Dual career couples/families are those couples in which each of them is engaged with professional, managerial or administrative work. Research show that dual career issues like children's education are seen as obstacles to international assignment and hinders career development plans of multinationals. My question is, in what ways do these set of people pose a challenge to the organization?
i think you can measure the strength of need for family vs. need for power/ achievement, and work within a motivational framework. you may need to find n the rmp a greater motive
1. Strategies for Working with Dual-Career Couples in the Hope Focused Couples Approach; by Joni L. Utley and Amy R. Robertson
Regent University Hope Research Project
URL: www.hopecouples.com/resources/Strategy_Guides/Strategies...
Societal changes over the past few decades include a dramatic increase in the numbers of women in the workplace; women account for 47% of the U.S. labor force (U.S. Bureau of Labor, 2008). Dual-career family, a term introduced by Rapoport & Rapoport (1976), denotes a family structure in which the husband and wife simultaneously pursue active careers and family lives. More recent definitions describe the dual-career couple as two people who each have a career and a shared relationship (Arnold, 1997). Career is distinguished from the term job, as career involves a high level of commitment, specialized training, and involves a developmental sequence (Rapoport & Rapoport, 1976). Although there are many positive benefits associated with dual career couples (Rapoport & Rapoport, 1976; Bird & Schnurman-Crook, 2005; Haddock & Rattenborg, 2003; & Parker & Arthur, 2004), balancing the demands of work and home responsibilities contributes to increased stress and taxed coping resources in the marital relationship (Parker & Arthur, 2004). A couple’s ability to manage these demands has important implications for martial satisfaction and marital conflict.
Multiple Identities
In dual-career marriages, partners each have commitments to their careers and to their families. Sense of self is interlinked with both these pursuits, as a career-minded spouse will have both a strong professional identity and family-identity. Threats to identity are generally perceived as very stressful and elicit self-protection responses (Thoits, 1991). Thus, when career and family commitments compete, intense conflict is likely to erupt as spouses seek to protect their senses of identity. Finding a satisfactory balance between family and professional identities is crucial for these couples.
Time, Responsibilities, and Values
The way in which dual-career couples devote their time and divide their responsibilities gives insight into the importance they place on work and family roles (Papp, 2000). A line of thinking that has gained traction in terms of helping dual-career couples negotiate their time is to re-conceptualize their lives as consisting of three careers – his, hers, and the career of the family (Levner, 2000). This model can be used in therapy to challenge the couples’ values and promote a dialogue that goes deeper than basic delegation of tasks (Levner, 2000). Dual-careers can be a very complicated issue to address in therapy, as it involves attitudes about gender roles, a topic that is value-laden. Oftentimes, even couples who claim to be egalitarian have ingrained views about gender-specific roles within the family that underlie many of their conflicts. For Christian couples, gender-specific roles in the household may be part of their religious beliefs. The therapist must be careful to respect clients’ values but to gently challenge attitudes that are inconsistent or contribute to the couple’s conflicts.
Crossover of Stress
Dual-Career Couples 2
Research has consistently shown that job stressors have a negative impact on psychological well-being of not only the worker, but his/her partner as well. The most recent term used to describe this phenomenon in psychological literature is ‘crossover’ (Westman, 2002). Crossover of stress from one partner to another has been linked with decreased well-being and diminished marital satisfaction (Crossfield, Kinman, & Jones, 2005). Strategies to mitigate this crossover are particularly important with dual-career couples, as the crossover is bi-directional.
Benefits of Career/Family Identity
Despite the crossover of job stressors contributing to strains in the relationship, dual-career couples also report benefits to being dually employed (Haddock & Rattenborg, 2003). In addition to the financial gains of the double income, a majority of parents believe that holding both professional and parental roles made them better parents (Marshall & Barnett, 1993). Likewise, for women, the work-role may alleviate familial stressors, and contribute to a more egalitarian marital relationship (Haddock & Rattenborg, 2003) which can increase the quality of the relationship (Gottman, 1999). In working with these couples, assessing each partner’s perceived benefits and struggles of their dual-identity can be essential in the understanding any conflicts or strengths in the relationship.
Apart from other incidental and in-built challenges in managing dual career couples, the challenges revolve around "Work-Life Balance". Balancing and managing of "Work-Life Situation" requires individual and institutional efforts for increased productivity and superior commitment of dual career couples.