Dual Career Marriages: Elements for Potential Success

Dual career marriages are a new phenomenon in the alternative family life-style scene in America. Working couples in general do not fit into the definition applied to this life-style. This is caused by the deep commitment that each partner feels for his or her work relationship. However, the 1980s will see significant increases in this group. There are joys and sorrows associated with dual career marriages. This article will examine the uniqueness of family and work relationships and will attempt to describe various ingredients that appear to lead to success in the two career partnership.     

Contextualizing a Life in Science: Janet Taylor Spence and the History of Women and Gender in American Psychology

The present paper reflects on the life and career of Janet Spence (1923–2015) by situating her experiences within the history of women and gender in American psychology. This history has revealed the structural factors that have affected women’s participation in psychology, the shared themes in women’s interpersonal and professional experiences, and the specific strategies that women have used to navigate an androcentric, and at times overtly sexist, discipline. In spanning the second half of the twentieth century, Spence’s career provides an interesting case study of how these decades of institutional and political change affected a specific woman scientist and her science. I argue that her biography can offer rich insights into the complexly intertwined, and even reflexive, relationships among psychologists, their psychologies, and their contexts.     

Sisters of the Heart Along the Way: The Power of the Female Mentoring Relationship

Women's mentoring relationships with other women can have powerful effects on professional development and enrich the lives of both mentor and protégée. Women psychology students and early career psychologists are tasked with integrating their personal and professional identities and overcoming gender-related barriers to professional growth and career success. Mentors provide assistance negotiating these and other challenges to the junior professional's development. The author shares her experience as a woman student and early career psychologist in the context of her relationship with her woman mentor. She discusses her reconciliation of stereotyped beliefs about being a woman and a professional psychologist; processes significantly influenced by powerful characteristics of her mentoring relationship such as supportive encouragement, modeling, transparency, and spiritual connectedness. The author then explores the link between the relational qualities in the mentoring relationship and an enhanced overall approach to clinical work with patients. Last, the benefits of women's intimate relationships are discussed, followed by references that explore benefits and challenges, and models and strategies for women mentoring women. The author concludes that as a sister of the heart relationship, the mentoring bond between women can be a healing and empowering attachment.     

Achievement and affiliation motivation in career-oriented and homemaking-oriented college women

The purpose of this research was to investigate the possibility of an interaction between need for achievement and need for affiliation in career-oriented and homemaking-oriented college women. In the first study, scores on the appropriate scales (Achievement and Affiliation) of the Adjective Check List were obtained for 250 female college students, who were also classified as career or homemaking oriented on the basis of their responses to a questionnaire concerning postcollege plans. No significant differences were found between the career- and homemaking-oriented groups on Achievement and Affiliation; but, as predicted, a significant interaction occurred between the two variables. A second study, involving 257 college women and employing the same procedures and analysis, replicated the results of the original study: no main effects, but a significant interaction between Achievement and Affiliation. Implications of the findings for female career development and the counseling of women are discussed.     

Considerations in Counseling the Retiring Career Officer for Reemployment

In this article, the unique characteristics of the retiring career officer are discussed, and specific problems encountered by counselors assisting the career officer in his or her transition from the military to civilian work environment are noted. Suggestions are offered concerning counseling such persons for reemployment.     

Maintaining Men's Dominance: Negotiating Identity and Power When She Earns More

This article examines the power dynamics in marriages where wives earn substantially more than their husbands based on in-depth interviews with husbands and wives in 30 couples. The results demonstrate how normative gender expectations constrain interactions between spouses and how spouses in these unconventional marriages struggle to construct appropriate gender identities that are more or less consistent with the conventional expectations that men should be breadwinners and women should be homemakers. These data represent an important counterpoint to the growing body of quantitative work that demonstrates that a woman's power diminishes as her income exceeds her husband's by illuminating how men's power is preserved within marriage, even in the absence of their traditional economic dominance.     

The dimensions of career and work orientation in college women

The purpose of this study was to clarify the meaning of the construct, career orientation. Fourteen presumed measures of career orientation as well as Super's Work Values Inventory were administered to college women. Analysis of the relationships among these variables identified two relatively independent clusters. The first cluster most closely approximated the usual definition of career orientation. Career-oriented women were found to be highly career motivated and perceived the career role as primary in their adult lives. The second cluster was called work orientation. This orientation characterized women with well-defined occupational aspirations who placed a high value on both the career role and marriage-family responsibilities in their future. Work-oriented women tended to choose traditionally feminine occupations in contrast to the career-oriented women whose aspirations included higher level and less traditional occupations.     

