Attitudes towards work and family roles and their implications for career growth of women

Sex Roles, Vol. 45, Nos. 7/8, October 2001 f 0 2002)

Attitudes Towards Work and Family Rolesand Their Implications for Career Growthof Women: A Report From India

Deepti Bhatnagar^Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Ujvala RajadhyakshaIndian Institute of Technology, Bombay

This paper explored attitudes towards work and family roles of professionalmen and women in India. Ninety-two husband-wife pairs from salaried, uppermiddle class, dual-career families in India participated in the study. Propo-sitions based on adult development theories of men and women, regardingreward value derived from and commitment made to occupational, parental,marital, and homemaker roles over the life cycle, were tested. Results indi-cated that there was no change with age, in attitudes towards occupational andhomemaker roles. Instead, gender-based differences in attitudes towards theseroles were observed. Attitudes towards the marital and parental role variedacross the life cycle, although not in keeping with propositions based on theadult development theories of men and women. There was no reversal in atti-tudes towards work and family roles of men and women after midlife. Rather,some reversal in attitudes appeared to occur between the marital and parentalrole, over the life span of both men and women. Results are reviewed withinthe Indian cultural context and their implications for the career developmentof women are discussed.

KEY WORDS: family roles; Indian culture; career development.

'To whom correspondence should be addressed at Indian Institute of Management,Ahmedabad, India.

549

0360-0025/01/1000-0549/0 (D 2002 Plenum Publishing Corporalion

550 Bhatnagar and Rajadhyaksha

INTRODUCTION

If the twentieth century was characterized by a constant search for newgeographical markets, the twenty-first century will be characterized by asearch for new talent. As the competition for well-qualified, high-performinghuman resources intensifies, organizations are recasting and redesigningtheir policies that affect career development of employees, with the inten-tion of attracting and retaining only the "best" to stay with the organization.Today it is recognized more than ever before that happy employees staycommitted to the organization and that keeping an employee happy meansunderstanding and appreciating work and nonwork aspects of an employee'slife. This fact has been underscored by the globalization of organizationstructures and the increasing diversity of the workforce caused particularlyby the entry of growing numbers of women into paid employment. All thesechanges have made it imperative to move away from the traditional notionof the "organization man" as a young White male to a more pluralistic def-inition of the same. In this context, efforts to increase employee retentionand productivity need to begin with an improved understanding of the aspi-rations and attitudes towards work and family roles of professional women,along with those of their men colleagues. Our paper presents results of onesuch effort among Indian men and women professionals.

UNDERSTANDING ATTITUDES TOWARDS WORK AND EAMILYROLES USING THE DEVELOPMENT APPROACH

Of the several theoretical approaches that can be used to understandan individual's attitudes towards work and family roles, the developmen-tal approach has been gaining considerable popularity for its dynamic andcomprehensive perspective. This approach sees work and family life not justas static phenomena but also as an evolving reality, which offers individualsdifferent constellations of challenges and choices at different stages of de-velopment. Further, the developmental approach addresses issues relatingto work-family interfaces, and it also allows for a different view of the adultdevelopment of women by acknowledging that developmentally women aredifferent from men.

For a long time adult development theories propounded by Erikson(1978) and Levinson (1978) to name a few claimed to speak for the develop-ment of all adults. These theories were based mainly on the life experiencesof North American men. For instance, the work of Daniel Levinson and asso-ciates (1978) was based on intensive 20-hr interviews with 40 men in the agegroup 35-45 years hailing from the northeastern part of the United States.

Attitudes Towards Work and Family Roles of Professional Men and Women in India 551

As a result of his study, Levinson identified four broad periods of sta-bility interspersed with periods of change in the life cycle of a man. The fourperiods of stability were the era of preadulthood (8-22 years), the era ofearly adulthood (17^5 years), the era of middle adulthood (40-65 years),and the era of late adulthood (60-65 years). Intervening between the peri-ods of stability were four periods of change the early adult transition years(17-22 years), the age-30 transition, the midlife transition (40-45 years), andthe late adult transition (60-65 years). During the periods of stability, thelife structure of a man involved addressing the appropriate developmentaltasks during that period, whereas during the periods of transition, elementsof life structure were reviewed and rearranged so as to respond to changesin one's external and internal psychological domains.

