way to examine some of the changes that have taken place in family living arrangements in the past two decades is to look at changes in female-headed households. Between 1954 and 1969, the number of female heads of families increased by about 40 per cent; this number grew another 22 per cent between 1970 and 1974, so that by 1974 female-headed households represented 10 per cent of all households in the United States, and approximately 15 per cent of all families with children. Much of this change reflects the increase in the number of black female family heads. Since 1960 there has been a 10 per cent increase in the number of white female family heads, and a 35 per cent increase in the number of black female family heads. In 1973, black women represented 28 per cent of all female family heads (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975).
Female heads of households are younger (on average) than previously, and more apt to be divorced, separated, or single, rather than widowed. Between 1960 and 1973, the median age of women who headed families declined by about 5 years, from 50.5 in 1960 to 45.1 in 1973, with black female family heads about 9 years younger than their white counterparts (U.S. Department of Commerce 1974). The shift toward younger, divorced, or separated female family heads (from older, widowed family heads) will no doubt continue as a result of the continuing and rising rate of divorces and separations. In 1973, 37 per cent of female family heads were widowed, 13 per cent unmarried, and 50 per cent divorced or separated. This is in contrast with 1960, when 50 per cent of them were widowed and 36 per cent divorced or separated (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1974).
There are two fundamental reasons for interest in and concern for increases in the number of households headed by women. First, as a group, these households are particularly disadvantaged. Two thirds of all female household heads have less than a high school education. In 1972, more than half of them had incomes below the poverty threshold ($4,254), compared with less than 10 per cent of male heads of households. In 1973, a higher proportion of children under 18 years of age lived in fatherless families than ever before: about 10 per cent of white children and 38 per cent of black children. Nearly one half of all female family heads between the ages of 25 and 44 have three or more children. In short, increasing numbers of children are experiencing the economic disadvantages which attend households headed by women (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1974b; U.S. Department of Labor, 1975; Waldman and Whitmore, 1974).
The second major reason for interest in the growth of female-headed households is that increasing numbers of women have experienced or will experience this status at some point in their lives. The shift toward later marriage age, when combined with the ability and inclination of young single women to leave their parent's home and set up their own household, has been a major element in the increase in households of "primary individuals" who are female. The rise in the number of children born to unmarried women, coupled with the tendency for these women to set up their own household rather than move in with relatives, has also contributed to the trend.
But the major factor in the rise in the number of households headed by women is the increasing likelihood that a marriage will end in divorce or separation. The number and rate of divorces increased in 1974 for the 12th straight year. The ratio of divorced people to those in intact marriages has risen from a level of 35 per 1,000 in 1960 to 63 per 1,000 in 1974, with approximately 50 per cent more divorced women than divorced men in 1974-an indication of the greater likelihood that divorced men will remarry. Perhaps the most important element in this trend has been the shift in the age patterns of divorce in recent years. In 1974, the ratio of divorced persons to persons in intact marriages was higher for those under 45 years old (66 per 1,000) than for those 45 years and over (59 per 1,000), representing a reversal of the situation a decade earlier (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1974).
It has been argued that the rise in the number of families headed by women represents not a preference for single-parent families but rather a transitional status which increasing proportions of women will enter (and leave) at some point in their lives (Ross and Macintosh). The vast majority of the individuals who are postponing marriage today are likely to marry at some point; a growing proportion of them will experience separation and divorce; and an increasing proportion of those divorced will experience remarriage. Between 1960 and 1969, the rate of remarriage of divorced women rose by almost 11 per cent (from 122.1 per 1,000 divorced women to 135.4). In contrast, the remarriage rate for widows has remained fairly constant: 36.1 per 1,000 widows in 1960 to 39.3 per 1,000 in 1969. Thus, the major group of women who are likely to remain in female-headed households are widows. But, as noted earlier, widows represent a shrinking proportion of the total female household heads (NCHS, 1973).
If, in fact, there has been a decrease in the importance of marital status in predicting or determining the sorts of activities and roles a woman adopts, part of the reason is that marriage is not eternal. More and more women are spending more and more time in roles that lie outside the traditional family life cycle. The length of time after childhood and before marriage is growing, as is the number of women spending time between marriages.
It is not really surprising that the social perception of appropriate female roles is catching up with the reality of post-World-War-ll America. It is rather more surprising that it has taken so long to recognize that the "career woman" and the mother may be one and the same person. But then, as Keller (1972) has noted, the working woman is "one of America's best kept secrets."
