Women returning to school: The consequences of multiple roles

Previous research suggests that strain is a predominant consequence of multiple-role incumbency. The likelihood of negative outcomes is increased when the role combination is non-normative. The validity of these assertions is tested for a group of women who have returned to school at midlife, comparing them to a group of their neighbors who are primarily housewives. Findings demonstrate that the students experienced significantly greater positive outcomes or gratifications from their multiple roles than the housewives experienced from their relatively unitary roles. However, the students also reported significantly more negative consequences or strain than did the housewives. Though the students had a net positive gain, the difference was not significant. Moreover, role strain was negatively correlated with high levels of involvement in leisure and volunteer activities for both subsamples. Finally, feminist ideology varied directly with gratification for both students and housewives. The mix of positive and negative corollaries of multiple roles challenges the assumption in the literature that strain is an ubiquitous outcome. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of sexual division of labor and strategies for enhancing net gratification.I am grateful to Judith Long for her assistance in conceptualizing and designing this research. Anne Foner, Peggy A. Thoits, and anonymous reviewers for Sex Roles made numerous helpful comments which strengthened the final version. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Antonio, Texas, August 1984.     

The Married Professional Woman: An Examination of Her Role Conflicts and Coping Strategies

A group of 232 married women doctors, lawyers and professors were surveyed about their attitudes toward their roles and how they cope with role conflicts. Close to half of the women reported that it was impossible to rank the relative importance of their family and career roles, and a majority of women stated that they often experienced strains between these roles. Coping strategies such as having family members help with chores, having family members help resolve role conflicts, reducing standards within certain roles, considering personal interests important, and scheduling and organizing activities carefully were found to be significantly related to satisfaction. It is suggested that married professional women who develop effective coping strategies will find the challenge of combining a profession and a family a rewarding one.     

Sharing of home responsibilities between professionally employed women and their husbands

A sample of 139 married couples with young children and with relatively equal status careers (wives were university professors or businesswomen) were interviewed about work and home life. Considerable, traditional inequity in the distribution of child-care tasks and chore responsibility was noted, but women were generally satisfied with their husbands' home involvement. In the academic sample, the longer hours each spouse worked, the more child care the other performed; in the business sample, child-care involvement was largely determined by the husband's work hours, income, and education. Overall, women were more self-critical than were men about their performance in home roles, and women's role performance was rated more highly by husbands than by themselves. Women professionals' continued use of traditional sex role standards and the importance of attending to both partners' perspectives in studies of married life are discussed.     

Televised Models of Female Achievement Revisited: Some Progress

In a previous study which analyzed the content of a sample of 1972 primetime television programming, Manes and Melnyk (1974) concluded that television portrayed employment and marriage as incompatible life-styles for women. The present study applied the same content analysis procedures to a sample of 1978 prime-time television programming. Results indicated that female characters employed outside the home were significantly less likely to be married than were employed male characters ( p <.001), a finding which replicated the result obtained previously. In contrast to the 1972 results, however, analyses of the 1978 data revealed that employed married women were not significantly less likely than either their male counterparts or unemployed housewives to be depicted as successfully married.     

Class,housework, and happiness: Women's work and life satisfaction

Large-sample surveys often fail to find a difference in self-reported satisfaction between housewives and employed women. Several explanations that have been offered for this failure are explored here in greater detail. The suggestion that the ease of housewives' lives is experienced as a benefit compensating for fewer satisfactions in other areas is rejected; greater time pressure is associated with greater satisfaction for housewives. The suggestion that working-class women are happier at home, while middle-class women prefer careers is also not supported; working-class women appear to be less satisfied with their lives and no more satisfied with their work whether the comparison group is working-class women with jobs or middle-class housewives. Social desirability, on the other hand, is found to be a major factor predicting the self-reported happiness of housewives, and the general issue of the role of social expectations in evaluating satisfaction is raised.     

Eternal Mothers or Flexible Housewives? Middle-aged Chinese Married Women in Hong Kong

How do Hong Kong Chinese women position themselves in relation to this stigmatized social category of “si-nai” (middle aged-housewives) and the prevailing norms and values regarding women’s roles? The case of middle-aged, married women in Hong Kong provides empirical support for an alternative understanding of the identity of adult woman and helps to problematize conceptualizations of women’s identity as centered on their mother roles. The narratives of these twenty-six women show the fluidity of their roles as mothers (and wives). These roles change with reference to social context, life circumstances, and life course. Many middle-aged women have tried to resist becoming “mad housewives” and have learnt to be “flexible housewives” by actively decentering their role as mothers.     

