Pew: Mothers Are More Educated and Earning More Dough

So-called "Mommy wars" and debates about whether working women with children can "have it all" aside, a slew of recent information from the Pew Research Center reveals a profile of American mothers that's different from the past, though perhaps not shocking, especially in high-achieving Montgomery County.

A record number of women go to college before having children, found one study, and women are the breadwinners in nearly half of U.S. households with children, said another. 

In 2011, babies were born to a class of women that were more educated than ever before, according to Pew. The majority of mothers with infants had at least some college (66 percent) while only 14 percent didn't have a high school diploma. 

Pew says the shift is significant, since babies with educated mothers tend to fare better in the early stages of life:

"Experts have identified a strong linkage between child well-being and maternal education levels. On average, a mother with more education is more likely to deliver a baby at term and more likely to have a baby with a healthy birth weight. As they grow up, children with more educated mothers tend to have better cognitive skills and higher academic achievement than others."

Read the full study, here.

With more education comes more money, it would seem, as a separate study of U.S. Census data from the Pew Research Center found 40 percent of households with children are financially supported by women. That's a jump from less than 11 percent of women breadwinners in 1960 and a little more than 20 percent in 1980, Pew said.

Philip Cohen, a University of Maryland sociologist who spoke to The Washington Post about the study, said the shift in earning happened in the last two decades:

"The decade of the 2000s witnessed the most rapid change in the percentage of married mothers earning more than their husbands of any decade since 1960," Cohen said. "This reflects the larger job losses experienced by men at the beginning of the Great Recession. Also, some women decided to work more hours or seek better jobs in response to their husbands’ job loss, potential loss or declining wages."

Working mothers reported either being single parents (63 percent of the group of breadwinners, or 8.6 million women) or simply earning more money than their husbands (37 percent of the group, or 5.1 million). 

Two-parent households with a high-earning mother had a median income of almost $80,000 in 2011, Pew found. That is above the national median income of $57,100 for all families with children. Single mothers had a median income of $23,000, the study found.

Polling Americans' attitudes about shifting roles of women in the home, Pew found that most people don't think women should return to traditional homemaker roles (about 67 percent of people polled) although many feel that children are better off when women stay at home (about 51 percent). Eight percent thought the same of men staying at home. 

Nearly two-thirds of Americans said a rise of single mothers is a "big problem," although, as Pew pointed out, when broken down by age, people under 30 are much less alarmed (about 47 percent said it is a big problem) than people over 50 (74 percent). 

Read the full Pew report, here.

What do you think: Are women's roles in the home changing? Are you a woman earning the lion's share of income for her family? Do Americans have it right about women and children? Have it wrong? Tell us in the comments.