When schools closed and child care disappeared during the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of working parents faced the same difficult question: Whose job would have to change?
For dual-earner couples, the answer was not simply about who earned more money or who traditionally handled more responsibilities at home.
New research co-authored by the Lynette S. Autrey Professor of Psychological Sciences at Rice University Eden King and led by Kristen Shockley of Auburn University found that the characteristics of each partner's job, including schedule flexibility and how difficult it was to step away from work, played a key role in how couples navigated those decisions. The study, "Dual-Earner Couples' Job Characteristic Discrepancies: Implications for Within-Dyad Relative Work Adjustment During COVID-19," published in Personnel Psychology, examined how dual-earner couples balanced work and family responsibilities during the early weeks of the pandemic.
"We wanted to understand how couples navigate decisions about who should make short-term adjustments in their work schedules to accommodate family needs," King said. "The first few weeks of the pandemic offered an opportune moment to explore precisely this issue. It was a unique moment in time when nearly every parent of a young child had to figure out how to manage working when childcare was no longer available."
"The early weeks of the pandemic created a rare opportunity to observe work-family decision-making as it unfolded in real time," Shockley said. "Previous research has often asked people to imagine what they might do in a hypothetical situation or to recall how they handled similar challenges in the past, both of which have limitations. In March 2020, nearly every dual-earner couple with young children was suddenly forced to make difficult decisions about whose work would adapt, giving us an opportunity to identify the factors that actually shaped those choices."
Although the study examined decisions made during the pandemic, King said the findings extend well beyond that moment. Every day, dual-earner couples negotiate who leaves work early for a sick child, adjusts a schedule for a school event or steps away from work when family responsibilities arise.
Researchers found that couples weighed two major job characteristics when making those decisions: schedule flexibility and job role indispensability, or how critical each person's responsibilities were perceived to be.
Perhaps most importantly, couples weren't evaluating one person's job in isolation. They were weighing both partners' jobs against one another.
"Individuals' decisions to prioritize family needs above work needs depended on the flexibility and indispensability of both their and their spouse's jobs," King said.
While household income often plays a role in family decisions, money alone did not explain which partner adjusted their work. The findings remained even after researchers accounted for how much each partner contributed financially to the household.
The findings also help explain why work-family decisions often play out differently for men and women.
When someone needed to compromise professionally to support family needs, women were more likely to make those adjustments. However, King said the research points to a more nuanced explanation than gender alone.
"The effect of job characteristics on adjustments did not vary by gender," King said. "In other words, the job characteristics affected both men's and women's adjustments similarly. It seems that differences in men's and women's job characteristics are contributing to gendered decisions about families."
Those everyday compromises can have consequences. Researchers found that making work adjustments appeared to have a negative effect on women's relationship well-being, suggesting that repeatedly being the person whose career adapts around family needs may take a psychological toll.
The findings also carry important implications for employers, King said.
"Members of dual-earner couples almost always work for different, independent employers," King said. "But both members' employers would benefit from recognizing that their employees' work-life experiences are inherently intertwined with their spouses'. Work-life decisions, both big and small, are interdependent, and flexibility for everyone can help."
While conversations about work and family often focus on major life decisions, such as relocating for a job or choosing whose career to prioritize, King said the research highlights the importance of the everyday compromises couples make.
"A big takeaway for me is that it isn't just the big-picture decisions, like which person's job to prioritize when making a cross-country move or which person's educational opportunity to pursue, that matter," King said. "It's also the everyday choices we make that can influence our personal and relational well-being."
This work also honors the legacy of co-author and Rice alum Beth Buchanan '21, who was tragically killed in a car accident in 2023 while this research was ongoing.
