Detail from the promotional poster for the 1983 movie "Mr. Mom," starring Michael Keaton and Teri Garr.

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There’s a power shift underway in earning power in the American family, in the American marriage. More and more wives are out-earning their husbands.

Women already get more college degrees. Now, a new study says, in marriages where the couple is under forty, nearly a quarter of women make more than their spouse. More than the guy. A generation ago, that portion was closer to zero.

That’s a big change. We wonder how it changes the family chemistry. The gender roles. Our culture.

This hour, On Point: What does it mean when the wife makes the bigger bucks?

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Kathleen Gerson, professor of sociology at New York University. She focuses on gender, work, and family life. Her latest book is “The Unfinished Revolution: How a New Generation is Reshaping Family, Work, and Gender in America.”

And from Berkeley, Calif., we’re joined by Joshua Coleman, a clinical psychologist and expert on families, parenting, and relationships. He’s co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families. His latest book is “When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along.”

More links:

Read the Pew Research Center study “New Economics of Marriage: The Rise of Wives,” published this week.

Anne Kornblut (randomhouse.com)

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In a poll just after the 2008 election campaign — the one that featured Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin — 85 percent of Americans said they thought they would see a female president in their lifetime.

My guest today, Washington Post White House correspondent Anne Kornblut, is not so sure.

The year 2008 saw women high in the presidential campaign, but it also brought us talk of “Caribou Barbie,” “lipstick on a pig,” “likable enough,” and “testicular fortitude.” The glass ceiling, she says, is cracked, but thick.

This hour, On Point: Women in American politics.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Anne Kornblut, White House correspondent for The Washington Post. She covered Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and traveled with Sarah Palin following her vice presidential nomination. Her new book is “Notes from the Cracked Ceiling: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and What It Will Take for a Woman to Win the White House.” 

You can browse excerpts at randomhouse.com and see a special online report drawn from the book at washingtonpost.com.

Also from Washington we’re joined by Celinda Lake, Democratic strategist and president of Lake Research Associates. She’s co-author of “What Women Really Want: How American Women Are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class, and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live.”

And from New York we’re joined by Kellyanne Conway, Republican strategist and president of The Polling Company. She’s co-author, with Celinda Lake, of  “What Women Really Want.”

A worker in Houston, Texas. (Photo by billjacobus1/flickr.com; click above for full image.)

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It’s been a rough recession for everyone, but especially rough for men.

Tally up the job losses since November, and 80 percent have fallen on American males. Factory jobs, gone. Hard hat construction jobs, gone. The very male cowboy culture of Wall Street, stumbled and humbled.

Reihan Salam looks at the fall and sees not just numbers. He sees the end of an era of macho jobs, macho risk-taking, the end of an age of macho culture ruling the economy.

It may be a quiet end, he says. And it may not.

This hour, On Point: Reihan Salam on the grind of the Great Recession, and “the death of macho.”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Reihan Salam joins us from New York. He’s a fellow at the New America Foundation and author of an article in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine titled “The Death of Macho.”  He’s the co-author, with Ross Douthat, of “Grand New Party: How Conservatives Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.”

Joining us from Olympia, Wash., is Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College and director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families.  Her most recent book is “Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage.”

More links:

UMass-Amherst economist Nancy Folbre puts Reihan Salam’s piece in context on the NYTimes.com Economix blog. One of the articles she points to is this one, from Forbes, called “Cleaning Crew: The women who are fixing the financial mess.”

And in Foreign Policy, BYU political economist Valerie Hudson writes “Good Riddance: Why macho had to go.”

President Obama is expected to nominate a woman to replace retiring Justice David Souter. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is currently the sole woman on the Supreme Court. (AP Photo)

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Any day now, Barack Obama will be announcing his choice for nominee to succeed David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. Speculation is high that it will be a woman.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said she’s “lonely” on the court. And at one level, it seems obvious that the court should have another woman. The world is half female.

But does a woman bring a special kind of jurisprudence to the bench? Is it the “quality of empathy” Obama says he wants? And what kind of woman? Hispanic? Straight? Gay? Elected?

This hour, On Point: Women, justice, and the Supreme Court.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Charlottesville, Va., is Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate. She recently co-wrote  a piece with Hanna Rosin called “An Unnatural Woman,” looking at potential female nominees to the Supreme Court and issues of sexuality. She’s also written recently about the controversial idea of a female jurisprudence and the concept of judicial empathy.

From Washington, we’re joined by Hanna Rosin, a contributing editor at The Atlantic and a writer for Slate. She’s also a founding editor of “Double X,” a new women-focused Web magazine launching today.

And from Palo Alto, Calif., we’re joined by Deborah Rhode, professor at Stanford Law School. She’s a pioneering scholar on the field of gender and the law. She’s director of Stanford’s Center on the Legal Profession. Her latest book is “Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies of Change.”

