Work-Family Decision Making in Dual-Earner Couples
Summary
Dual-earner couples navigate a complex interplay of professional ambitions and domestic responsibilities, making choices about time, resources and roles that affect both partners’ careers and family life. Decision making is shaped by societal norms, workplace flexibility, policy frameworks and individual values, and occurs both at critical transitions—such as childbirth or geographic relocation—and through everyday routines. Studies reveal that while many couples endorse egalitarian ideals, ingrained habits and tacit negotiation processes often perpetuate traditional divisions of labour. Recent theoretical advances emphasise the family-relatedness of work decisions, recognising how personal values, partner support and capability constraints converge to determine the allocation of paid and unpaid tasks. Understanding these dynamics is vital for designing organisational policies and family supports that promote gender equality, well-being and career advancement across diverse cultural contexts.
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Work-Family Decision Making in Dual-Earner Couples publication trend
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Technical terms
Dual-earner couple: A partnership in which both individuals engage in paid employment and share domestic and caregiving responsibilities.
Work-family decision making: The processes through which couples allocate time, tasks and resources between work responsibilities and family life.
Work-family habits: Relatively automatic, recurrent patterns of decision making that structure daily arrangements of paid work and domestic duties.
Family-relatedness of work decisions (FRWD): The extent to which individuals integrate family values and caregiving priorities into choices about their paid employment.
References
- Work-family habits? Exploring the persistence of traditional work-family decision making in dual-earner couples. Journal of Vocational Behavior (2023).
- The career identity of young working fathers in dual-earner relationships: A family-relatedness of work decisions perspective. Frontiers in Psychology (2022).
- How fathers’ values matter for work–family decisions and partner support: a capability approach. Community Work & Family (2023).
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