What is a Modern Family? Someone Should Explain it to the Heritage Foundation
- Brian Page
- a few seconds ago
- 4 min read
The headline from a PEW Survey Release:
"In a Growing Share of U.S. Marriages, Husbands and Wives Earn About the Same"
According to the Pew Research Center, in nearly half of all U.S. marriages, both the husband and wife have similar levels of education and earnings, marking a significant shift from the past, where male breadwinning was the norm.
The study also found that couples with similar levels of education and earnings tend to be more satisfied with their marriages and to share household and child-rearing responsibilities more equally.
Our role as husbands and fathers is as essential today as it has ever been. It's just changing.
What is a Modern Family?
“77% of adults believe that children are better off when their mother and father both focus equally on work and home life.”
Our parents and grandparents might tell us that the only responsibility of men is to be the provider, which might have been the case in their world.
As you will see, this is not the case in ours.
Fifty years ago, 85% of households had one partner who focused primarily on caregiving and home care, and the math of doing so added up.
But not today.
Comparing the Cost of Living in 1970 to 2025
Citations
House: This is the median sales price of new houses sold, reported quarterly (1970 values in the low-$20Ks; 2025 Q2 at $410,800) via St. Louis Fed.
Car: The 1970 figure is an average new car price (“Total”) from a historical transportation data table; the 2025 figure is the average transaction price reported by Kelley Blue Book.
College tuition: The 1970–71 number is an NCES historical average tuition & required fees (all institutions). The 2025–26 number is College Board’s published public 4-year in-state average.
Health insurance: There isn’t a single continuous, nationally standardized “average premium” series that cleanly matches employer-plan premiums all the way back to 1970 in one table. So I used a clearly documented 1970 per-enrollee annual hospital-care benefit spending figure as a proxy, and compared it to KFF’s employer premium averages in 2025.
The Modern World
For most of America, the single breadwinner and stay-at-home-mom is no longer the norm. Nor is expecting men to be the breadwinner. Today, most American households have dual incomes, and women make around the same or more in 45% of households.
Even if you prefer to move forward with perceived gender norm roles after having a child, the modern economy does not allow most of us to make this choice.
The modern and practical approach to providing for a family is for couples to do so as teammates.
Most of our parents and grandparents didn't need two incomes to cover the average cost of a new home, a car, or college. But that was their world.
For many modern families to flourish, spouses and partners must draw strength from each other as teammates, working together as providers and caregivers.
Career advancement opportunities, career flexibility, earning potential, and employer services that didn't exist decades ago. These are the factors that drive career and home management choices in marriage, not gender.
Most couples are happier when they plan their modern lives in line with the modern world. When husbands contribute equitably to the household chores, they are happier.
When couples manage money as a team, communicating regularly and using their hard-earned dollars on what they need and value most, they are happier.
When fathers have more time with their children and do not feel burdened by being the sole breadwinner, they are happier.
Dangerous Nonsense from the Heritage Foundation
The Washington Post just reported on a new Heritage Foundation document that calls for a new tax break to incentivize larger families, pitching a credit worth more than $4,000 for married joint filers with children and widowed parents as long as they meet work requirements.
The credit would increase by 25 percent for parents with at least three children and by another $2,000 for each eligible child younger than 5 years old, to encourage a parent to stay home and provide child care.
It doesn't take a math whiz to figure out that these incentives fall woefully short of the average cost of raising a child, which is over $40,000 a year in some states.
For context, the Heritage Foundation is the organization that produced Project 2025, the roadmap for the Trump administration, which, in less than a year, has already fully implemented over half of the plan.
Using tax incentives to encourage women to stay home isn't new. It's been done by Viktor Orbán (pictured above with Trump), the long-serving prime minister of Hungary, who was elected through a regular election but has since weakened and bypassed democratic safeguards such as independent courts, a free press, minority rights, and checks on executive authority. Sound familiar?
Related: Click here to calculate the compounding financial consequences of having a child.
Solutions to Mitigate the Rising Costs of a Family
Yes, we have an affordability crisis in the United States. I provide solutions for families to mitigate rising costs.
I am the only Accredited Financial Counselor™ and Fair Play Facilitator™, empowering couples with systems to manage money and the home as a team, drawn from decades of national leadership and lived experience.
Contact me to set up a free 15-minute exploratory call.
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