Many of the problems commonly blamed on breakdown of the
traditional family exist not because we've changed too much
but because we haven't changed enough. As Betty Carter argues, pro-
nouncements about the "revolution" in traditional marriage often work to
hold back needed change in marriages. Because couples believe that their
stresses come from how much gender roles have already changed, they
don't realize how much more they still need to change. ¹

The failure of men to share housework and child care with their part-
ners, for example, is a primary source of overload for working mothers and
a major cause of marital conflict. Yet one recent study comparing the
housework done by men and women in six different living situations found
that married men did less housework than men in any other living arrange-
ment, including cohabitation. Meanwhile, outdated expectations about
marriage continue to be perpetuated among young men. In 1994, a national
survey reported that 86 percent of 13- to 17-year-old girls expected to work
after marriage, but only 58 percent of boys the same age expected to have an
employed wife. ²

Over and over, we find that it is the lag in adjusting values, behaviors,
and institutions to new realities that creates problems in contemporary
families. Marital dissatisfaction and divorce frequently originate when

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