The whole ideal of the Atomic Age nuclear family was built on women as a class sacrificing themselves for the benefit of men. Our society was architected so that unskilled working class men could support a family on one income and women lacked key financial freedoms that kept them dependent on men.

Historical background: the Atomic Age started in the post New Deal era in the late 1930's and peaked in the 1950's. The harbinger of it's end was a push towards corporate dysregulation that started in the 1970's and culminated in Regan era fiscal policy. It was a period of enthusiasm, technical innovation, the rise of the middle class and yes it was the period when we build most of our nuclear infrastructure in America which was considered an ideal form of clean energy and technical innovation. The phrase nuclear family clearly has it's root in the cultural milieu of this time period. It is honestly a really special historical period for art and design as well and it's also been the fodder for a lot of dark reimagining (see Fallout franchise).

A very large portion of our society still idealizes this fantasy even though the social safety nets for men through affirmative labor policies that made this ideal possible have been stripped away for the last half a decade. Globalization means all our unskilled work goes overseas and corporate oligarchs sacrificed the tax structures that balanced the economy for working class earners in order to enrich their own coffers.

Now men want to blame women for the state of society-- because like any good American they are trained to seek out under-privileged groups to blame for social ills caused by unchecked capitalism-- and to continue benefitting from women as if the social contract that made the Atomic Age nuclear family was still in effect. It's worth mentioning that while men in the 1950's didn't respect their female partners as equals, they also did not engage in the fervor of unchecked male supremacy and misogynistic hate than men today engage in.

Women are waking up to the fact that partnering with a man suffering under those dual delusions in a tough economy is a complete liability and naturally refusing to go along with it. We are living in the death throws of end state capitalism and it's unclear what the future will hold. We used to think that overpopulation would be the death of humanity but it's becoming clear that any sufficiently industrialized society will have a steep drop off in birth rates because of the above elements coming into play. Manufacturing jobs are never coming back and oil and gas (another industry that employs and enriches mostly men) is also going the way of the dodo.

Who knows what the future holds. I personally believe in a sustainable future, and I think that our path forward is going to look a lot different when the boomer generation finally becomes irrelevant. I think people in the Gen-Z generation, no matter their gendered leanings, are going to be more in favor of straight up redistributing wealth and resources because it doesn't seem like the old model of putting one class to work and trying to cut down the rest is going to work.