Times have changed, but the concept of alimony goes at least as far back as the Code of Hammurabi.
With up to 40% of American kids being born today to single mothers, often with neither alimony nor meaningful child support, alimony, like marriage, is irrelevant to the lives of many Americans today.
Some states are ending lifetime alimony. One must wonder to what extent the risk of alimony is a deterrent to marriage. (It certainly can be a deterrent to divorce, at least for a while).
Pew had this report last week: Women are now the primary breadwinners in 40 percent of households with children in the US. I'm not sure what that means because I don't know whether that includes the single moms or not. Maybe we can assume it does, in which case it's relatively meaningless.
Nevertheless, there surely seem to be a lot more two-income households today than there were in the 50s (even though many women did work outside the home then). However, in the 50s there were almost no single moms other than widows. It was considered shameful.
Women married to functional men take jobs not as a matter of economic necessity usually, or as a matter of personal fulfillment. It's usually a matter of people wanting an economically-higher standard of living, better financial security, or the ability to pay escalating tuitions and housing costs.
In other words, for the family.
