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The timeline doesn’t work. Birth rates started to drop in the late 50s, when the oldest boomers were maybe 14. Marriage rates never recovered from their 1949 peak.
I would point at the wild increase in workforce participation driven by the war and by increased mechanization. A woman with her own income has significantly less incentive to follow the pre-war norms. When my grandmother was done tolerating her cheating husband, she divorced him and went to nursing school. Couldn’t do that in 1930.
Ah, but does that track female LFPR? I believe the fifties actually represent a long term minimum of female LFPR, due to rising male incomes meaning fewer women had to work. Statistically rosie the riveter(to the extent that she existed to begin with; she's greatly exaggerated) went back to being a housewife and it was her daughters, not her, that began entering the workforce on a more permanent basis.
I think so? The data shows brief dips in the 50s, but the overall trend starts to go up pretty early.
I suspect if we broke these up by sector, factory jobs probably did go back to men, with gains concentrated in healthcare, educational, and other service sectors.
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