Both Parents Working in Majority of Families

Both parents worked in 51% of American families in 1998, surpassing the number of families in which one spouse stayed home for the first time since the government began keeping track, the Census Bureau reported. The bureau’s Fertility of American Women report also found that 59% of mothers that same year returned to work before their babies had turned 1 year old, an all-time high and nearly double the 31% reported in 1976, the first year the government began tracking such trends. In 1995, the last year the bureau looked at fertility statistics, 55% of new mothers returned to work within 12 months of giving birth. Of the 3.7 million women with infants, 36% were working full-time in 1998, 17% were working part-time and 6% were looking for jobs. Another dramatic change noted in the report is that women ages 40 to 44 are ending their childbearing years with an average of 1.9 children, down from 3.1 in 1976.