Dual-Career Marriages

The decision of married women to diligently pursue a career comparable to their husbands has redefined traditional spousal roles forever. Dual-career couples are increasing in number constantly, as more and more women decide that they want to accomplish ambitions they have created for themselves before, if not instead of, living out the traditional woman's role of wife and mother. These marriages pose an amazing challenge to gender role customs, with dramatically different priorities and means of cooperation than ever considered (or rather, recognized) before now. These husbands and wives undermine the traditional structure of marital roles. They are concentrating more on career development than family development, seeking self-sufficiency, high achievement, better social status, and financial success. And of course, they acknowledge both positive and negative consequences of these practices.

Wives' high career commitment

The modern career woman's high degree of commitment to her career in the 1990s may be one of the most problematic factors concerning marital satisfaction of both husbands and wives. While the workforce has finally accepted the position of women as interchangeable with that of a man, the same transition still has yet to occur completely and successfully in the household. The dissatisfaction of working wives tends to be a consequence of their expanding, instead of redefined, responsibilities and role as a result of their demanding career. In contrast, husbands' marital dissatisfaction often results from the fact that she is less available for him, to accommodate him, because she does not have the time. Nonetheless, some career women are readily admitting to their husbands that their work comes first.

Another apparent consequence of wives' high career commitment is the increasingly limited amount of children in the dual-career marriages of young couples. L.J. Beckman's (1978) work showed that working women considered parenting and a career as conflicting, if not competing roles.1 Rosanna Hertz's study (1987) of corporate career couples explains that employers' expectations of career-devoted employees are still based on the assumption that the employee is a man, and constructed around male social roles and experience. His (or her) devotion to the needs of the company are regarded as his/her investment in the corporation, in turn, meriting investment in them by the company (e.g. promotion, salary increase, more flexible management, etc.). When career-oriented women desire to have and care for children in a traditional manner (such as taking time off while the children are young) rather than following the stereotype male career pattern, it is often interpreted as disinvesting in the corporation.