While the relationship is likely more complicated than ideologues of any stripe would want to acknowledge, its seems highly plausible that their are meaningful connections between economic changes from the 1950's in areas like inflation, middle class standard of living, wealth disparity, and poverty levels, due to impacts of females entering the workforce and divorce rates (that related highly to single-parenting, child-care needs, lower quantity and quality of parent-child interactions, etc.).
There was a temporary need for women in the workforce in WWII that subsided afterwards. While some women continued to enter the workforce out of financial necessity, its is highly likely that many others chose to work full time due more to changing cultural attitudes and the very explicit female empowerment movement that encouraged it.
The drastic increase in not only the number of workers, but the combined household incomes and consumer buying power would seem likely have had large economic impact, including inflation of prices and dropping of hourly wages that would then force even women that did not want to into the workforce, and greatly lower the standard of living among single parents whose numbers were increasing due to changing attitudes and laws about divorce.
I am struggling to find good research articles on it, because most google searches return stuff on gender equality in the workplace, which is not the same thing.
Note that this doesn't mean that 2 worker households has to produce these economic problems. Scandanavian countries have 70% working mothers to the US 60%. However, they also have lower divorce rates (fewer single working mothers), and women have the first child nearly 5 years later than the US (far fewer teenage and young adult mothers prior to education and career), plus other differences. But within the context of the US, most women working full time could have been a major factor contributing to the erosion of the middle class.
