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TITLE:
Facilitating or Resisting: Patterns of Satisfaction and Spousal Attitudes in the Family Life of Highly Educated Workers

AUTHOR(S):
April C. Gilbert

DOCUMENT TYPE: Article

April Gilbert received her doctorate from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Center for Working Families during 1997-1998 and 1999-2000.

Working Paper No. 44

ABSTRACT:
Work hours among highly educated employees in the U.S. have increased substantially over the past two decades. Associated with these longer work hours are attitudes reflecting greater emotional involvement in work. The impact of this increased work involvement on the families of workers is largely unexplored. In this study of highly educated workers in two professional organizations, I investigate how work-related phenomena such as time spent working and organizational commitment together affect family satisfaction. From survey data, I find that greater work time reduces general family satisfaction as reported by workers, but does not correlate with workers’ satisfaction with their primary relationship. By studying a number of interview-based case studies, I conclude that this lack of correlation is due to the varying expectations and values held by spouses of workers. Depending on these values and expectations, spouses may end up facilitating or resisting the worker’s behaviors. Gender factors into spouse responses due to the different choices that men and women have when choosing a partner. Spouses with professional experience themselves, or for whom the material benefits are more important than family time with the worker, are likely to facilitate a partner’s work orientation. Spouses who emphasize nonwork or nonmaterial values but have not been able to exercise these values through their choice of spouse, primarily women, are more likely to become resistant to work absorption by their partners.