Dual-career Families Research Articles

Work-family conflict in the dual-career family

The focus of this paper is the development and testing of a model of the relationships between work conflict, family conflict, work-family conflict, quality of work life, quality of family life, and life satisfaction. The model was based on the theoretical work of Kopelman, Greenhaus, and Connolly (1983, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 32, 198–215) and was tested on responses from 220 career-oriented individuals with children and a career-oriented spouse. Fifteen of 17 hypothesized relationships were significant and the variance explained in work-family conflict exceeded 49%. The results indicated that work conflict was the most important predictor of family conflict lending support to Kanter's contention that the work and family domains cannot be considered as separate, independent entities. Of 6 relationships tested, work conflict was also the most important predictor of work-family conflict. It is suggested that this is due to the fact that people have less control over their work lives than their family lives and implies that work operates as a dominant constraint over an individual. Work-family conflict was shown to have a significant negative influence on an individual's quality of work life and quality of family life, which, in turn, were highly related to life satisfaction.

Child Day Care Arrangements and Employee Health

With the changing demographics of the work force and predictions that two thirds of new job entrants will be female, it is vital that occupational health nurses develop programs to meet these changes to ensure the health and safety of the work force. Workers and their families can no longer be viewed as separate from the workplace. There is an interactive relationship between workers, their families, and their work. Child day care arrangements can positively or negatively affect all three domains. Available, affordable, accessible, and dependable child day care are only part of the answer for the child care crisis facing today's workers. The perception of the quality of the day care center seems to be a major factor affecting mothers in the work force. Occupational health nurses are in a pivotal position to assist workers in meeting the unique demands and challenges of the dual career family--including child day care--thus promoting a more productive, healthier, and safer work force.

Part-time Residency Training in Psychiatry

Part-time training in psychiatry has largely remained informaland has been utilized only by about 1% of psychiatry residents. This is puzzling considering the large number of women who have children during residency. In addition to aiding residents with child care needs, part-time training is also of potential value to dual-career families, handicapped residents with mobility problems, physicians seeking mid-career changes, and as a solution to those with funding problems. In this article, we present the case for systematic planning for part-time training based on experience in our program and a survey of other programs. We address the practical issues of arranging inpatient and outpatient clinical experiences, on-call arrangements, didactic programs, funding dilemmas, supervision, and evaluation.

UNDERSTANDING AND EFFECTIVELY MANAGING THE INCREASINGLY FEMALE WORK FORCE

This article examines the problems management must address with an increasingly female work force and is focused on the conflicting demands of family versus career. Statistics highlighting the impact of working women and dual career families are cited. Management policies that alleviate some of the career/family conflict are also discussed. The article concludes with human resource development strategies to accommodate the increasing numbers of working mothers as well as fathers.

Women in Dual-Career Families and the Challenge of Retirement

The author reviews structural sources of strain that younger dual-career families are likely to experience as first identified by the Rapoports, and extends the analysis to families whose members are about to retire or are retired. The analysis is limited to heterosexual married couples with or without children in a dualcareer family. Objectives of this essay are twofold: (1) to lay the groundwork for a theoretically informed empirical study of mature dual-career families and (2) to identify needed areas of research on aging spouses, especially women, in dual-career families.

Prise de décision dans la famille: Une bibliographie sélective (1980–1990)

Abdel-Ghany Mohamed and Ann C. Foster (1982), Impact of Income and Wife's Education on Family Consumption Expenditures, J. Consumer Studies and Home Economics, 6 (March), 2 1-28. Acock Alan C, Deborah Barker and Vern L. Bengston (1982), Mother's Employment and ParentYouth Similarity, J. Marriage and Family, 44 (May), 441-455. Acock Alan C. and John N. Edwards (1982), Egalitarian Sex-Role Attitudes and Female Income, J. Marriage and Family, 44 (August) , 58 1 -589. Alaniz Lisa P. and Mary C. Gilly (1986), The Hispanic Family : Consumer Research Issues, Psych, and Marketing , 3 (Winter), 291-304. Aldous Joan, From Dual-Earner to Dual-Career Families and Back Again, in J. Aldous ed., Two Paychecks : Life in Dual-Earner Families, Sage Focus Editions, V, 56, 1982, 1 1-26. Allen Chris T., Kathleen Debevec and Kenny R. Chan, Nontraditional Family Forms, Time Observation and Household Behaviors : Perspectives and Research Directions for the Consumer Researcher, Proceedings, AMA Educational Workshop in the Changing Household. Its Nature and Consequences , Cambridge, MA, 1983, in Marketing to the Changing Household : Management and Research Perspectives , Mary Lou Roberts and Lawrence H. Wortzel (eds), Cambridge, MA, Ballinger, 1984. Allen Chris T. and Charles M. Schaninger, Dual Career, Dual Income and Non-Work Families, AMA, 7, 1980, 93-96.

The Effects of Dual Career Participation on Men: Some Determinants of Variation in Career and Personal Satisfaction

Little is known about the ways in which men's professional and personal lives are affected by participation in dual career families. This paper presents findings from an exploratory, in-depth interview study which investigated this issue by probing the individual perceptions of husbands in dual career families. A majority of male respondents reported positive professional, familial, and marital consequences of dual career membership. A small group was less satisfied. Sources of variation in satisfaction are presented and five factors which appear to be linked to subjects' differential reactions are identified.

