Researchers Find Couples Working More Than Ever, and Liking It Less

Bulletin from the job front: People work more than they want to.

A new study of two-career couples finds that the number of hours they spend on the job has risen substantially in the last two decades. And they don’t like it.

“People are working longer hours, and it’s not because they want to,” said Marin Clarkberg, a Cornell University sociologist.

Clarkberg and other researchers presented their latest findings on the work-family time squeeze Friday at a meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science.

Both sexes feel stressed by the competing demands of job and home. But in some ways, the situation can seem worse for women, said Clarkberg, because they often have to choose between working full time or not at all.

The reason: too few part-time jobs for women with families, and the ones that exist often pay poorly and do not offer health insurance or other benefits.

Clarkberg’s research showed that actually, both men and women would often like to work something less than a standard 40- or 50-hour week.

Her results were based on surveys of 4,554 married couples questioned in 1988 and 1994 as part of the National Study of Families and Households.

Among the findings:

* 43% of men and 34% of women said they work more hours than they want to. The number is smaller for women only because one-quarter of them don’t have paying jobs.

* Half of all the women and 20% of the men said they wished they could work part time. In fact, though, just 20% of the women and 6% of the men did this.

* Only about 10% of couples said they prefer the traditional roles of the man as breadwinner and woman as full-time housewife. Yet 25% of the couples fit this mold.

* Just 14% of couples said they want both spouses to work full time. However, twice that number actually do.

Part of the problem, said Phyllis Moen, another Cornell sociologist, is that the job market is still largely geared toward the traditional pattern of working full time or not at all--a setup suited best to working husbands and stay-at-home wives.

“Workers increasingly are caught in a time squeeze,” Moen said. “They have two jobs, one at work, one at home.”

Home computers, e-mail, faxes and other innovations theoretically should make it possible for people to be more flexible about their work hours. But the researchers said the technology often seems to result in people working still more.

“People can work any place, any time, but they can also work everywhere, all the time,” Moen said.

Other data collected by Clarkberg show that when couples’ work hours are added up, they are spending more time on the job than ever before. Between 1972 and 1994, couples’ total average working time has increased by seven hours a week.

Another study by Robert Drago of the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee examined teachers’ hours to see if they are really as cushy as they are sometimes portrayed. He found that while teachers are required by their contracts to work an average of 6 1/2 hours a day, they actually average just under 10 hours when their extra hours at school, commuting time and homework are added in.