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Substantial changes in both family composition and workforce demographics have
occurred in recent decades. Women’s labor force participation rates have risen considerably; this
is especially the case for women with children. Since 1960, married women with children have
almost tripled their participation in paid labor; in 2001, 69.6 percent of all married mothers with
children under 18 were in the labor force (Anderson 1997; Bureau of Labor Statistics 2002).
These shifts in female labor force participation have also profoundly changed the composition of
American families. In 2001, just 19.4 percent of marriages had only a single male wage earner,
while 63.7 percent of married couples with children under 18 were dual-earner (Bureau of Labor
Statistics 2002). How have these demographic changes shaped the experience of work and
family, particularly for members of dual-earner couples? Han and Moen (2001) argue that “the
fact that the majority of American men now have wives who are employed and the majority of
workers, male or female, typically confront family constraints is slowly, yet steadily, redefining
the work-family interface” (p. 202).
Although increasingly prevalent in recent decades, research on work and family is marred
by several significant limitations. First, most research on work and family has focused on
individuals as the unit of analysis (see Hammer et al. 1997, Jacobs and Gerson 2001, 2003 for a
critique of this orientation). While the increase in women’s labor force participation has clearly
changed the life course of American women, it has also substantially altered experiences of men
and families. Given the marked rise in women’s labor force participation and the concurrent
increase in dual-earner families as a predominant family form, it is likely either that couples and
families make decisions regarding work and family together or that individual members of one
family are affected by the occupational choices of other members. Thus, I focus on couples as
the unit of analysis in this research. A further limitation of previous work-family research is its
inattention to the social psychological aspects of this conflict, specifically the perceptions of
individual workers. While many studies have examined outcomes such as psychological distress
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Convention