An Approach to Quantifying the Needs of Dual-Career Families

Abstract

Research on the dual-career family is identifying strains and costs particular to women who are attempting to balance the two roles of career and family. Counseling and associated research have not, as yet, provided knowledge that would lead to the more effective counseling of women in dual career families. Using wives in the second phase of a longitudinal study of 53 dual career couples, this study inductively derives a set of dual-career scales useful for counseling: family and career interface, personal satisfaction with trend setting, career support of the traditional wife-mother role, trend breaking, trend maintenance, and compensatory factors. All met stringent reliability analyses and S form Guttman scales that allow for the internal ordering of subareas from least difficult to most difficult. These subareas in the Guttman scales provide a quantitative base for identifying in detail areas to counsel and which areas must be counseled first before other diagnosed problem areas can be coped with.

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