Dual career marriages: Problems,satisfactions, and therapeutic considerations

A prognosis for the dual career marriage with and without children is developed and evaluated. A brief history is given, current shifts in sex-role stereotypes within and out of marriage are delineated, advantages and satisfactions as well as disadvantages and problems of the dual career marriage are discussed. Some particular issues facing clergy couples are cited and therapeutic considerations are briefly touched upon. Pertinent research and literature in the field of Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling and Pastoral Counseling is reviewed throughout.     

Influences on Career Choice: The Responses of Ethnic-Minority and Ethnic-Majority Girls

In a study concerned with factors affecting career aspirations, 37 Muslim and 32 non-Muslim secondary-school girls were interviewed and their responses compared in four areas: career aspirations and the extent to which these matched examinations being sat; influences on career choice; when respond-entfirst considered her choice; and attitudes to work. In general, there were minimal differences on aspirations and general influences on careers, but Muslim girls reported more parental involvement, thought about choices later, and were somewhat more instrumental in attitudes to work. These results are discussed in the context of culturally mediated attitudes to education and the interrelationships of career and family life.     

Will both spouses have careers?: Predictors of preferred traditional or egalitarian marriages among university students

This study examined the significance of work preference variables, family preference variables, socialization influences, and needs for achievement and affiliation in predicting preferred traditional versus egalitarian marriages among university students. Results showed that, overall, male university students preferred traditional marriages while female university students preferred egalitarian marriages. Sex also interacted significantly with the following variables: desired family task involvement, desired job task involvement, and mother's family involvement. The data suggest that a perspective encompassing a wide variety of variables (including work, family, and socialization considerations) may be useful for conceptualizing individuals' preferences for traditional or egalitarian marriages. Implications of the results for management and career counseling are discussed.     

THELMA GWINN THURSTONE

This paper examines the life and career of Thelma Gwinn Thurstone—her career strategies and her contributions to psychological testing, intelligence theory, and instruction—based on her publications and a series of personal interviews with her and her colleagues. Thurstone's contributions, with her husband, L. L. Thurstone, included the development of the American Council on Education's Psychological Examinations and the Primary Mental Abilities test batteries. Her own work included the development of instructional materials using the common factor theory of intelligence. Thurstone, wife of a preeminent scholar and mother of three sons, pursued career strategies that facilitated her continued professional activity for six decades. Further research on measurement history and also on women's career strategies are suggested.     

Telling lies

Men and women (20 each) were videotaped while describing someone they liked, someone they disliked, someone they were ambivalent about, someone they were indifferent about, someone they liked as though they disliked him or her, and someone they disliked as thought they like him or her. Accuracy at detecting that some deception had occurred was far greater than accuracy at detecting the true underlying affect, and people who were good at detecting that deception was occurring were not particularly skilled at reading the speakers' underlying affects. However, people whose deception attempts were more easily detected by others also had their underlying affects read more easily. Speakers whose lies were seen more readily by men also had their lies seen more readily by women, and observers better able to see the underlying affects of women were better able to see the underlying affects of men. Skill at lying successfully was unrelated to skill at catching others in their lies. A histrionic strategy (hamming) was very effective in deceiving others, and this strategy was employed more by more Machiavellian people, who also tended to get caught less often in their lies. Methodological considerations and systematic programs for future research are discussed.     

POWER AND INFLUENCE STRATEGIES IN VIOLENT AND NONVIOLENT MARRIAGES

How important is the use of physical violence in determining the balance of power within marriage? Do women in violent marriages make more use of indirect strategies in attempting to persuade their husbands than do women in nonviolent marriages? Is marital satisfaction related to influence styles? These questions are investigated by looking at decision making in couples and how this is related to the forms of influence strategies used by wives and husbands in violent and nonviolent marriages. Data from in-depth structured interviews with 137 self-identified battered wives and 137 comparison wives, some of whom were also found to have experienced violence from their husbands, are used to answer these questions. Results indicated that women with violent husbands used more influence strategies overall, although these women had less overall power in terms of decision making than did women with nonviolent husbands. The relationship of influence strategies to decision making was different for women with violent husbands than for those whose husbands were not violent. As expected, the use of coercive strategies related negatively to marital happiness, whereas positive strategies were positively predictive. Violence and other negative strategies should be included in future research on influence strategies in close relationships, and a positive-negative dimension should be included as a way of categorizing influence strategies.     

