In a column in The New York Times, Ross Douthat noted a Fox News commentary in which Tucker Carlson accused Republicans of building “an anti-family, finance-dominated economic system.” (“Tucker Carlson Versus Conservatism,” January 12, 2019)

Among Douthat’s comments on Carlson’s commentary, was his mention of the “family wage” of the 1940’s and 50’s—a wage that allowed “a single breadwinner to support a family.”

Today, women have followed men into employment, often a necessity since one wage no longer supports an average family.

However, it also has to do with women finding their way back into the economic sphere, where they always played a role until the industrial revolution began separating work and family.

Today we have need of different career models for men as well as women .

Careers, more often than not, require a major investment of time while workers are in their twenties and thirties—also the years when parenting is a vital job.

Writes Douthat: “Is there really nothing conservatives can do to address the costs of child care, the unfulfilled parental desire to shift to part-time work, the problem that a slightly more reactionary iteration of Elizabeth Warren once dubbed ‘the two-income trap’?

“If marriages and intact families and birthrates declined as the family wage crumbled, perhaps we should try rebuilding that economic foundation before we declare the crisis of the family a wound that policy can’t heal.”