Rearranging Family and Career Priorities: Professional Women and Men of the Eighties

Abstract

This study examines changes in the interrelationships of family career aspirations and occupational values over the 1970s decade for women and men graduating from college. Findings document the dramatic increase during the 1970s of university womens desires for high-status professional career and commitment to concomitant lifestyles and values. Aspiring professionals desiring career--accomodating lifestyles face the greatest potential for role conflict. The numbers of women who expect to place family 1st have declined. If family becomes a source of stress rather than support the dual-career family lifestyle may not be viable. Much of the hard-won ground upon which these undergraduates expectations rose is in danger of being lost unless changes are made in the social structure of the family and workplace to allow men intimate involvement in family life and women equitable opportunities for career advancement. Todays aspiring professionals will face difficult choices: lowering career aspirations or consciously rejecting parenthood.