Scene from the film "I Love You, Man."

American pop culture and movies are full of male buddy tales that go way back. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby on the road. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid — Newman and Redford — on the run. George Clooney and Brad Pitt cracking safes and knocking over casinos.

Male friendship, male bonding, are hardly new. But there’s a new vocabulary in play these days, mashing up male friendship and old-fashioned romance. “Bromance” is hot. “Mancrush.” “Mandate.”

The new film “I Love You, Man” brims with a new kind of buddy talk. So, what is “bromance”? And is something really changing?

Up next On Point: Male bonding, American male friendship, in the age of “bromance.”

You can join the conversation. Are male friendships changing? Loosening up? Mattering more? What does bromance mean to you?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Baltimore, Maryland, is Geoffrey Greif, author of “Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships.” He’s a professor at the University of Maryland and blogs on male friendships for Psychology Today.

From Montreal, Canada, we’re joined by Robert Heasley, president of the American Men’s Studies Association. He’s in Montreal for the 17th Annual Conference on Men and Masculinities. He’s an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Watch the trailer for “I Love You, Man” here:

The Boston Globe’s Christopher Muther writes about bromance today in a piece called “Man enough for bromance.”

Singers Rihanna and Chris Brown perform at the Z100 Jingle Ball 2008 at Madison Square Garden on Friday, Dec. 12, 2008 in New York. (AP)

Nineteen-year-old pop singer Chris Brown didn’t just give pop singer Rihanna a hard time.

He beat her. In their Lamborghini, the night before the Grammys. Punched, choked and bit her, according to police records. Threatened to kill her. Shoved her head against the window and wailed away until her mouth filled with blood and blood spattered the car.

It’s just one couple in the limelight. But experts say it’s one young couple in a new generation that is seeing not less but more relationship violence.

This hour, On Point: A new generation faces an old cycle of abuse.

You can join the conversation. Why isn’t this problem fading? What would you say to Rihanna — to Chris Brown — if you had the chance? Is their story your story of abuse? Young listeners, what’s going on in your crowd? What keeps this going?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Sandy Banks, columnist at the Los Angeles Times. Readers responded in droves to her column “Chris Brown and Rihanna: a lesson for teens.” She is also the mother of three daughters—18, 20, and 23—with opinions of their own about the case.

Lisa Hartwick, director of the Center for Violence Prevention and Recovery at the Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center.

Candace Hopkins, director of Love is Respect, a national dating abuse helpline.

A week from today, it could be over for Hillary Clinton. She may roar back in Texas and Ohio. But if she doesn’t, we may be watching the last week of the strongest bid in history by a woman for the White House.

And we’re pausing today to ask what role gender — and maybe sexism — has played in the story of Hillary Clinton’s historic run.

We’ll talk with Geraldine Ferraro, the Democrats’ VP nominee in 1984; Pat Schroeder, who geared up to run in ‘88; and with columnists Ellen Goodman and Katha Pollitt, about women, this woman, and the White House.

This hour, On Point: gender and the Clinton campaign.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Ellen Goodman, syndicated columnist for The Boston Globe.

Geraldine Ferraro, Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1984.

Pat Schroeder, former Democratic Congresswoman from Colorado, she considered a run for the White House in 1988.

Katha Pollitt, columnist for The Nation magazine.

The issue of women and power is very much in the news. But look beyond Hillary Clinton’s push for the White House, and only two percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 1000 are women. Two percent — forty years after women stood up for liberation.

Nina DiSesa has grabbed and wielded corporate power. She’s been named one of America’s most powerful women. Now she’s ready to advise other women on how to crack the “boys club.”

Her advice may make feminists see red. It’s seduction.

This hour, On Point: Seducing the boys club, with the chairman of McKann Erikson New York, Nina DiSesa.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Nina DiSesa, chairman of McCann Erickson New York and author of the book “Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics from a Woman at the Top.”

It was the Double O Express, as Oprah Winfrey pumped up crowds for Barack Obama on Saturday from Iowa to South Carolina to New Hampshire.

For Hillary Clinton, the sight of Oprah and Obama drives home one of the great surprises — and ironies — of this historic campaign: that the first woman with a real shot at the presidency is running neck and neck with a man whose feminist appeal may be as strong as her own.

What do Democratic women want? It could be the deciding question of ‘08.

This hour, On Point: the gender vote up for grabs.

-Jane Clayson

Guests:

Anne Kornblut, she has been following the campaign for the Washington Post.

Ellen Goodman, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist at the Boston Globe.

Patricia Williams, professor of law at Columbia University and columnist for The Nation magazine. She has written extensively on gender and race.

Jennifer Lawless, professor of political science, Brown University. She is author of “It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office.” She was a Congressional candidate in 2006.