According to Levinson, building a career and family were the two ma-jor preoccupations for men during the early adulthood era. Career usuallytook precedence over family during this phase. Energies were focused to-wards attaining occupational goals, and family concerns were relegated to asecond place. Accomplishments in the world of work helped enhance self-esteem and professional standing. The precedence of career over familycontinued up to middle adulthood. It was not until the midhfe transitionyears (roughly the midforties) that men begin to experience and deal withfamily issues, and with confiicts between career and family, in a significantway. During this period, as the purpose of life's journey and milestoneson the way were reexamined, men started altering their perspective. Theirlife priorities underwent major reappraisals; the pursuit of self-mastery andcompetitive individual accomplishment started being replaced with a com-mitment to help develop others. In other words, Levinson's description ofmidlife changes suggested that during this stage, there was less inhibitionin shedding some of the stereotypically masculine baggage and a greaterwillingness to acquire a more stereotypically feminine orientation in workand family roles. Although Levinson did not study men in the late adulthoodstage that follows the period of midlife transition, late adulthood is generallyunderstood as a stage that involves coping with trauma of being superannu-ated, physiological changes, issues of health and mortality, and one's placein the changing structure of family roles.

Although mainly on the basis of the life experiences of men, manage-ment practitioners have used Levinson's study and other theories belongingto the same genre to explain the work attitudes and work involvement ofall employees across the life cycle. Organizational career paths have alsobeen designed based on these theories. It was left to Gilligan (1980) andBardwick (1980) among others to highlight the fact that the adult develop-ment of women may be of a different nature from that of men. Gallos (1989)went on to draw implications of this difference for the career development of


women, her most important conclusion being that the career paths designedfor men may not be entirely suitable for women.

Pioneering work on the psychological development of women has beendone by Gilligan (1993). Gilligan, whose work is based on the replicationof Kohlberg's moral development theories (Kohlberg, 1969), was the firstto question Kohlberg's hierarchical ordering of the affiliation/achievementdichotomy. From Gilligan's work emerged the notion of "difference" in theadult development of men and women, both in the timing and the mannerin which they go about addressing and resolving the conflict between thedevelopmental tasks of handling separation and attachment, or autonomyand integration across the life cycle (Gilligan, 1993).

Psychological development of women has also been the concern ofBardwick (1980). Focusing her attention on adult (working) women,Bardwick identifies four basic life phases for women that contrast with thelife stages of a man. These are early adult transition years (17-28 years), thesettling-down period (30-40 years), middle adulthood (40-45 years), andthe "age 50 and older" phase. During the early adult transition years, mostwomen, unlike men of the same age, are busy getting married and settlingdown to family life. The primary concern is to provide a stable start to theirmarriage, and their investment in work at this stage is not as significant asthat of their men counterparts. Attitude towards work involves a commit-ment to doing an important job well rather than a commitment to an ongoingoccupational or professional identity (Gallos, 1989, p. 120). For women, thenext phase namely the settling-in period entails strong commitment to fam-ily roles especially the maternal role. Most women in this phase expend a lotmore energy than do men in raising children as they oversee their childrengrow and move from preschool to junior school.

An attitude towards work that de-emphasizes career in relation to fam-ily continues for women until the middle adulthood phase (until the forties),and then things start changing. Having put child-rearing responsibilities be-hind them, women now have more time and energy to invest in to theircareers. During this stage, while most men go through a painful midlifecrisis, women experience greater assertiveness and professional accomplish-ment at work (Gallos, 1989). This being their belated (and probably thelast) opportunity to make a mark in their profession, most women who arefreshly released from the dominant responsibilities of family roles applythemselves to work with renewed interest and energy. They experience pro-fessional resurgence at a life stage when, interestingly, men are ready tomove towards the stereotypically feminine "enabler" roles at work and inthe family.

The age 50 and older phase presents comparable experiences and chal-lenges for men and women as both have to learn to deal with the trauma


of separation and loneliness caused by the empty nest at home, retirementfrom work, and a concomitant of aging—the occasional loss of dear ones.However, traces of differences could still be detectable in the seeminglysimilar experiences between men and women. As wives are usually youngerthan their husbands who are normally the first ones to retire and are oftenkeen to support career pursuits of their wives, most women find this phase—post-middle-adulthood—to be professionally challenging and rewarding.

Building on this notion of a "return to work" by women at a later stagein their life, Sekaran and Hall (1993) have proposed a model that explainsrole cycling between work and family for dual-career couples. A couplebegins with equal commitment to and involvement in both work and familyroles, in the early stage of married life together. However, with the arrivalof children into the family, one of the partners, usually the woman, reducesher work involvement, whereas the other partner, usually the man, devoteshimself to career-building activities. Once children have grown up and familyresponsibihties have abated, partners reverse roles.

