Yearning for the Past

Political parties and candidates love the American family. Just ask them – or listen. Family values, working families, family budgets, "family-friendly" policies – all are woven through the speeches of Democrats and Republicans alike. But the two parties can't seem to agree on what the typical American family is (or should be). And social policy experts say government and political leaders across the board suffer from distortion or just denial over who and what the American family has become, and what it needs to prosper.

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For decades, candidates and parties have catered to a presumptive ideal of the American family unit: two married, opposite sex adults, with children or planning to have them, and with a woman who may or may not work outside the home (and not after the children are born). That model was not entirely accurate, notes Stephanie Coontz, author of "The Way We Never Were" and an expert on marriage and family trends. But the aspirational element was there, the assumption being that what people wanted was a "Leave it to Beaver"- style life, and the policies that supported it. Gender wage gaps existed but were not big targets for change, since men were mainly the breadwinners and it was assumed women wanted to marry and would quit their jobs eventually. The idea of the typical minimum wage earner was a teenager at a burger and shake joint, not a single parent trying to pay the rent. Child care was presumed to be taken care of, literally, in house, with the vast majority of women with kids too young for kindergarten staying out of the paid labor force.

This election year has both parties still talking about families, but the family structure itself has changed dramatically over time. There are now more unmarried women of voting age than married women. The loving couple down the street may be unmarried (8.3 million such households existed in 2015, compared to 523,000 in 1970, according to the U.S. Census Bureau). They may not be heterosexual, either (nearly 450,000 U.S. households were same-sex couples in 2014, the bureau reports). Young adults may be living with parents as they pay off college loans, while middle-aged adults might have elderly, ailing parents living with them so they can provide round-the-clock care. And some may not be coupled or caring for children at all: a full 28 percent of American households are people living alone, up from 17 percent in 1970, Census says. As for the man of the house bringing home the bacon, that pattern has been upended. Women are now the sole or primary breadwinners in 40 percent of homes with children, up from less than 11 percent in 1960, the Pew Research Center reports.

"I think the American family is changing in a variety of ways, with different types of family relationships, more unmarried women, people delaying childbearing or doing it in a different way. It really speaks to the need for politicians to catch up to where families are today," says Jocelyn Frye, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where she focuses on issues affecting women and families. "Policymakers have been slow to catch up," particularly on workplace issues, she says.

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The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 was the last substantial piece of federal legislation aimed at helping modern households, Coontz notes, and the law is limited in scope and relief (it requires large employers to give up to 12 weeks' unpaid leave for the birth of a child or other family medical situation).

"In a majority of families, every parent in the home is employed. We're not weaving [policy] in to [accommodate] two parent families," says Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at the Evergreen State College and who also is director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families. Meanwhile, "women are staying at work longer into pregnancies and going back to work much quicker," in part because they cannot afford to lose income.

Family caregiving is also becoming a growing, and time-consuming pressure, according to caregiver advocacy groups. As people live longer and the baby boomer generation ages, there will be fewer potential family caregivers to provide for them, according to projections by AARP. For example, while there now are about 7 potential family caregivers available for people in prime need years (age 80 and older), that ratio will drop to 4:1 by 2030 and 3:1 by 2050, the group reports. But Coontz and others note that employment and labor law has not caught up by requiring paid family leave or even paid sick leave for workers.

In many cases, corporate America has been ahead of government entities in recognizing changes in family structures. For example, more than 400 major businesses earned a perfect score this year for LGBT equality from the Human Rights Campaign, which bases its rankings on factors ranging from anti-discrimination policies to accommodations and protections for transgender workers. But there is no federal law banning workplace discrimination against LGBT people. Many companies also offer such modern family benefits as extended maternity and paternity leave (paid and unpaid), adoption assistance and even free shipment of breast milk for nursing, traveling mother-employees. But the FMLA, which applies only to companies employing 50 or more people, allows for just 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

That, says Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, often comes down to politics – specifically, how each party views social change through a political lens. "We've watched huge changes in the family, accelerated by millennials," who are marrying and reproducing later, Greenberg says, attributing the shift to sexual freedom and a multiplicity of types of families.

"Where it became politicized was in the [promotion] of the traditional family. As conservatives watched the decline of the family and the traditional male breadwinner role, they began to make [traditional families] central to their policies and values," says Greenberg, who has extensively studied the impact of the rise of unmarried female voters.

That's backed up by an examination of the two political parties' national platforms. Each one has 26 mentions of the word "family," but the context is radically different. The Democratic platform talks about raising "family" economic security with hikes in the minimum wage and closing of the gender pay gap. It celebrates "family planning," including abortion rights and access to birth control, and calls for the "family" benefit of paid sick leave and affordable child care. On immigration, Democrats talk about not separating families by deporting parents of underage citizen children.

Republicans, however, use the word "family" more narrowly, denouncing same-sex marriage and calling opposite-sex marriage the "foundation for a free society [which] has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values." The RNC platform wants education, taxation and welfare policies to encourage marriage and discourage cohabitation. "The loss of faith and family life leads to greater dependence upon government," the platform says.

Married people are a "natural constituency" of the GOP, Greenberg says – but unmarried women in particular vote overwhelmingly Democratic (Hillary Clinton wins unmarried women by a 2:1 margin, polls show, similar to how Barack Obama did in 2012).

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Unmarried women – who may well be working for minimum wage or are being paid less than male counterparts – are "more economically vulnerable, so that's clearly part of it," says demographer Ruy Teixeira, who has written several books on the changing American electorate. "Some are flat-out poor. They feel most in need of potential help from the government."

It would make sense, then, advocates note, for both parties to examine the needs of the evolving family, whether it be tax breaks for child and family care, workplace flexibility or mandatory paid days off. The solutions won't be easy – conservatives, after all, don't want too much government involvement in people's family lives, and worry that moves such as raising the minimum wage will result ultimately in job losses that hurt families. But instead, advocates see push-back.

"They're very invested in that [older] model. They're very invested in a return to that model," says Rebecca Traister, author of "All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation." "They're yearning for an era when men, specifically white men, ran politics" and other arenas. "That was made possible by the subjugation of another population of America," women, she adds. "That is an economic model – not just a family structure," Traister adds. The American family, however, continues to change. Its members, meanwhile, wait for government and political parties to change with it.