TWO-CAREER FAMILY VERSUS ONE-CAREER FAMILY

Two-Career family versus one-career family

Two-Career family versus one-career family

Fundamentally, the traditional one-career family was symbiotic by design. Both partners mutually reinforce each other's role thereby boosting the capability of each to succeed. While the women cared for the household, raised the children and handled day-to-day errands, the men were in charge of procuring employment and sourcing economic opportunities. He may occasionally assist with family affairs but his involvement was centered primarily on his career with family time as a secondary responsibility.

Often the acceptance of a job is the result of a compromise; the situation may be the best available for both partners, although not optimal for either. If we are to retain two-career couples, provision for both members must be sustained so that they are not constantly looking for situations that will be better for both members. Even if the partners are initially satisfied, a new set of problems may arise: one spouse may fail to get tenure or lose grant support or a non-university job; one partner might be perfectly happy and the other wish to leave; one spouse might success- fully fly up the promotion ladder while the other stagnates. There are no easy solutions to these problems, but we must at least begin by recognizing them and making them part of our thinking and planning.

Much more attention is being paid today than in the recent past to the need for "spousal opportunity," as we label it at Berkeley. This situation is ironic, because a major impetus for the new attention is that highly qualified males increasingly are accompanying the excellent women that we currently are hiring.

Two-career families are now the norm in America, and are increasingly the norm throughout the world. As a result, the trend toward workplace learning affects many more people than was the case only 30 years ago. Sixty-five percent of all U.S. households are now two-income or single-parent families. Along with the emergence of two-career families comes a reduction in the amount of available time for learning, with increasing pressure to learn in the most effective manner possible. People are also better educated than ever before, and their education has resulted in better outcomes in the workplace. In 1980, a college-educated worker was paid only 28% more than an employee with only a high school diploma; in contrast, in 1996, the average college-educated worker was paid 77% more. This ...