I read that book too. There is a bad consequence of this/women working. If women are taking more and more high paying jobs, that leaves more and more men with lower paying jobs. And their spouses are either forced to live on one reduced income or work too. And thus lower the pay scale for men even more. So what you end up with is a situation where very few Americans feel like they can survive on just the husband’s salary.
That is progress for some: To force everyone into the labor market. Another consequence is to concentrate resources more unequally. Instead of two Doctors marrying two women and having four people live well, you have two Doctors marrying each other and having two people live very well. It’s beneficial to some. Detrimental to others.
In practice, it may or may not mean two doctors marrying. It almost doesn't matter. Among this class, a full-time working mother is less common than a stay-at-home mom. They may work before the children come, or may re-enter the workforce after the children are grown. But often, even professionals will at least scale back their careers while the children are young.
There are mutually-reinforcing causes of this. First, the husband is more likely to be a professional with a steady professional income, and with the status to go with it. Thus, there is a little less financial pressure for the woman to “bring home the bacon.” Second, it is more likely that each of the couple came from similar family backgrounds, including stay-at-home mothers. These families institutionally understand that family success is enhanced by stay-at-home mothers.
And that's part of the linchpin of the whole exercise: family success. Part of the root of the success of this class is the determination that the family - not the individual - should succeed. It is the family that is the building block, not the individual. It is the overall needs of the family that take all precedence, not the happiness or success or pleasure of the individual. Success is measured in decades, and by what has been done to ensure the success of the next generation, and the one after that.
I have seen this more times than I can count.
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