Dual Career Families

Dual Career Families

The societies in the United States and other societies abroad are enduring many changes at a rather rapid rate. The changes that I am specifically referencing are those involved with altering the norms and cultural traditions among marriages. There is a vast amount of growth among both the husband and wife fulfilling full-time careers. In the past, more traditional marriages existed. The husband would endure a full-time career while the wife stayed at home and completed the majority of the domestic work. The traditional marriage has definitely changed, as it has become more of a norm for both the husband and wife to maintain separate careers.

Research has identified numerous variables that affect the stability of a marriage. The factors that have been identified as affecting marriages and in turn influencing divorce rates include: financial stressors, domestic workload, job stressors, identity strains, and marital interaction time. The results that will be later identified may be of particular interest to couples that are in the early stages of marriage. The research has conveyed that the majority of the negative impacts that affect a marriage and in turn lead to divorce are most common to occur within the first few years of the marriage.

The first of the traditional norms that has taken on dramatic changes in dual career families is the amount of domestic work that each spouse completes. Some would expect that as women acquire their career they would have to take on less of the domestic workload. It might be expected that women's growing earnings will gradually increase their domestic bargaining power, and this in turn will ultimately compel men to share equally in child care and housework (Bittman, England, Sayer, Folbre, and Matheson, 2003). However, research does not concur with this statement. All the available studies identify the dual-burden phenomenon: even full-time employed women still bear a disproportionate responsibility for house work and child care (Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, and Robinson, 2000).

Various options exist in regards to the resolution of the women's amount of domestic work load. The options available include: tolerating things as they are, leaving their career, leaving their husband, or choosing to renegotiate the division of domestic labor. The first of these creates an unresolved tension toward change. The other alternatives directly reduce the dual burden in various ways: the second by removing the paid work, the third (divorce) removes the couple from dual-burden statistics altogether, and the fourth (renegotiation), as we shall see, leads to some redistribution (Bittman, Brice, Gershuny, 2005).

The research has identified a pattern of lagged adaptation among marriages in regards to the redistribution of the domestic workload. The research has also conveyed that the majority of domestic responsibility expectations are a result of the observed domestic work load interactions among the couple's parents. Those brought up when employed mothers were exceptional rather than normal are liable to have more gender-segregated views of domestic responsibilities: girls grew up to do housework like their mothers, boys to avoid it like their fathers (Brice, Bittman, Gershuny, 2005). It is evident that regardless of the division of the domestic work load or employment status, women still carry the majority of the work, as their mothers did in the past as well. Employed wives in the United States are responsible for .66 of the domestic work load, whereas non-employed wives are responsible for .80 of the domestic work load. The studies do show that husbands increase their domestic work load when leaving employment and decrease their share upon reentering the labor force.

Overall, women make a larger domestic labor adjustment immediately following their entry to their career. As the years proceed, the women's adjustment of daily domestic hours worked grows smaller. The men adapt at a much slower rate, their rate of adaptation is almost directly opposite of the women. The men perform their largest share of domestic work in the later years oppose to the initial years of their wives entering the labor market.

In addition to the proper distribution of the domestic work load, job stressors are also factors that affect the stability and health of marriages (i.e. crossover of occupational stress). The research has shown that one partner comes to share the feelings of the other, and to experience strains as if they were his or her own (Westman and Etzion, 1995). The sharing of the stressors and strains may be attributed to the stressors that are experienced in a marital couple's personal environment, such as financial problems etc.

The research that was based on the Demands-Supports-Constraints model found that crossover was primarily related to lack of support and problematic interpersonal relationships at work (Jones and Fletcher, 1993). Sixty-five percent of couples responded that they talk about their job related problems daily or almost every day. The job related problems that exist are often results of the features that a job possess such as, workload demands, quality demands, support from boss, support from colleagues, and commitment. All job features were significantly correlated with work-related depression/enthusiasm for both men and women, with the exception of work load demands (i.e. quality demands were associated with higher level of depression and lower levels of enthusiasm, and support and commitment were related to higher levels of enthusiasm and lower levels of depression) (Crossfield, Kinman, Jones, 2005).

When the aspects of psychological well-being are taken into account; the research shows that one partner's psychological well-being is significantly associated with the other partner's job demands and job commitment and/or satisfaction. A higher rate of depression and anxiety is found among men. Their rates of depression and anxiety are related to their partner's job commitment and/or satisfaction and work demands. Women on the other hand suffer a higher rate of depression from these job related features.

The discussion and communication that takes place among couples in regards to work related issues has different affects on men versus women. Evidence suggests