Essay: Why nowadays often both parents work? What are the effects to the children? The traditional family situation has changed over the last decades. Today, most parents are both working a lot. What are the causes? And do parents now have less time for their kids? Firstly, we will have a look at (western) Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. The economy was booming because of the currency reform and the new idea of a social market economy. Even for non-academic men, but working in the factories of BMW and Daimler it was possible to feed a whole family and to have a high standard of living at the same time. But as we know such boom do not persisting forever. So in the following decades after the fall of the Berlin wall, there were two reasons why especially the woman in western Germany started to work. On the one hand most family want to continue to increase their living standard, this was only affordable if both parents are working. And on the other hand, a lot of woman were fed up with the conservative family policy in western Germany and therefore they started working. So, how this change in society effect the children? It is often argued that since it is both parents are working, they have less time for their children. But caused by the developing of technology, nowadays a lot of parents have more free time which they can spent with their kids. The time which was necessary for household has strongly declined over the last 50 years because of inventions like vacuum cleaning robots or more efficient dishwashers. However, there still a lot of children who are not able to talk to their parents as much as they would. Despite of this, my opinion is that the employment of both parents has often more advantages than disadvantages.