Why No One Can “Have It All” and Why That Matters for Everyone 1 Kathleen Gerson 2 New trends in the organization of economic and private life have added a major wrinkle to the still unfolding gender revolution. The decline of the standard employment relationship has eroded the ability of salaried and wage-earning men to support a family household, while the decline of permanent, heterosexual marriage has undermined the traditional gender bargain that encouraged most women to provide unpaid caregiving in exchange for a partner’s financial support. These widespread social shifts have created new economic insecu- rities and intensified work–family conflicts. Drawing on 120 in-depth interviews with a diverse group of mid-life adults, I examine how workers and parents are navigating these new conflicts and insecurities. Four work-care strategies are emerging, all of which involve significant trade-offs. Among the four patterns, however, people are most satisfied with an egalitarian strategy. A substantial proportion in the other groups, which include traditional couples, childless singles, and unequal dual-earners, also express a preference for a more egalitarian sharing of work and care, although the preference for equality varies by gender. Effective social policy thus needs to insure that everyone—including people of all genders, class positions, and family circumstances—has the opportunity to forge a more equal, blended, and secure division of work and caregiving. KEYWORDS: breadwinning; caregiving; family; gender; new economy; work. INTRODUCTION Since the outset of the gender revolution, deep-seated debates have roiled American political discourse about how to combine earning a living and caring for children and other dependents. The substance of these controversies has shifted over the decades, but like a game of whack-a-mole, new disagreements continually emerge even when earlier ones show signs of fading. In the earliest stages, even declaring that a revolution was underway was controversial. While some analysts argued that the unprecedented rise in women’s labor force participation repre- sented the emergence of a “subtle revolution,” others dismissed this development as a temporary blip that would soon revert to past patterns as middle-class women found that pursuing a sustained work career inevitably clashed with caring for offspring. 3 1 An earlier version of this article appeared in a Council on Contemporary Families briefing paper entitled “Parents Can’t Go It Alone: What to Do for Parents to Help our Next Generation,” edited by Barbara J. Risman. https://contemporaryfamilies.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Parents-Cant-Go- It-Alone-Symposium-2019-Full.pdf. 2 Department of Sociology, New York University, 295 Lafayette Street 4th Floor, New York, New York 10012; e-mail: kathleen.gerson@nyu.edu 3 In 1970, an edited volume titled The Subtle Revolution: Women at Work marks one of the earliest efforts to examine the significance of women’s rapidly rising entry into the paid labor force (Smith 1979). By 2003, however, a controversial cover article published in The New York Times Magazine declared an “opt-out revolution” was sending college-educated women back to a life of domesticity (Belkin 2003). 1 Sociological Forum, 2023 DOI: 10.1111/socf.12959 Ó 2023 Eastern Sociological Society.