This is the final article in a series about unhappiness in contemporary women.

Q: How do modern family trends affect women's happiness?

A: In the U.S. Society and Values, U.S. Department of State electronic journal, January 2001, author Stephanie Coontz wrote an article titled "The American Family: Where We Are Today." She is a professor of history and family studies at a state college in Olympia, Wash. She also is the director of research and public education, council on contemporary families. She undoubtedly is a leading expert on American families and speaks to the positive trends for women today.

She states that mothers today, whether they work full-time or part-time, spend almost twice as much time with each child as mothers spent in the 1920s. This change has developed because there has been an increase in available time per child due to women having fewer children. Another trend in children is the decreased mortality rate today. Infants in the 1950s were four times more likely to die than infants today.

Coontz emphasizes that working mothers were the norm throughout most of the last two centuries. However, in the 19th century, the number of married women who worked decreased because children were sent out to work. With the abolition of child labor, married women re-entered the workforce.

Increasingly, from the 1920s to the 1950s, husbands worked and women stayed home. By the end of the 1950s, dual-earning families again evolved as the norm. What is new, however, is modern women have more control over their own incomes and more freedom to choose the courses of their own lives.

Both men and women spend a smaller proportion of their lives raising children because they have fewer children and because they live longer. The average couple spends more than two decades together after their children leave home.

Many studies show children do better when their mothers are happy in their own lives. Satisfaction for mothers can be full-time work, part-time work or staying at home. Which alternatives mothers choose have no significance to children's happiness, as long as their mothers are happy. Although mothers working have caused some roles at home to shift to fathers, fathers still do less housework than mothers. In 1988, 25 percent of couples said they shared child care equally. Today, 49 percent of couples report equal child care responsibilities. That, of course, leaves half of married parents who do not share child care equally.

With the current life expectancy of 76 years, adults for the first time will have to care for both their parents and their children. Twenty-five percent of today's families provide the equivalent of one day's care a week, at least, for aging relatives. This care is provided free to relatives. More families expect to be caring for older relatives in the next decade, and older adults are less likely to be poor or suffering from illnesses. Children today have more opportunities to enjoy relationships with their grandparents.

There are positive results from some of the family trends formerly considered negative. Divorce is beginning to work out more successfully so women and children experience much less stress. Family roles and bonds can be maintained. Non-custodial parents have more contacts with their children. Child support is rising with the establishment of child support enforcement programs in all states. This rise in child support directly benefits women and children, since 90 percent of children live with their mothers, whether single or divorced.

Children of divorce seem to be faring better than they did in earlier decades. One can speculate that increasing child support and decreasing post-divorce conflict between parents have benefited children. In addition, studies show step-families are learning to support children's access to adults from other sides of the families. For example, step-mothers or step-fathers support children's relationships with their biological parents and biological extended family members.

One of the most significant findings in studying modern families is the types of family structures are not the most important factors in determining family happiness. How families function internally is far more important than whether or not families are single, cohabiting, divorced or remarried.

Coontz believes most of the unhappiness in today's families is due to the cultural lag in social institutions that have failed to keep up with changes in modern families. Work policies and school schedules are two prime examples of lagging institutional practices. Perhaps the increasing unhappiness of women today, despite gains in many areas, is related to cultural and social forces over which they have no control and which do not meet their needs in today's reality.

Judy Caprez is associate professor and director of social work at Fort Hays State University. Send your questions in care of the department of sociology and social work,

Rarick Hall, FHSU.