Work-Family Strategies During COVID-19: Examining Gender Dynamics Among Dual-Earner Couples With Young Children

• Published in: Journal of applied psychology Vol. 106; no. 1; pp. 15 - 28
• Main Authors: Shockley, Kristen M., Clark, Malissa A., Dodd, Hope, King, Eden B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Psychological Association 01-01-2021
• Subjects: Adult; Child Care; Coronavirus; Coronaviruses; Couples; COVID-19; COVID-19 - psychology; Division of Labor; Dual career couples; Dual Careers; Egalitarianism; Employment - statistics & numerical data; Family - psychology; Family Work Relationship; Female; Human; Human Sex Differences; Humans; Husbands; Job Performance; Latent class analysis; Male; Married couples; Pandemics; Personal Satisfaction; SARS-CoV-2; Sex Distribution; Telecommuting; Test Construction; United States; Well Being; Wives; Women; Work Performance - statistics & numerical data; Working hours; United States; dual-earner couples; gender; division of childcare; remote work; work-family
• ISSN: 0021-9010; 1939-1854
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0000857

There are several existing typologies of dual-earner couples focused on how they dually manage work and family; however, these all assume that couples can outsource childcare during normal work hours and that work is largely conducted outside of the home. Early attempts to control COVID-19 altered these assumptions with daycares/schools closing and the heavy shift to remote work. This calls into question whether couples tended to fall back on familiar gendered patterns to manage work and family, or if they adopted new strategies for the unique pandemic situation. We addressed this question using a sample of 274 dual-earner couples with young children. We content coded couples' qualitative responses about their plans for managing childcare and work commitments and used these codes in a latent class analysis to identify subgroups. Seven classes were identified, with 36.6% of the sample using strategies where women did most or all childcare, 18.9% of the sample using strategies that were not clearly gendered or egalitarian, and 44.5% of the sample using unique egalitarian strategies. We also obtained data from 133 of these couples approximately 7 weeks later regarding their well-being and job performance. Results suggested that women in the Remote Wife Does It All class had the lowest well-being and performance. There were nuanced differences between the egalitarian strategies in their relationships with outcomes, with the Alternating Days egalitarian category emerging as the overall strategy that best preserved wives' and husbands' well-being while allowing both to maintain adequate job performance.