Organization of the Study

Organizing this study was like trying to solve two puzzles at once, as I am simultaneously examining both the influence of work on family organization and the influence of family on work organization. To accomplish this dual goal, it is necessary to look at the process of dual-career couple development rather than simply its outcome. There is no master plan on the part of either work organizations or families to consciously influence each other. Instead, changes in work organizations, individual orientations toward careers, or family organizations are often only vaguely intentional. Couples feel their way through problems without the benefit of guidance from a well-defined set of rules and roles inherited from earlier generations. The majority of these couples did not grow up as the sons and daughters of dual-career couples, and thus they cannot look to their childhood family experiences to provide a framework of clues and memories for solving their daily problems. Their uncertainty about solutions reflects their own in-

experience with this situation as much as it does the relative newness of the phenomenon for social science.

People are often tempted to view their own life courses as intentionally self-directed. Yet, when I invited these couples to describe their personal histories, without asking them to justify their current positions, their answers revealed the incremental and often quite uncertain process by which they arrived at their present situation. Over and over again, individuals ascribed success to luck. They believed luck explained their career accomplishments and their success in balancing work and family lives. Attributing the hard work of balancing two careers, a household, and, in some instances, children to luck does not explain how many vexing problems were solved. Moreover, it denies that problems exist or existed in the past.

Solutions, even temporary ones, to the problem of weaving together public and private lives are most often arrived at by a series of guesses or by imitating examples of others in similar situations—such "pioneers" as the handful of friends or acquaintances or people these couples have read about. How Joan Franklin from the New York office solved a problem with her housekeeper when the schedule conflicted with an overseas assignment becomes folklore in the Chicago office in a matter of days. Like nervous brokers on Wall Street, these couples are constantly alert to any tidbits of information that might apply to their situation.

Ferreting out information and discovering pioneers only addresses part of the problem. What remains difficult, and perhaps most important, is establishing a fair and reliable way of balancing the demands of work and family. Even the "well-informed" couple must still cope with unpredictable requests from two employers, make

investment decisions regarding education and technical skills, arrange a household, achieve some measure of intimacy, and, in many cases, struggle with the questions of whether to have children and how to raise them. Husbands and wives in dual-career situations must negotiate many aspects of their individual and communal lives.

In order to analyze the relationship between work and family and to understand how the dual-career couple operates, it is necessary to probe deeply into the details of their work and family lives and into the means and parameters of their short- and long-term negotiations. Investigation of both process and outcome is necessary if we are to understand what factors are heavily weighted (career, salary, finances, children) and how they are prioritized. For these reasons and because the daul-career couple is a relatively new phenomenon, I employed a more qualitative emphasis in data collection. A large survey would have increased the sample size, but it would have allowed fewer questions and only restricted opportunities for probing beyond superficial responses. Instead, data collection consisted primarily of semi-structured, depth interviews with both husbands and wives of dual-career couples. The semi-structured format allowed respondents to be questioned in detail about their attitudes and behaviors regarding work and family, individual work histories, work relationships, family and personal finances, and household issues. Husbands and wives in these couples were interviewed separately, making it possible to gather information without direct concern about effects caused by the spouse's presence. This approach also allowed both factual and attitudinal data to be cross-checked between spouses.

A total of twenty-one dual-career couples were interviewed, which translated into a total of forty-two inter-

views averaging two-and-a-half hours each. Some respondents were reinterviewed in order to fill in gaps or to answer further questions. All the interviews were tape recorded, with the permission of the respondents, and additional notes were taken at the time of the interviews. The interviews were subsequently transcribed and coded for data analysis. All respondents were guaranteed anonymity, and names have been changed in the text to protect the identities of participants, their families, and their employers.

Participants in this study were selected from a pool of couples identified by informants in corporations located in the Chicago metropolitan area. Because there is no easy way to identify dual-career couples, it is difficult to speak about these couples as being directly representative of all dual-career couples. However, efforts were made to select respondents so as to minimize variability in careers and maximize variability in family situations.

The sample represents a cross section of those dual-career couples who could be identified through knowledgeable informants. (See Table 1 for characteristics of the sample.) Three factors were important in the sampling procedure: (1) each individual (male and famale) had a position at the middle-management level or above or an established position in a profession;^[7] (2) both couples with children and couples without children were included; and (3) cases in which husbands earned more than their wives, the same as their wives, or less than their wives were all included. This final point was intended to allow investigation into issues of income level and authority within the family.

I was also concerned that this sample reflect the role

[7] My concern was to identify people in corporate managerial careers, rather than those in individual professions with noncorporate affiliations.

of large-scale firms as trendsetters in the organization and trajectory of careers. Where possible, couples were therefore selected if at least one spouse was employed by a large corporation. Firms represented in the sample included major financial, consulting, industrial, and entertainment enterprises and ranged in profit levels from several million to several hundred million dollars annually. The work locales were principally in major regional or national headquarters. (See the Appendix for more detail.)

Another significant characteristic of this sample is that the couples I interviewed were not involved in new or young marriages. As Table 1 shows, the median length of time these couples had been married was nine years. In effect, I have captured the lives of these people after the point at which daily living adjustments were made.

Findings from this study are presented through an examination of the general issues facing dual-career couples, beginning in Chapter 2 with a consideration of work life and careers for men and women in the modern corporation—how individuals arrived at their present positions, the significance careers have to these individuals, and the implications of two careers in a family for individual career decisions. Chapter 3 marks a transition from specific concerns about work to the implications of work, and particularly of income, for the internal organization of a family. Although money does make a difference in distinguishing these couples from most other couples, money alone is not enough to resolve issues of power and equity between husbands and wives. Chapter 4 explores the most private of family decisions—having or not having children—and considers its public consequences and political nature. Chapter 5 analyzes how children are integrated into the dual-career family and suggests that the private matter of how to raise children, as well as the initial decision about having them, can only be understood within the context of work and the larger system of economic stratification. Chapter 6 brings the pieces of the puzzle together by focusing on the relationship between career and family as it is worked out in the dual-career marriage. The study concludes by presenting proposals for a broader theoretical model of family, work, and gender roles.