Mothers serve as primary breadwinners in 40 percent of American families with children, reports the Associated Press. That’s a record for women, who made up only 11 percent of breadwinners in 1960. The stats come from a new Pew Research Poll, but the news comes to the Cut by way of Sex and the City writer Candace Bushnell. This morning, Bushnell tweeted that the demographic shift illustrated by the poll was first the basis for her 2005 novel, Lipstick Jungle. “World is catching up!” she wrote.
According to the AP, only 21 percent of those polled said “the trend of more mothers of young children working outside the home is a good thing for society,” and three in four adults said the rise of the career woman has made it harder for parents to raise children. (The majority of female breadwinners are also single mothers.) Men are less excited about it than women: 57 percent of men say children are better off if the mother is at home, compared with 45 percent of women.
