one hand, he didn't want to be an absent father--reacting against his own
family background. At the same time, he had a hard time cutting back.
He would come home excited about some new opportunity, which meant
more work. And my reaction would be, you've got to be kidding, you
don't have the time. So it's a constant struggle.

He: Even before we got married, she told me that she was going to make
demands on my time--for helping with household, child care. So I've
always felt that the feminist liberation or equal time issue was out on the
table; the principle of parity has always been there. So in a sense, I'm
balanced between a principle that I essentially agreed to when we got
married and an ideal amount of time that I would consider appropriate to
devote to my work. Every once in a while I find myself thinking, gee, if
only I'd had more time at work, I could have . . .

The roles of both dual-career spouses differ from their parents' roles in
key ways: The woman has a career and is not a full-time mother, and
the man has more involvement in the home and is not a sole breadwin-
ner. These changes in the divisions of work and family, however, do not
necessarily mean absolute departures from the basic expectations that
work is more primary for men than women and that family is more
primary for women than men. These expectations prove resilient, even
with the advent of women's careers.

We have observed that the continuities between the generations
reflect these traditional associations of work as a more primary domain
for men than women and home as a more primary domain for women
than men. Women perceive ways in which, careers aside, they are
reproducing their mothers' commitment to mothering and, second-
arily, to home and family. Men recognize the extent to which they
replicate their fathers' commitment to work life and to occupational
success.

The gender-linked pair of expectations represents an important core
of the dual-career marriage. For some couples and in some aspects of
dual-career family life, this gender-linked dichotomy continues to
characterize the work-family system. For other couples and in other
domains of the dual-career family, the dichotomy is being challenged,
and traditional gender scripts are being revised and rewritten.

-48-