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73 4 CUSTOMIZING CAREERS BY OPTING OUT OR SHIFTING JOBS Dual-Earners Seeking Life-Course “Fit” Phyllis Moen and Qinlei Huang Two-career couples are nothing new in American society, but dual-earning has by no means been institutionalized within families or the workforce. Dual-earners reflect a new workforce demography, an increasing percentage of households in which all adults are in the workforce. Still, most working couples struggle under both government laws and regulations and private-sector policies and practices that adhere to the stereotypical (male) lockstep adult course. The expectations surrounding paid work and its rewards are constructed around the “career mystique” belief that a lifetime of full-time continuous employment is the only path to success and fulfillment (Moen and Roehling 2005). However, the career mystique template makes no allowance for family care responsibilities or an insecure labor market. Dual-earners thus confront a fundamental mismatch between the exigencies of two jobs plus family care work and outdated career path expectations, policies, and practices. A second mismatch is created by the global risk economy together with economic downturns that are unraveling established conventions associated with seniority, job security, and retirement. This chapter focuses on the implications of these two mismatches: the workfamily mismatch, which renders one or both spouses in dual-earner households vulnerable to the tensions between the new workforce demography and the conventional occupational paths designed for workers without family responsibilities; and the job security mismatch resulting from economic downturns, new information technologies, offshoring, and increased competition within a global workforce (Altobelli and Moen 2007; Meiksins and Whalley 2002; Moen and Roehling 2005; Rubin and Smith 2001; Sweet, Moen, and Meiksins 2007; Williams 2000). 74 PHYLLIS MOEN AND QINLEI HUANG We propose that dual-earner couples respond to these mismatches through ad-hoc career customizations, that is, adaptive strategies on the part of one or both partners in the form of job turnover, job shifts, or job stability. In today’s economy , career customization is not necessarily the result of long-term goals and plans; rather, it is an effort to respond to the mismatches that constrain workers’ options, including actual job layoffs of one’s self or one’s spouse. This study tests the theorized adaptation by examining a sample of dual-earners from the most advantaged segment of the American workforce (married workers with at least some college education, employed in professional or managerial jobs). This is the most likely group to appear in the primary sector of the workforce, holding what have historically been the most stable “good” jobs offering benefits, pensions, access to internal labor markets, and the greatest job security (Kalleberg, Reskin, and Hudson 2000). Arguably, even this privileged sector finds itself in double jeopardy, obliged to customize one or both spouses’ career paths in a cultural and policy “career mystique” climate that does not support, and may even penalize , such ad hoc customization (Moen, Sweet, and Hill 2009; Sweet, Moen, and Meiksins 2007). Dual-earner households may use job shifts or exits of one or both spouses as a strategic adaptation to the time pressures built in to their multiple goals and obligations at work and home. “Opting out” is the phrase many journalists use to depict the informal career customization of dual-career women who exit the workforce because they and their husbands cannot “do it all” (Moen 2008; Moen, Kelly, and Magennis 2009; Stone 2007). Conventional gender norms, together with the future income prospects of each spouse’s job, mean that typically wives, not husbands, are the ones doing the opting out. We draw on data from the Ecology of Careers Study (Moen 2003) to investigate the conditions under which one or both members of dual-earner couples customize their careers by selecting (or by being selected into) job shifts or exits, whether these are the result of corporate restructuring, work-family conflicts, or simply job or family pressures, overloads, and strains. Is Customization the Solution? Prior studies document a widespread desire for more voluntary career-customization options among many sectors of the workforce who do not wish to or cannot follow the lockstep career mystique (Moen and Chesley 2008; Moen and Kelly 2009). These include dual-earner and single parents, child-free couples, singles, empty nesters, care providers for infirm relatives, and couples nearing retirement (e.g., Clarkberg and Moen 2001; Moen 2003; Moen et al. 2000; Moen and Roehling 2005). Several measures could create a wider pool of work-life options in society, including [18...

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