[4] In Britain, the breadwinner model developed among the emerging middle class towards the end of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-nineteenth century.
This is the notion that the wage earned by a husband ought to be sufficient to support his family without his wife and young children having to work for pay.
Throughout the century, multiple items of legislation were written in to law limiting the age at which a child could enter work and ensuring mandatory standards of education.
A primary reason women in domestic abuse situations choose not to divorce or report their spouses is economic dependence on their partner.
[11] In societies where the breadwinner model is present, it is common for the non-earner (predominantly women) to have broken career paths, providing unpaid labour to the family or working part-time.
[14] In 2013 the UK female employment rate reached 67.2 per cent, the highest since the Office for National Statistics' records began.
[15] As women's growing presence in the professional world has risen, as well as support for gender equality, male–female relations in the home have changed, especially the breadwinner paradigm.
[17] "As increasing proportions of women entered the paid labour market during the latter decades of the 20th century, the family model of a male breadwinner and female homemaker came under significant challenge both as a practice and an ideology".
[18] There is now agreement in most literature that the breadwinner model, in which men take primary responsibility for earning and women for the unpaid work of care, has been substantially eroded.
With the exception of Denmark, research by the World Economic Forum has shown that all Nordic countries have closed over 80 percent of the gender gap.
Recent data from the US Census stated that "40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family".
The decline of the breadwinner model has been accompanied by an erosion of the economic support of family members and the "distribution of time and regulation of marriage and parenthood".