It's about time: couples and careers

Abstract

It's About Time: Couples and Careers. Phyllis Moen (editor). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2003. 436 pp. Cloth ISBN 0-8014-8837-0, $45.00. Paperback ISBN 0-8014-8837-0, $19.95. Phyllis Moen's edited volume, It's About Time: Couples and Careers, is a compilation of studies from the Cornell Couples and Careers Study conducted by scholars at the Cornell Employment and Family Careers Institute. The volume consists of 19 chapters, each focusing on the myriad ways in which dual-income couples attempt to synchronize the competing demands of work and family life. More specifically, the book provides glimpses into the ways that today's couples are managing their workplace and family responsibilities, and does so by focusing on the temporal dimensions of each. At base, the book recites what has become conventional wisdom in the literature: Both workplace culture and policies will have to change, or couples will have to revert to a more traditional model, with women opting out of the workforce and men serving as the primary breadwinners. The book advocates for the former and offers some insight into the lives of modern, dual-earner middle-class couples. It's About Time raises a number of interesting questions and examines the ways in which couples negotiate and work through the day-to-day challenges in their lives. Among the more interesting aspects of the book are substantive chapters that contribute to our understanding about how couples develop time strategies, as well as how time constraints influence everything from satisfaction with relationships to family planning to commuting patterns. Investigations by previous scholars and several of the book's contributors do a good job addressing the fact that the challenges imposed upon dual-income couples are very gendered, differentially affecting men's and women's choices and opportunities. Interestingly, in Chapter 12, Joy Pixley and Phyllis Moen find that, when faced with career opportunity decisions, couples in the Couples and Careers Study were more likely to indicate that they prioritized the wife's career or gave both partners' careers equal priority, indicating a shift away from the notion that wives' careers are secondary to men's. At the same time, Robert Orrange, Francille Firebaugh, and Ramona Heck show that wives in dual-earner households are still largely responsible for managing their households, especially if they have young children. Likewise, Janet Marler, Pamela Tolbert, and George Milkovich show that couples' employment arrangements are highly correlated with traditional gender role attitudes, with women being more likely than men to adapt their work over their life course to accommodate increasing caretaking responsibilities in the household (256). …