With dual-career couples comprising the most common
family type, it is important for mental health
professionals, employers, and policy makers to understand
the unique challenges of this population (Haddock et al.,
2001; Saginak & Saginak, 2005.) Numerous researchers have
studied the consequences of family and work role strain for
dual-career couples. However, when dual-career couples are
able to share responsibilities and negotiate degendered
roles they experience the benefits of dual-career couples.
The literature clearly supports the importance of
egalitarian roles for marital satisfaction and life
satisfaction of dual-career couples.
While researchers have studied social role strain,
gender role strain, marital satisfaction, and life
satisfaction and discussed the importance of degendered roles and responsibilities for dual-career couples, no
studies have examined gender ideology. Saginak and Saginak
(2005) called for researchers to investigate how gender
ideologies and the gender socialization process perpetuate
the challenges faced by dual-career couples in balancing
work and family.
This study investigated the associations between
gender ideology and gender role strain, job-family role
strain, marital satisfaction, and life satisfaction among
70 individual members of dual-career couples. A
multivariate analysis of variance was utilized to
investigate the relationship between gender ideology and
the criterion measures. Gender ideology was partially
associated with gender role strain with the androgynous
gender ideology group scoring significantly lower on gender
role strain than the masculine or undifferentiated gender
ideology groups but not significantly lower than the
feminine gender ideology group. Gender ideology was not
associated with job-family role strain or marital
satisfaction. In addition, gender ideology was also
partially associated with life satisfaction with the androgynous gender ideology group scoring significantly
higher on quality of life than the masculine or
undifferentiated gender ideology groups but not
significantly higher than the feminine gender ideology
group.
Thus, the current study indicates there are partial
associations between gender ideology and gender role strain
and life satisfaction for dual-career couples. Mental
health professionals, employers, and policy makers working
with dual-career couples should assess the socially
constructed gender norms and expectations internalized by
individuals into a gender ideology as the possible source
of challenges experienced by the dual-career couple.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/3299 |
| Date | 12 April 2006 |
| Creators | King, Jennifer Jean |
| Contributors | Davenport, Donna |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | 169978 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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