breadwinner

plural breadwinners

1. The primary income-earner in a household.

   More significantly, as women flooded into the workforce and divorce rates climbed, the model of a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home mother disintegrated.

   2018, Katherine Reynolds Lewis, The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever — And What to Do About It, page 34

   2 more examples

   At one side lay the little town of Hollingford, into a street of which Mr. Gibson's front door opened; and delicate columns, and little puffs of smoke were already beginning to rise from many a cottage chimney where some housewife was already up, and preparing breakfast for the bread-winner of the family.

   1865, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, Chapter I

   The female breadwinners who are making more than their working husbands are in a whole different income bracket; their median household income is $80,000. The role of men is evolving even in the three-quarters of dual-parent families in which fathers are the primary breadwinners. […] Those fathers reported that being a breadwinner was less important to them than providing their children with love and emotional support, being present and involved in their child’s life, or being a good mentor and role model.

   2013 June 3, Brad Harrington, “Behind the Data on Breadwinner Mothers”, in The New York Times

   Synonyms: breadearner