To conclude the discussion on adult development, while both men andwomen grapple with the developmental issues of attachment and separationin their work and family roles at different life stages, they seem to resolvethese conflicts in different ways. The development process of women ap-pears to be the mirror image of that of men. Men seem to begin their adultlife with an emphasis on individuality and workplace achievement at theexpense of other roles and move towards connectedness at a later phase oftheir life. Women, on the other hand, seem to begin their adult life by valuingconnectedness with significant others more than autonomy and individualachievement, and move towards accepting separation and expression of in-dividual excellence as recognition of self at a later stage.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

The "difference" perspective on the adult development of men andwomen has been fast gaining ground. However, most of the theorizing hasbeen based on samples of men and women in the United States. Empiricalinvestigation of some of its basic tenets in cultures other than the NorthAmerican one is still inadequate. This study attempts to address this lacunaby examining whether the attitudes to work and family roles of professionalmen and women in India follow the pattern suggested by adult developmenttheories.

Based on main tenets of the adult development theories, it is possibleto propose that the extent to which professional men and women will findthe work and family roles (of spouse, parent, and homemaker) personally


rewarding and satisfying will vary across their life cycle. It is also possible topropose that the amount of time and energy resources that they are willingto commit to the enactment of work and family roles will vary across theirlife cycle. TTierefore we can state

Proposition I. The reward value of and commitment to the work role willvary significantly across different stages in the life cycle of professional menand women.

Proposition 2. The reward value of and commitment to family roles (con-sisting of marital role, parental role, and homemaker role) will vary sig-nificantly across different stages in the life cycle of professional men andwomen.

Further, consistent with adult development theories, we can expect thatduring early adulthood and during the settling-down phase of middle adult-hood (roughly the twenties and thirties), men will derive greater rewardvalue from the work role and will also commit more time and energy re-sources to this role than will women. Thus the following can be stated;

Proposition 3a. During the phase of early adulthood and the settling-downyears of middle adulthood, the reward value derived from and the commit-ment to the work role will be greater for men than for women.

However, towards the end of the settling-down period and during andafter the middle adulthood years (roughly forties onwards) a reversal in theattitudes towards work and family roles by men and women can be expected.As a result, in a later phase of their life, women will derive greater rewardvalue from and plan greater commitment to the work role than will men.

Proposition 3b. During the post-middle-adulthood years (40+ years), thereward value derived from and the commitment to the work role will begreater for women than for men.

With regard to the family roles, consistent with adult development the-ories, in the early adulthood years, women will derive greater reward valuefrom the family roles and will also be more predisposed to committing greatertime and energy resources to the enactment of their familial responsibilitiesthan will men. Thus,

Proposition 4a. During the phase of early adulthood and the settling-downyears of middle adulthood (the twenties and thirties), reward value derivedfrom and commitment to the family roles will be greater for women thanfor men.


Also, compared to women, men will be the ones deriving greater rewardvalue from and planning greater commitment to the family roles in their lateryears. Therefore we can state

Proposition 4b. During the post-middle-adulthood years, the reward valuederived from and the commitment to the family roles will be greater for menthan for women.

METHOD

Participants

Participants for the study were "dual-career couples" from the cityof Bombay. Dual-career couples are a special case of dual-earner or dual-worker couples where both spouses have occupations requiring special train-ing, a high degree involvement or commitment, and the occupations entaila regular sequence of related jobs in a hierarchy of prestige through whichpersons move (Aldous, 1982). The dual-career lifestyle is a relatively recenthfestyle in the Indian context, and very few studies have focused exclusivelyon it. Most studies that have looked at work and family issues in India havelargely paid attention to the working woman/wife and her changing statusin society (e.g., Mitra, Pathak, & Mukherjee, 1980), or on dual worker asopposed to dual-career couples (e.g., Ramu, 1989; Singh & Sahgal, 1995).Because there was no readily available list of dual-career couples in India,the snowball sampling technique (Green, Tull, & Abraham, 1995) and surveyresearch method using questionnaires were used to gather data.-

