DUAL CAREER COUPLES- Issues of Work life Balance

“The most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry.”

                                                                                               Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg

This career guidance makes good sense based on research. Several decades ago husbands were considered to be the sole breadwinners, whereas wives remained at home and were mainly involved in bringing up their children and doing household chores. In the last 40 years industrialized nations have witnessed remarkable changes in their labor market characteristics. One of the important observations is the steady increase of women’s participation in the paid workforce. Because of changing values and perception on women’s and men’s roles in society, the tasks of women are no longer confined to family and home-keeping, and men are no longer the sole breadwinners in the family. A relatively new partnership constellation is one in which both the partners are highly educated, possess a high upward career orientation, and working full time in an arduous job. This kind of partnership arrangement is termed as Dual-career couples (DCC).

Dual-career couples face pressure from both the ends- professionally as well as personally. They have to fulfill multiple roles and come across several demands and stressors from the domains of work and private life. It has been observed that dual careers frequently provide couples with several benefits and compensations but that quantitative and qualitative overload may cause stress. DCC experience more stress, more conflicts related to work-family, role ambiguity, role conflict and overload than single-career couples. They might face lot of pressure in their endeavor to balance work and family responsibilities, this pressure becomes greater when dual-career couples have a child or children, they often experience a sense of guilt for not being able to give enough time to their children.

A different zone of research, however, highlights the positive effects of the engaging in two domains and suggests that experiences can be rewarding for both the partners-

Enhanced Equality : Both  the partners being working creates a better opportunity as they will be able to help each other in better ways at the time of need relating their work. They will be able to decrease each other’s stress level by few percent. Helping and supporting each other in projects would become much easier since both will be in a position to understand each other’s problems.

Improved financial stability: As in dual career couple both are working, the financial crisis gets decreased. Besides that they get a better advantage of giving their offspring a better future in terms of education as well as lifestyle than those couples in whose case only one partner is working.

Enhanced socialization: In old times women were just meant for staying at home and looking after the house, this is no longer practiced.  Today everyone looks for a partner with good educational background and a secure income who can act as an extra support system for the family. Because of it socialization becomes important.

    More responsible offspring: Dual career path implicates giving less time to the children which can be a negative, but the positive aspect is that eventually children learn to be independent and self reliant. This enhances their efficiency and gives them the ability to handle the world on their own.

If both the partners respect each other, value and be appreciative of each others’ careers, help each other  to be successful and keep the channels of communication open, they will be able to handle and quite possibly even accept the twists and turns encountered along the way.