Super's Career Stages and the Decision to Change Careers

This study examined Super's (1990) concept of recycling through the stages of adult career development in a sample of 226 Australian men and women who were approximately evenly distributed across the following four steps in the uptake of a second career: (a) contemplating a change, (b) choosing a new field, (c) implementing a change, and (d) change fully completed. A group of adults of similar age, gender, education, occupation, and career history who had no intention of switching careers was also included for comparison. Recycling predictions were supported by the finding that the three groups who were in the throes of career change displayed greater concern with Super's first (exploration) stage than the nonchanging control group. In addition, the two groups who were most intensely involved in the change process (choosing field and implementing) scored higher in exploration concern than the group whose career change was fully completed. Satisfaction also varied as a function of the participant's stage in the process of switching to a new career. Global satisfaction with the present job was highest in workers who had completed the change to a new career, but nonchangers were more satisfied than the three groups who were actively caught up in the change process. On the other hand, satisfaction with the overall pattern of career development was higher in the two stable groups (nonchangers and change-completed) than among the three groups still actively involved in making a change. Implications of these results for midlife career counseling were considered.     

Post-divorce adaptation and the attribution of responsibility

A study was conducted to explore the possible relationship between post-divorce adjustment and the attributions divorced women give for the failure of their marriages. The study revealed that significantly more subjects who attributed their divorces to interactive rather than personal factors were more active, more socially skilled, happier, more optimistic, and less likely to blame themselves rather than outside forces for failures. The findings were also analyzed in light of whether or not subjects had initiated their divorce proceedings. The importance of making interactive attributions was discussed.We would like to thank Cynthia Weinman for her help in conducting the study. We are also grateful to the City University of New York for providing the funds for this research.     

MATHEMATICS AND SELF-ESTEEM: IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN'S CAREER CHOICE

The relationship of math participation and success to self-esteem and career goals is examined in a sample of 64 women and 52 men college students at the end of their sophomore year. No gender differences were found in math anxiety or perceptions of the usefulness of mathematics, but women were less likely to select a math-related career goal. Among the men students, math participation and self-assessments of math ability were positively related to more general self-estimates of competence; among women, these variables were not related significantly. Women's choices for math-related careers were more closely associated with scholastic ability and math background than were men's career choices. These results are discussed in the context of societal pressures and supports for men and women in regard to math participation.     

Clinical interventions in parent-infant groups around issues related to separation-individuation

Parent-child groups as an educational method in a general hospital setting provide support for parents and an environment in which they can discuss their questions about their child's development. This paper illustrates the clinical use of parent-child groups as a means of early intervention in problems that become apparent during the Separation-Individuation stages of development. We present two case studies of mother-child pairs, who have been members of the group for 2 years. The first case is a bi-racial child whose mother is struggling to deal with the child's rapprochement stage behavior. Through the oral and anal stages, conflict has grown in their relationship due to the mother's way of viewing her child, as well as her own unresolved adolescent separation difficulties. The second case is an overprotective mother whose own pathology prevented her daughter from resolving her rapprochement crisis. Interventions by the leaders as well as the group's educational method help both mother-child pairs to resolve interpersonal conflict and to continue their essentially normal development.     

生涯决策中的优柔寡断

优柔寡断是跨领域地长期体验到决策困难的一般倾向, 对个人的职业生涯决策和发展的很多方面产生影响, 近年来成为职业生涯心理学中的研究热点。与优柔寡断相关的概念较多, 有必要探讨它们的中文翻译及其在生涯决策领域相关概念体系中的位置。在整理分析了优柔寡断的特点、理论解释、研究方法及相关研究后, 提出未来值得深入研究的方向是：优柔寡断的结构, 其在动态情境下对决策的影响, 其前因变量研究和纵向研究。