Scaling Back: Dual-Earner Couples' Work-Family Strategies

Recent work has focused substantially on one subset of dual-earners, the high-powered two-career couple. We use in-depth interviews with more than 100 people in middle-class dual-earner couples in upstate New York to investigate the range of couples' work-family strategies. We find that the maj...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of marriage and family 1999-11, Vol.61 (4), p.995-1007
Main Authors: Becker, Penny Edgell, Moen, Phyllis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Careers
Child care
Child rearing
Children
Coping
Dual career couples
Dual Career Family
Families & family life
Family
Family (Sociological Unit)
Family relations
Family Work Relationship
Females
Focus Groups
Gender roles
Husbands
Mass Media
Men
Middle Class
New York
Occupations
Organization
Parenthood
Partners
Physical Health
School age children
Scientific Concepts
Sexual Division of Labor
Sexuality. Marriage. Family relations
Social Problems
Sociology
Sociology of the family. Age groups
Spouses
Time management
Wives
Work and Family
Work life programs
Working women
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Summary:Recent work has focused substantially on one subset of dual-earners, the high-powered two-career couple. We use in-depth interviews with more than 100 people in middle-class dual-earner couples in upstate New York to investigate the range of couples' work-family strategies. We find that the majority are not pursuing two high-powered careers but are typically engaged in what we call scaling back—strategies that reduce and restructure the couple's commitment to paid work over the life course, and thereby buffer the family from work encroachments. We identify three separate scaling-back strategies: placing limits; having a one-job, one-career marriage; and trading off. Our findings support and extend other research by documenting how gender and life-course factors shape work-family strategies. Wives disproportionately do the scaling back, although in some couples husbands and wives trade family and career responsibilities over the life course. Those in the early childrearing phase are most apt to scale back, but a significant proportion of couples at other life stages also use these work-family strategies.
ISSN:0022-2445
1741-3737
DOI:10.2307/354019