The Cost of Career Equality: A Personal Response to Academic Couples: Problems and Promises

This piece relates one academic's personal experience of a commuting, dual-career marriage to sociological analysis presented in the recent book, Academic Couples: Problems and Promises. The book, summarized and reviewed here, covers the history and social context of academic women and couples in America, legal and institutional concerns about programs for hiring partners, and data on the career success and scholarly productivity of academic couples. The article's author finds that the studies in the book contextualize her own experience, but do not address the emotional and social issues she observes as a wide-spread phenomenon among commuting couples.