She Works/He Works: How Two-Income Families Are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off

Argues that the new reality of working families can strengthen family life

In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, Barnett and Rivers take a close look inside the two-income household, which they call the "New American Family," and document emerging patterns in the lives of working couples. They trounce the model of the Ozzie-and-Harriet family of the 1950s, which, they assert, was an aberration permitted by a brief period of affluence. The obstacle to workers' job satisfaction, in their perception, is a corporate culture "lagging behind the people who work within it." They urge corporations to view working couples as engaged in "dynamic interaction," where spouses no longer have a separate "work self" and "family self" but share responsibility for the household and bringing home the bacon. Among the authors' more interesting findings: job flexibility is now as much a man's as a woman's issue; family is as important to men as to women; where men and women have comparable jobs, women put in more effort. The findings here offer an informative glimpse into the lives of contemporary working couples, but the scope is somewhat narrow?only affluent (and white, it seems) couples of opposite-sex partners considered. Barnett is professor of psychology at Radcliffe; Rivers is professor of journalism at Boston University.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A significant and unabashedly optimistic assessment of two- income families, expressed in lively, straightforward prose. The stressed-out, harried working wife and mother so often reported in the media is a myth, according to Harvard psychologist Barnett and journalist Rivers, who have written several books on women and society. Based on the findings of a study of 600 working- and middle-class subjects in the Boston area, Barnett and Rivers (coauthors of Beyond Sugar and Spice: How Woman Grow, Learn, and Thrive, 1979, etc.) contend that husbands, wives, and children in two-income families are doing just fine. Unlike 40 years ago when the male breadwinner and the female homemaker were the ``natural order of things,'' today 60 percent of all couples are two-earner couples, and traditional roles have relaxed. Men today are contributing more to housework and are more involved in day-to-day child-rearing tasks; the result is happier fathers. As for working mothers, they are for the most part less stressed than stay-at-home mothers and don't spend any less ``quality'' time with their children. Instead of two separate halves with distinct roles, today's dual-earner marriage is a partnership wherein husband and wife ``enrich their respective lives.'' And, of course, the increased income that a two-earner family provides is often a necessity in today's shaky economy. Given this reality, the authors further explore what steps may be taken to help dual-earner couples deal with the pressures that inevitably arise. Their proposals include encouraging parental leave; developing a sick-leave policy that includes fatherhood in the equation; providing extended vacation time; and creating workplaces free of sexual harassment. With striking statistics and engrossing case studies, Barnett and Rivers deliver a timely and lucid exposition of the contemporary American family. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A milestone study that one hopes will garner the attention it deserves. Thanks to a major government grant, professor-psychologist Barnett tracked dual-earner couples to discover the impact of work on professional and personal lives. Not surprisingly, the results say that the Ozzie and Harriet family is a myth, as are a number of other widely held stereotypes: that working women are miserable, that women must stay home for the first few years of their children's lives, and that men and household tasks don't mix. The authors then prove by way of a parade of statistics and surveys that two-income families are healthier than families with a single wage-earner. Unfortunately, the somewhat academic prose might restrict widespread readership. Barbara Jacobs