Role portrayals of men and women in print ads

The study examines role portrayals of men and women in Indian magazine ads. Fourteen hundred ads of 2006–2007 were collected from men’s, women’s, and general interest magazines and were content-analyzed. Results reveal that women in Indian magazine ads are primarily portrayed in traditional roles such as concerned with physical attractiveness, housewives and sex objects. Contrarily, men are portrayed in sex appeal, authority figures, career-oriented, and outdoor roles. Men and women are also portrayed in egalitarian roles. While in most product categories, men are portrayed as sexually appealing, authority figures, in activities outside home, and as career-oriented, women are depicted as concerned with physical attractiveness, as housewives, and sex objects. Some product categories also depict women in egalitarian roles and as outdoor and adventurous. Men’s magazines portray men and women in highly traditional roles. Contrarily, women’s and general interest magazines portray women in more modern roles. Findings support an incremental change in contemporary role portrayals compared to past.     

Intimacy Motivation and Subjective Mental Health in a Nationwide Sample

Over 1,200 adults in a representative nationwide sample were administered the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and an unstructured interview which produced 25 measures of subjective mental health and ultimately six factor scores: unhappiness, lack of gratification, strain, feelings of vulnerability, lack of self-confidence, and uncertainty. The TATs were scored for intimacy motivation (McAdams, 1980)--a recurrent preference or readiness for experiences of warm, close, and communicative interaction with others. Controlling for age, education, and their interaction, high intimacy motivation in women was associated with greater happiness and gratification, whereas in men it was associated with lack of strain and lack of uncertainty. Women high in intimacy motivation who were living alone reported lower levels of gratification and more uncertainty in their lives than other women. Intimacy motivation also declined significantly over the life span for women, but not for men. Finally, demographic effects on intimacy motivation were examined. Controlling for age, education, and their interaction, professional men (e.g., doctors, lawyers, and teachers) scored higher on intimacy motivation than did men in other occupational categories, while among women the occupational groups with highest intimacy motivation were service workers and craftspersons.     

A Society in Transition: Structure and Determinants of Attitudes Toward the Role and Status of Women in Ireland

This study examines the structure of attitudes toward the role and status of women in Ireland and their demographic determinants. Following a pilot test and an instrument pre-test, the main study was based on a stratified quota sample of 420 male and female Dublin adults, aged 18 to 65. Using factor analysis, eight measures were developed tapping attitudes toward the role and status of women. There was a consistent pattern of significant main effects for sex, age, and SES, which indicated that males, older people and those of lower SES background held more traditional attitudes and were less likely to favor social policies associated with greater equality. Among married women, employment status was a significant determinant of more egalitarian sex-role attitudes along a number of dimensions. The implications of the results for social change in Ireland are discussed.     

Sex differences in depression

The role of housewife has been hypothesized as the source of excess mental illness among married women as compared with married men. The present study found both housewives and working wives significantly more depressed than working husbands. Although working wives report that they do more housework than husbands, this factor was not significantly related to depression for either wives or husbands. It is suggested that the risk factors for depression, including marriage for women, may be better understood in the context of clinical theories of depression, especially the learned helplessness model.     

Contributions of a supportive work environment to parents' well-being and orientation to work

Examined the joint and unique contributions of informal social support in the workplace and formal, family-responsive benefits and policies provided by employers to the job-related attitudes and personal well-being of employed parents with a young child. Eighty married men, 169 married women, and 72 single women with a preschool child completed a survey concerning social support from co-workers and supervisor, utilization of family-responsive benefits and policies, readiness to leave the employer for additional benefits, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, role strain, and health symptoms. Among the findings: (a) Fathers and mothers expressed equal levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, but mothers reported more role strain and health symptoms; (b) nearly 48% of married women's organizational commitment was accounted for by measures of support in the workplace; (c) informal social support at work was significantly more important to men's well-being than that of women; and (d) formal, family-responsive policies appeared more consequential for the prediction of women's role strain, perhaps because of women's greater responsibility for adjusting work life to meet the demands of family roles.     

Longitudinal change in sex role orientations: Differences between men and women

Longitudinal comparisons over the five-year period of 1975–1980 show that both men and women have significantly lessened in sex role traditionalism. The change among women, further, is significantly greater than that for men. Using multiple regression analysis it is found that for women, entry into marriage, but not employment, is associated with lessened traditionalism. For men, it is not entry into marriage, but continuation in it that seems important. Restricting attention only to those who are married shows a general effect of the importance of role demands for women. For married men, none of the predictor variables are important.     

Life Satisfaction of Career Women and Housewives

Profound changes in gender roles have taken place over the past several decades in the United States. Women’s roles have changed most: women are marrying later in life and at lower rates, having fewer children, and working more outside of the household. “Career women” are the new normal and housewifery has gone out of fashion. At the same time, women have become less happy. We use the US General Social Surveys from 1972 to 2014 to explore these latest trends. We find that, until recently, women were happier to be housewives or to work part-time than full-time, especially, women who are older, married, with children, in middle or upper class, and living in suburbs or smaller places. The effect size of housewifery on subjective wellbeing (SWB) is mild to moderate, at about a fourth to a third of the effect of being unemployed. Therefore, we argue that one possible reason for the decline in average happiness for women was increased labor force participation. Yet, the happiness advantage of housewifery is declining among younger cohorts and career women may become happier than housewives in the future.     

