By Arun Kumar
Washington, March 27 (IANS) Both the wife and husband hold paying jobs among more than half of married couples in the United States, and their number is expected to increase in the next decade.
Although such dual-earner couples have bolstered family incomes, they also have had to find creative ways to nurture family life.
The US Labour Department reports that in 57 percent of married couples husbands and wives work. Coping with two jobs and rearing children leaves many couples hard-pressed to find time together.
Experts argue the share of dual-earner couples will increase. Wives' incomes help maintain living standards, said David Cross, director of Market Outlook, an economic adviser to manufacturers and retailers.
Although surveys of college women point to their desire to stay home when they eventually have children, "the economics won't work for the vast majority," he said.
In 1979, women who worked full-time earned 63 percent as much as their male counterparts. By 2006, they earned 81 percent of what men earned. Wives' earnings contribute 35 percent of family income in the United States, and in one-third of dual-earning couples, the wife brings home the bigger pay cheque.
As women's earnings have bolstered family income, men's behaviour has changed.
According to the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, men do seven hours of housework per week, double what they did in 1968. Women still put in many more hours of housework than do men.
Since the mid-1960s, there has been a tripling of time fathers devote to childcare, said Suzanne Bianchi, a University of Maryland sociologist and author of Changing Rhythms of American Family Life. "Men married to employed wives really are doing basics - feeding, bathing, taking [children] to the doctor," she said.
The US Labour Department reports that men are more likely to use flexible work schedules than women. Many men are "feeling a crunch," Bianchi said, and broadening the interest in family-friendly policies among workers.
A 2005 Fortune magazine survey shows that 84 percent of male executives at the largest US companies want more time for things outside of work. "The first [men] with this interest are the dual-earners," Bianchi said.
US law allows up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for certain workers to take care of a sick family member or a new baby. It covers a little more than half the work force. When compared to other countries, "we have a reputation that we work a lot," said Bianchi.
Heather Boushey, an economist for the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, said the employer-paid leave for which some groups advocate could result in job discrimination against women of childbearing age.
She prefers a programme enacted in 2004 in California, under which all workers (not just parents) are eligible for six weeks' partial pay leave. The programme is paid for by workers.
In the near term, state and local experiments are more likely than new federal legislation. But the market also reacts to workers' needs, said Jeanie Duck, vice president for Boston Consulting Group: More companies are helping employees face "life situations."
They give workers unpaid sabbaticals, temporary transfers to less-stressful jobs, and telecommuting options as well as assistance for spouses seeking jobs, she said.
Professionals juggle, Boushey said, but the real stress for dual-earner couples is among lower-income families, in which a husband might work a day shift and a wife, a night shift. "They might be with their children, but sleeping," she said, "which is not quality time."
Dual-earners just want a little time, Boushey believes. "We buy salad in a bag ... we read magazine articles about getting more done in less time."