The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home

In this landmark study, sociologist Arlie Hochschild takes us into the homes of two-career parents to observe what really goes on at the end of the "work day." Overwhelmingly, she discovers, it's the working mother who takes on the second shift. Hochschild finds that men share housework equally with their wives in only twenty percent of dual-career families. While many women accept this inequity in order to keep peace, they tend to suffer from chronic exhaustion, low sex drive, and more frequent illness as a result. The ultimate cost is the forfeited health and happiness of both partners, and often the survival of the marriage itself.

Burnout among Dual Career and Single Career Families

The organisation may suffer when individuals face problems in meeting the demands both of family and workplace. A survey in a heavy industry plant revealed differences between married workers and non‐married workers in three components of burnout. The results are analysed.

Understanding the Dynamics of Self-Concept of Members in Dual-Career Families

This study examined the gender differences in how self-esteem and sense of competence moderate the relationships between four specific work variables and job satisfaction among members of dual-career families. Based on the gender differences found among a sample of 85 couples in dual-career families, it is conjectured that women with high self-esteem and sense of competence might be experiencing tensions because of an excessive role overload and hence experience lower levels of job satisfaction. Suggestions are made for organizations and family members to enhance the quality of life of both working partners.

Making Organizations Work for the Dual-Career Family

Making Organizations Work for the Dual-Career Family

Decision Making in Single- and Dual-Career Families in India

In a study of 47single-career and 54 dual-careerfamilies, the relative authority of husbands and wives in various areas of decision making was explored. The important findings are that (a) husbands in single-career families had greater power than the husbands in dualcareer families; (b) wives in dual-career families had greater power than the wives in singlecareer families; (c) the relative power of spouses was not significantly different in the two types of families; and (d) dual-career families were more egalitarian than single-career families. These results are explained in the light of theoretical formulations relating to resources and norms.

Dual-career Families and the Family Life Cycle

SynopsisThis paper reviews the current literature on the family life cycle, while considering the aspects o f the dual-career family and its development through the stages o f the family life cycle. The developmental issues o f the dual-career family are reviewed from the joining of the couple in marriage through the introduction, growth, and launching of children, and then into retirement. Specific problem areas of the dual-career family are addressed, with suggestions for intervention by family therapists.

Book Review: Dual-Career Families: Contemporary Organizational and Counselling Issues

Book Review: Dual-Career Families: Contemporary Organizational and Counselling Issues

A Residue of Tradition: Jobs, Careers, and Spouses' Time in Housework

This study compares the amount of time dual-career husbands and wives spend in housework, relative to their same-sex counterparts in other dual-earner and single-earner households. Data on 1,565 white couples drawn from the 1976 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics were entered into a multiple regression analysis of husbands' and wives' weekly hours of housework. Across couple types, wives spent considerably more hours in housework than husbands and performed about 79% of all the housework that was done in their homes. Dual-career wives performed significantly fewer hours of housework each week than did full-time housewives, but they did not differ significantly from other fulltime employed wives. Dual-career husbands only differed significantly in their household labor from nonprofessional or nonmanagerial husbands of full-time housewives. They did not allocate significantly more time to housework each week than professional or managerial husbands married to housewives or than husbands in other dual-earner families in which the wives had nonprofessional/nonmanagerialjobs. Dual-career couples were not found to be more egalitarian than other couples in their allocation of time to household labor. Consequences of these findings for the extent of viability of the dual-career family form are discussed.

Fair vs. Equal Role Relations in Dual-Career and Dual-Earner Families: Implications for Family Interventions

Seventy dual-career and 42 dual-earner couples participated in a study designed to assess the influence of perception of equity, role relations and family type on marital and individual adjustment. Equity was found to be a significant factor affecting adjustment for both husbands and wives, while role relations was a significant factor only for wives. Dual-career and dualearner families did not differ in likelihood to report equity or degree of overload. Husbands and wives did not differ in likelihood to report equity, but wives reported a significantly greater degree of overload. Results are discussed in terms of clinical intervention with these families.

Dual-Career Families: Contemporary Organizational and Counseling Issues

Dual-Career Families: Contemporary Organizational and Counseling Issues

Social Policy and the Dual-Career Family: Bringing the Social Context Into Counseling

Although most counselors who work with dual-career families are not involved in formal policy analysis and development, their clients are inevitably affected by a broad array of social policies. Values analysis is presented as a tool for counselors to explore the impact of policies on the family. We argue that predominant social values—independence of families, minimal government intervention, separation of home and workplace, and the sex-typed division of labor—lead to policies that create dilemmas for dual-career families. We present and illustrate a counseling process that traces dual-career family dilemmas to discrepancies between family values and the values underlying social policies that affect the family. An alternative set of values based on community and human development is presented as a framework for evaluating current social policies and guiding the formulation of new policies.

Mental Health and Psychological Functioning of Dual-Career Families

This article provides a general introduction to the dual-career family and considers factors important to the understanding of the rewards and stresses that characterize personal, marital, and family life. Key issues in the psychosocial development of women and men that are important to understanding dual-career marriages are identified. Life as a dual-career family is then described, and sources of stress and factors that promote effective coping are both considered. Crucial to these considerations are two "meta issues "—concepts of equity and the nature of society. Finally, recommendations are made about what the counseling psychologist can do in the areas of preventive and psychotherapeutic intervention and ongoing research.

Commentary on the Dual-Career Family

Commentary on the Dual-Career Family