The Dualities of Careers and Families: New Integrations or New Polarizations?

This paper examines the prevailing assumption that the dual-career family is the vanguard of new and more symmetrical forms of work and family integration. We argue that careers and families have been integrated in the past by a sex-role division of labor that compensated for men's career involvement with women's confinement to the home; that dual careers are a historically-specific variation of the “idle wife” pattern; and that careerism in the future is likely to become associated with non-parenting rather than symmetrical families. This, we anticipate, will involve a growing polarization of career-centered and family-centered lifestyles and a widening gap between the two in standard of living. Finally, we conclude that the type of family policy needed to reduce this polarization must recognize the family as more than a personal lifestyle option. It must promote and protect the family unit as the nurturer of values and qualities essential for humane societies.