n, but delinquent child support payments are a significant problem in this country, both for children who are born into marriages that end in divorce, and for children who are born outside of marriages. The problem has become so acute that some legislators have called for taking child support payments out of father's income tax refunds (106).
Another reason that women are not necessarily better off today is the high rate of divorce (84). When couples with children divorce, the woman suffers disproportionately to the man in large part because women are still overwhelmingly awarded custody of the children, and child support payments do not begin to cover the actual cost of raising children. In addition to the direct costs of child care, clothing and maintenance associated with children, there are indirect costs that are much more difficult to calculate. For example, a woman with two children cannot be expected to live in a studio apartment; she requires larger living quarters which comes with higher rents or mortgages. At the same time, child care has very specific rules regarding when children can be dropped off and picked up, so the woman's career may be shortchanged if she cannot put in the hours that she would otherwise in a two-parent household. As a result, her long-term income suffers as her careers prospects are curtailed.
Even in families where the parents do not divorce, the economic gains that women have made are questionable. For example, two income families (with or without children) made it possible for couples to purchase larger and more expensive houses. As the housing market adjusted to this, the price of housing increased, with the result that the second income is no longer a luxury in many cases, but a requirement for purchasing a home. In this way, single and divorced women who do not have the benefit of a second income may be priced out of the housing market, in part because of gains that other women ha...