Laws are used to reinforce societies values. Society changes and often the laws lag behind in enforcing those values.

In the 50s societies values related to woman and races began to shift. Laws began to shift.

Incentives to remain married decreased socially and legally. Zero fault divorce occurs and there’s a greater need for women to enter the work force to support themselves. Equality of gender is pushed further to allow woman to enter the workforce. As societies values shift, there becomes more paths forward than the two parent one salary household and some opt to choose the dink lifestyle. As businesses mentalities shifted in the 80s to incentivize profits at all costs rather than keeping an even hand looking out for the consumer, there was an attempt to make more money and as “household income is rising” businesses began prioritizing capturing a larger portion of it. Business law was grossly ill prepared to protect consumers as businesses became infinitely smarter with the amount of data that exists.

So I blame lots of places. But greed & feminism share a good amount of the blame. As the say “the path to hell is often paved with good intentions”. I believe this is the case here. US society didn’t value traditional family structure and as soon as that happened, laws shifted. Dinks arose, businesses took advantage, and no one has the stones to either regulate businesses or place incentives in law for one income families.

If the law doesn’t pick a value, greedy men will. Churches and such used to instill values to keep greed in check and as churches go away, and values have changed as a society we’ve de stigmatized making a profit at all costs.

This is how I view it. I’m generally conservative but I do see purpose in laws unlike how some conservatives see law. Repealing a law is as consequential as creating a law and there is a place for both actions depending on what society values.

So in the end, it’s all the boomers fault 🙂 jkjk

Edit: I’d add dataguys response in here as well.