His Career, Her Job, Their Future: Cohabitors’ Orientations Toward Paid Work

Abstract

In this article, we examine the work orientations of service- and middle-class cohabiting couples. Through our in-depth interviews with both partners in 61 couples, we find that middle-class cohabitors often report polarized work orientations—they are generally either the most conventional (privileging men’s work or planning for the female partner to become a stay at home mother) or the most egalitarian. The service class, conversely, more often contain one partner with a stronger, yet nonprivileged work orientation, but this partner is equally as likely to be the female as the male. Furthermore, we detail those couples, often absent from the literature, in which neither partner has a strong orientation toward paid work. We examine our findings in light of what they might mean for couples’ relationship progressions, future orientations, and persistent gender inequality in marriage.