Easing Stress In Duel-Income Families

How many families with children at home have an "at home" parent? Less than 10 percent. A dual income family is the norm. Men and women have had to adjust their roles and expectations in the home as women have entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers. Having acceptable childcare for infants and preschoolers is a major concern.

Because of longer life spans and the poor health of elderly relatives, many families who still have teenagers at home also have eldercare demands. Eldercare is less rewarding and has uncertain time involvement with less institutional support.

The work place is also changing. Work demands are increasing. Workers are expected to give longer and longer hours and participate in goals and management. Workers are expected take initiative, be loyal, involved and available. This makes home seem as a place of refuge from work, a place to reenergize for work and a place to think and plan work.

How much work and effort is enough? What are the limits of human enthusiasm and endurance? How long should the workday be? Sustained overloads can lead to demoralization and fatigue. The tensions and demands of the workplace have impact on home life and how parents cope.

How can organizations help? Organizations can help most by providing flex time and leave time policies that support family life. Leave policies benefit women most as they are generally the primary caregivers. Supervisors sensitive to female employees and childcare issues provide welcome support.

Childcare, senior care and counseling services are helpful but do not address the core issues of helping work mesh better with family life. Companies can downplay a workaholic culture that ignores family roles and concerns.

Supervisor support at work buffers emotional work exhaustion and has a positive impact on marital satisfaction. Work interference with the family creates marital dissatisfaction.

Social support, marital satisfaction and cooperation. Supportive friends and family buffers emotional exhaustion and they have a positive impact on marital satisfaction. The presence of support is enough to ward off work related stress. An absence of support is a stress in itself.

Happy marriages lighten stress from heavy workloads at home, reduce conflict at home and stop family conflict from affecting job performance. Women are especially sensitive to marital strain and how it affects the quality of their marriage. A woman's ability to negotiate her relationship with her husband and work out solutions about family and work conflicts is crucial to reducing her stress and anxiety.

A wife's satisfaction with her husband's involvement in family tasks is important. The more time a father spends in childcare the better the family relationship. No matter how they divide childcare and family work, it makes a big difference if a wife believes she can enlist her husband's help and draw on him as a resource. This gives her options or a backup.

Men and change. Job stress affects men more and adding other roles to the work role is stress producing. Men who are supportive to their wives want to be good fathers, are willing to share work in the home. They want closeness in their marriage and see their wife as an equal. They want to actively parent and share responsibility in the home.

Still, men at their best fall short of being the more supportive spouse in the home. Men with a traditional gender role background find it more difficult to provide the kind of support that will ease the burden of a working wife and mother.

Traditional men do well when they can make the shift and embrace their wife's work involvement. They don't label her working as a source of conflict. They show interest in her workday and work relationships. A supportive husband helps by letting go of cultural norms against women’s employment and will reinforces his wife's need to lower her standards of housekeeping to realistic levels.

Stress and children. The number and ages of the children at home make a difference. Preschoolers, budding adolescents and teens cause more concern. Satisfaction with the quality of childcare arrangements also lessens stress. For mothers, the quality of the relationships with the children is a significant factor in psychological comfort or distress. Stress stemming from the mothers' role is more significant than job-related stress.

What are the short cut answers to handling a dual income family?

• Having understanding and flexible employers and supervisors.
• Having social support from friends and family.
• Having marital satisfaction and cooperation in family tasks.
• Having satisfactory relationships with children and childcare arrangements.
• Having protection of family life and time from work intrusions.

Balancing home and work takes commitment and priority decisions. Make home your first priority and you'll be OK.