Roles and Role Conflict of Women in Infertile Couples

This study explored the experience of role conflict for women in infertile couples. The infertile group consisted of 29 women who, with their husbands, were beginning an infertility program; comparison group subjects were 29 married women with no history of inability to conceive. Each subject completed self-report instruments measuring role conceptions and expectations, the experience of role conflict, and occupational commitment. Each husband also reported his role expectations for his ideal woman. Also, a semi-structured interview was conducted with each infertile subject. Compared to the control group, the infertile group's role conceptions were more traditional; they reported less role conflict of various kinds, and they showed greater occupational commitment. They did not differ significantly on degree of wife-husband role discrepancy, or on mother's occupational commitment. These findings lead to an understanding of infertility as part of an interactional system for dealing with potentially intolerable sources of role conflict.     

Role conflict and perceptions of gender roles (the case of Israel)

The present study focuses on work—family role conflict among Jewish women employed in a female-typed occupation (secondary school teachers) and a male-typed occupation (university professors). The major hypotheses of the study are that women who work in different occupation types employ different strategies to reduce role conflict and that family roles contribute more to role conflict than work roles. The findings support the hypotheses and show that women in a male-typed occupation spend less time on family and domestic roles, and increase their hours of work. Consequently, their burden at home decreases while their burden at work increases. Because the burden at home contributes more to role conflict than the burden at work, women in male-typed occupations report less role conflict than women in a typically female occupation.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics Conference, Paris, 1994. We wish to acknowledge our gratitude to Dafna Izraeli for her insightful critique. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This research was funded jointly by Schein Institute and The Eshkol Foundation.     

鳏与寡对老年人抑郁水平的影响:社会网络的调节作用

为了进一步探讨丧偶与抑郁水平之间的关系,讨论社会网络（包括家庭网络和朋友网络）在其中的作用机制,并比较丧偶与抑郁水平的关系及社会网络作用机制的性别差异,本研究对中国老年社会追踪调查（CLASS）2014年调查中7649名老年人（其中丧偶老人2149名,男性715,女性1434;在婚老人5500名,男性3398,女性2102）的数据进行分析。结果发现,丧偶对老年人抑郁水平有消极影响,但影响作用不存在性别差异;男性丧偶老人的朋友网络显著低于男性在婚老人,而女性老年人中无此差异;相对于在婚老人,家庭网络对男性丧偶老人的抑郁水平的缓解作用更大,而在女性样本未发现家庭网络的缓冲作用。应重视丧偶老年人,特别是男性丧偶老年人,家庭网络的建设与维护,从而缓解丧偶对老年人心理健康的消极影响。     

The Role of Nonperformance Factors on Job-Related Relocation Opportunities: A Field Study and Laboratory Experiment

Two studies examined the role of employee gender, marital type (single-earner, dual-earner), and parental status in understanding differential access to job opportunities requiring relocation, as well as possible perceptual processes underlying these effects. A large-scale field study (Study 1) found that married women and employees in dual-earner marriages were provided fewer relocation offers than married men and those in single-earner marriages. A laboratory experiment (Study 2) extended Study 1 by examining the perceptual process by which these nonperformance factors affected relocation opportunities. Again, married women and employees in dual-earner marriages received lower recommendation ratings for jobs requiring relocation compared to married men and single-earners, respectively. Further, decision-makers' perceptions of an applicant's willingness to relocate, family resistance to moving, and ease of adjustment to a geographic move partially mediated the relationship between these nonperformance factors and relocation opportunities. Implications for research and applied practice are discussed.     

Interrole Conflict, Coping Strategies, and Role Satisfaction Among Single and Married Employed Mothers

This study examined the relationship between interrole conflict, coping strategies, satisfaction, and marital status among a select sample of employed black mothers. Single and married black mothers were compared on type of coping strategy used to handle mother and worker role conflicts, and level of satisfaction with mother and worker roles. There was a significant interaction between marital status and coping strategy in their effect on satisfaction with the mother role. Finally, single mothers were significantly more satisfied with their worker roles than married mothers.     

Wives' work and psychological well-being: An extension of gove's social role theory of depression

The effectiveness of social role theory in explaining the relationship between wives' work (inside and outside the home) and psychological well-being is examined in reference to existing empirical patterns and alternative explanations. The theory is extended by the reorientation of its assumptions around central concepts and premises of the rational choice and social exchange framework: rewards, costs, cost reduction, alternative sources of gratification, and subjective evaluation of behavioral outcomes. Several mediating factors are integrated into the revised theory: help with housework and child care, work satisfaction, and participation in voluntary associations and social networks. The explanatory utility of the additional causal links proposed in the expanded theory is explored in a comparison of 50 employed wives and 50 housewives, all of whom have at least one preschool child living at home. The validity of the revised propositions is supported by the findings, which reveal no significant difference between the employed wives and the housewives in depression, health anxiety, or life satisfaction.