Challenges To Dual Career Couples And Their Remedies

Dual Career Couples are hose couples who works in order to maintain a good and smooth lifestyle for their families and peruse their professional fields. The following challenges are faced by dual career couples in Pakistan:

Lack of Communication

Communication is necessary to solve any kind of problem. It becomes difficult for dual career couples to share everything and talk through the matters on daily basis. The thing which adds up to the tension that exists between the partners is when they go back home from their job they become too irritated and exhausted sometimes to talk to anyone. This creates communication gap between partners and children.

Increased Expenses

No doubt that working couples can enjoy more earnings but on the other hand they bear more expenses as they buy the branded products in order to maintain their image in society. Also they hire servants and governesses for reducing workload and perform child care responsibilities.

Societal/ Cultural Threats

Women may have to face different threats such as harassment in working place. In Pakistan it is difficult for women to work in organizations because it is regarded as male dominated society. In our society still there are people who think that men’s job is to earn live hood whereas, woman is the homemaker. These stereotypes also target the men in a dual couple by questioning him and having vague philosophy that he is not enough to earn for his family that’s why his wife is also working.

Compromises

Due to the responsibilities, often someone in a dual couples either women or men have to sacrifice a bit for the responsibilities regarding children and household activities. For the sake of other partner’s professional life/ work load. And usually the women are the one who sacrifices more. But if no any understanding buildup regarding the share of duties that It causes so many problems between partners.

Child Care Issues

Taking care of children is pretty challenging for these couples. Parents are most worried about their child care as they think that they cannot give them proper attention. Sometimes they have no time to discuss their domestic issues which creates a gap between parents and children. These parents are unable to be there for their child on emergencies. In addition to this whenever child is sick mostly women perform active role to cure them.

Fewer Vacations

In professional life we need vacations for relaxing and help to build understanding between partners and children’s but when we talk to Madam Noreen she said she never get any vacations. It becomes more stressful for us to maintain work life balance.

Overburden of Responsibilities

We know that dual career couples have more responsibilities than a normal couple as they have to manage office and household at the same time which may create stress among the partners. Dual career couple has to perform multiple roles. Hence it became difficult for them to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

Security Issues and Stealing Threats

Security is the major issue especially for those dual career couple in which husband’s job is in another city/country. Dual career couple has also tension of stealing from house in their absence these tensions may cause lower performance in working place.

Paternity Leave

Although the duration for maternity and paternity leaves is allocated by Government. But only maternity leave is given in most of the organizations but paternity leave is often ignored or given just for 2 or 3 days in many organizations / Small Businesses.

Exhausting working hours

In Pakistan most of the organizations expect their employees to work in office continuously 9. AM to 5. PM which make them often feel tedious. Moreover, they are also unable pick or drop their children from their Schools/collages because of job schedules.

Less Social Activities

These couples often are unable to go for vacations, Weddings, to meet their relatives, Social gatherings or any dead to share the sorrows of their loved ones due to their busy schedules. As we know that social life is also very important for a healthy lifestyle.

Benefits to Dual Career Couples

Along with the challenges the following are the benefits/ reasons why people prefer being a dual career couple:

Financial Stability

As both person in a couple would do the job, the family will face decreased financial crisis compared with those families in which has one person is earning side. With better financial stability, they can maintain a good future for themselves and also their children’s a better lifestyle and education. Getting more attentive on profession, they are probably awarded for their commitment, so that will also be a healthier advantage for sustaining financial stability.

Independency

Women became more independent and strong in the family than before. Because now she also do a job and earns that’s why she is no more wholly dependent on her husband’s income.

Sharing Common Aims

Both partners works together to complete their personal goal effectively and efficiently with each other’s support. As every parent wants that their child should be more successful and satisfied with their lives. A dual career couple can support their child in their professional fields by training them informally about the Organizational behavior.

Equally Managing Household Responsibilities

As both partners are working that’s why not only one partner such as wife is responsible for household activities. Now both partners are equally responsible for managing their home. So, working together in coordination creates better understanding for each other’s responsibilities, strengthen the bond between husband and wife.

Rational decisions

Work and life both needs a healthier experience and education. Using that experience and education a dual career couple can deal with many problems easily and will be able to make rational decisions in any situation. Dual career couple always faces bundle of challenges like: stress of maintaining domestic and work life, societal issues, and long working hours, paternity and maternity leave issues and so on. To deal with those challenges one always has to make rational decisions and that is easier if partners are well educated so that they avoid unnecessary fights and try to understand each other’s point of view.

More Responsible Children

Being a dual career couple parents are not every time available for the children. Hence, this could bad but the encouraging thing is that slowly and gradually youngsters acquires to be less reliable on their parents and inclines to find out solutions for their problems by their own. Hence children become self-reliant, independent.

Benefits of Working in Same Organization/Department

While conducting an interview from interviewee, we got informed that working in same profession and department is beneficial for the couple. One interviewee told us “whenever I have any work such as asking for anything needed in home, childcare concerns, going home early. I feel no hesitation for going for that because her boss is actually her husband and she allowed doing her remaining task later. ” But this is a unique situation when the boss is the husband. In this situation where both husband and wife are under third person (supervisor), then she can face little bit music but again she can go for domestic work (if urgent), then she have a responsible person behind her who can perform her work also (her husband).

Recommendations to Minimize These Challenges

As per our understanding we think that the following can be solutions to minimize the challenges faced by dual career couples:

Flexible Working Hours

Their working hours should be flexible so that they can perform their various responsibilities such as picking and dropping children to schools, performing domestic responsibilities so that they have less stuff in mind to worry about and focus more on their job.

Paternity Leaves

Paternity leaves also should be given equal importance so that a husband can take care of his wife and child.

Nurseries in Organizations

Making nurseries available in organization would be life saving for such couple as they have not to worry about their child and especially women have not to compromise on her career for the sake of taking care of child during those working hours.

Filling Out Communicational Gaps

These couples need to fill out those communicational gaps by discussing and ending any disturbance in their relation. And try to maintain work-life balance and spent time with their children and spouse to address their problems.

Leaves

The number of leaves should be increased so that employees could plan family trips, and also enjoy their social life by going to gatherings, weddings, and family dinners.

Arranging Family Events

Organizations should arrange different family events in which they can arrange different tasks/games can be like those which are offered by reality shows so that employees could came and enjoy with their families. It will ultimately minimize the communicational gaps and make them more satisfied with their job and life.

Remote jobs

Remote jobs should be offered as it will encourage more women to do jobs as they wouldn’t have to compromise their career for their personal lives. Moreover, they can easily perform their domestic affairs.