In Dual-Earner Couples, Family Roles Are Changing in U.S.
Washington th Dual-earner couples, in which both the wife and husband hold paying jobs, make up more than half of married couples in the United States, and their share of all couples is expected to increase in the next decade. Although dual-earner couples have bolstered family incomes, they also have had to find creative ways to nurture family life.
(Media-Newswire.com) - Washington – Dual-earner couples, in which both the wife and husband hold paying jobs, make up more than half of married couples in the United States, and their share of all couples is expected to increase in the next decade. Although dual-earner couples have bolstered family incomes, they also have had to find creative ways to nurture family life.
The U.S. Labor Department reports that, in 57 percent of married couples, husbands and wives work. Coping with two jobs and rearing children leaves many couples, such as Michael Goldstein and Joanne Pratt, hard-pressed to find time together.
Goldstein and Pratt are married professors with a 6-year-old daughter. Each parent works full-time at adjacent schools in Massachusetts: Goldstein teaches finance at Babson College, and Pratt, biology at Olin College. The couple juggles class schedules to care for their daughter, but work affects their relationship too because Pratt always has had to spend many hours in the lab. “It’s been a long-time frustration that I have no clue what she does,” Goldstein said.
So in January, Pratt organized a weeklong biology course for faculty and included her husband. It was a way to spend time together, she said, and she learned that Goldstein has a “natural aptitude for sciences.”
Experts argue the share of dual-earner couples will increase. Wives’ incomes help maintain living standards, said David Cross, director of Market Outlook, an economic adviser to manufacturers and retailers. Although surveys of college women point to their desire to stay home when they eventually have children, “the economics won’t work for the vast majority,” he said.
In 1979, women who worked full-time earned 63 percent as much as their male counterparts. By 2006, they earned 81 percent of what men earned. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD ) reports that since the early 1980s, the largest narrowing in this “wage gap” among member countries occurred in the United States. The 30-member OECD represents most of the world’s industrialized nations.
Wives’ earnings contribute 35 percent of family income in the United States, and in one-third of dual-earning couples, the wife brings home the bigger paycheck.
MEN ARE CHANGING … DIAPERS
As women’s earnings have bolstered family income, men’s behavior has changed.
According to the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, men do seven hours of housework per week, double what they did in 1968. ( Women still put in many more hours of housework than do men. )
Since the mid-1960s, there has been a tripling of time fathers devote to child care, said Suzanne Bianchi, a University of Maryland sociologist and author of Changing Rhythms of American Family Life. “Men married to employed wives really are doing basics – feeding, bathing, taking [children] to the doctor,” she said.
When Sarah Crawford, a Washington attorney, had a baby, she took four months of unpaid leave before returning to work. Then her husband, David Uy, took leave to watch the baby. He found he could do some work at home while caring for his son, so he quit his full-time job and spent a year caring for the baby while starting a home-based advertising consultancy.
But as Uy gained clients, he needed help. He used the “DC Urban Moms” Internet site to find a babysitter. “I really enjoyed being home with the baby. Handing him over to a nanny was not easy,” Uy said.
Today, he takes his toddler two blocks to the nanny. “My daily commute is a red-wagon ride,” he said.
FAMILY LEAVE PROGRAMS
The U.S. Labor Department reports that men are more likely to use flexible work schedules than women. Many men are “feeling a crunch,” Bianchi said, and broadening the interest in family-friendly policies among workers.
A 2005 Fortune magazine survey shows that 84 percent of male executives at the largest U.S. companies want more time for things outside of work. “The first [men] with this interest are the dual-earners,” Bianchi said.
Federal law allows up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for certain workers to take care of a sick family member or a new baby. It covers a little more than half the work force. When compared to other countries, “we have a reputation that we work a lot,” said Bianchi.
Heather Boushey, an economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the employer-paid leave for which some groups advocate could result in job discrimination against women of child-bearing age. She prefers a program enacted in 2004 in California, under which all workers ( not just parents ) are eligible for six weeks’ partial pay leave. The program is paid for by workers.
In the near term, state and local experiments are more likely than new federal legislation. But the market also reacts to workers’ needs, said Jeanie Duck, vice president for Boston Consulting Group: More companies are helping employees face “life situations.” They give workers unpaid sabbaticals, temporary transfers to less-stressful jobs, and telecommuting options as well as assistance for spouses seeking jobs, she said.
Professionals juggle, Boushey said, but the real stress for dual-earner couples is among lower-income families, in which a husband might work a day shift and a wife, a night shift. “They might be with their children, but sleeping,” she said, “which is not quality time.”
Dual-earners just want a little time, Boushey believes. “We buy salad in a bag … we read magazine articles about getting more done in less time.”
( USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov )
This story was released on 2007-03-22. Please make sure to visit the official company or organization web site to learn more about the original release date. See our disclaimer for additional information.
