THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 15, 1996 TAG: 9602150352
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUE SHELLENBARGER THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
Think fast. What kind of American family is most represented in the work force?
a) ``Traditional'' couples with one male breadwinner.
b) Dual-earner couples.
c) Families headed by single men or women.
If you answered dual earners, you're right.
After steady growth for decades, nearly half of all workers, or 48 percent, come from married dual-earner couples, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Though many companies are still run as if Ozzie and Harriet were the mode, only 9.4 percent of workers come from so-called traditional families.
By 2000, two-paycheck couples will rise to a majority, or 51 percent, of all families, from 41 percent in 1980, says economist Sandra Shaber of Wefa Group.
Though the trend isn't new, major changes in the nature of dual-earner couples are accompanying the growing numbers, catching many employers off guard.
Women in dual-earner households are gaining in job status and earnings as they become more experienced in the workplace, giving them more clout at work and at home.
And more of the men, often the product themselves of two-income households, have more egalitarian views of gender roles.
A new kind of ``collaborative couple'' is emerging as a result, says Rosalind Barnett, senior scholar at Radcliffe College's Murray Research Center and co-author with Caryl Rivers, a Boston University journalism professor, of a new book on dual earners due out in May.
These pairs share parenting and appear to value each other's jobs more than traditional couples.
Partners' jobs buffer each other against layoffs and career changes and breaks. Their work and home lives are intertwined; what affects one partner on the job or at home affects the other, and neither makes career decisions in a vacuum.
``It's hard to overstate the importance of this change,'' Barnett says. ``Men's and women's work and home lives are like a spider's interconnected web; a tug that occurs at one section of the web sends vibrations all through it.''
Here are a few ways this web is encompassing the work place:
Men increasingly see their careers in relation to their wives'.
In a best-case scenario (assuming both have secure, well-paying jobs), the men are enjoying new freedom.
Rod Schrock, a Harvard M.B.A. who leads Compaq Computer's Presario personal-computer unit, is a hard-charging manager known for working long days. But he also is deeply involved with his toddler son, Jared, and is considering staying home for a while some time in the future.
His wife is a director of marketing in Compaq's portables division, and ``since we both have good jobs we may end up trading places every other year or so,'' he says. ``We have this argument: Who is going to get to stay home?''
More men are shunning traditional career paths.
Executive development consultant Ed Betof has passed up promotions or enticing job offers four times, partly to avoid disrupting his wife's career.
``We decided early on that her career and my career had exactly the same weight,'' he says.
Such values can confound employers' plans.
At a conference, a computer-company manager lamented that five employees, including two men in dual-earner marriages, had turned down promotions.
If companies are grooming people for leadership posts they can't accept, ``something is wrong,'' he said.
Dual-earner men also have hit their own glass ceiling.
In a study of 348 married male managers with children at home, Linda Stroh of Loyola University in Chicago and Jeanne Brett of Northwestern University found those with employed spouses got pay raises totaling 59 percent in five years, less than the 70 percent raises given those with wives at home. Two possible explanations:
Dual-earner men worked two fewer hours per week, on average, possibly violating unwritten ``face time'' rules.
Dual-earner men lack stay-at-home wives who aid their careers by doing all the housework and entertaining co-workers. ILLUSTRATION: Color drawing by John Corbitt, The Virginian-Pilot
Photo
KEYWORDS: EMPLOYMENT WOMEN CAREER FAMILY by CNB