On the basis of referrals and other information provided by initial partic-ipants, dual-career couples belonging to different age groups were contacted.A set of two self-administered questionnaires, one for each spouse, was givento each couple, and both partners were requested to fill these without con-sulting each other. The final participants for the study consisted of 184 usableresponses from 92 husband-wife pairs, who were living together and werefull-time salaried employees at the time of data collection. Participants camefrom a diverse set of professions such as medicine, management, academics,and so forth. There appeared to be a bias in the sample towards the med-ical and management professions, which together represented about 87%of the participant group. This bias may have arisen because of the snowball

study departed from the interview technique of collecting data predominantly used inprevious studies on adult development, in the interest of arriving at reliable and valid empiricalresults, and also because using several techniques to explore any research question is oftenpreferred to relying on just one methodology (Jick, 1979).


sampling method used. Seventy-five percent of the participants were post-graduates, 90% were Hindus, and 62% had a personal monthly income thatexceeded Rs l(),()()0 per month, which put them in the upper-middle-classincome category in India.

To capture broadly, the life phases of men and women as given byLevinson (1978) and Bardwick (1980) in as uniform a manner as possible, thefollowing age cutoffs were used: <30 years for early adulthood phase, 30-40 years for the settling-down phase of middle adulthood, and 40-1- yearsfor the post-middle-adulthood phase. Distribution of participants acrossdifferent age categories is given in Table I.

Measures

Participants' attitudes towards work and family roles were measuredusing the Life Role Salience Scales (LRSS) developed and validated byAmatea, Cross, Clark, and Bobby (1986). LRSS measures personal role ex-pectations on two dimensions, namely the personal importance or valueattached to a role (role reward value or RRV), and the intended level ofcommitment to a role in terms of investing one's time and energy resourcesin performing a role (role commitment or RC). These expectations are mea-sured with regard to four roles, namely the occupational role, marital role,parental role, and homemaker role. The LRSS comprises 40 items in all.These items are divided into eight attitude scales that measure the fol-lowing dimensions: occupational role reward value (ORRV) and occupa-tional role commitment (ORC), marital role reward value (MRRV) andmarital role commitment (MRC), parental role reward value (PRRV) andparental role commitment (PRC), and homemaker role reward value(HRRV) and homemaker role commitment (HRC).

The LRS scale has been used extensively to measure personal salienceof different life roles, both in Western and non-Western contexts (e.g., Aryee,1992; Chi-Ching, 1995; Day, 1999). The alpha reliabilities for the scales basedon our study data were of acceptable value as follows: .71 for ORRV, .75 forORC, .74 for PRRV, .75 for PRC, .80 for MRRV, .62 for MRC, .84 for HRRV,and .83 for HRC. Responses were obtained on a 5-point Likert-type formatranging from 1 {strongly disagree) to 5 {strongly agree). Descriptive statisticsand the correlation matrix of mean LRS scores for the sample are given inTable II, while mean scores on LRSS for men and women in different agecategories are given in Table I.

A conscious effort was made to restrict interdependence between part-ners' responses by requesting them to fill up the questionnaire independentlywithout consulting each other. Yet, to the extent that partners' responses


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ORRVORCPRRVPRCMRRVMRCHRRVHRC

Note. N =*p= - .05.

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were refiections of their shared lives as a couple, some element of correla-tion cannot be ruled out.^

RESULTS

To test Propositions 1 and 2, analysis of variance was conducted. Resultsare given in Table III. The procedure revealed main effects of participant'sage on marital role commitment {F = 4.56, p < .01) and parental role re-ward value (F = 7.66, p < .001); and main effects of participant's gender onoccupational role commitment {F = 14.61, p < .001) and occupational rolereward value {F = 4.25, p < .04), and to a somewhat less significant degreeon homemaker role commitment (F = 2.94, p < .09). No interaction effectsof participant's age and gender were evident on any of the LRS scale scores.

As no main effect of participant's age was evident on occupationalrole reward value or occupational role commitment. Proposition 1 was notsupported. In other words, attitudes towards the work role did not varyacross the life cycle for men and women. In fact there were gender-baseddifferences in attitudes towards the occupational role as was indicated bythe significant main effects of participant's gender on occupational role re-ward value and occupational role commitment. This result was supportedby t tests, which revealed that occupational role reward value (t = 2.20,p < .03) and occupational role commitment (r = 4.06, p < .001) were sig-nificantly greater for men than for women (see Table I).

e of the limitations of using couple data is that it increases the possibility of confoundingresults. Not only are partners likely to influence each others' responses to questions (despitethe researcher's request of no consultation), but the life choices of one partner are also likelyto affect/constrain the choices of the other partner. Hence responses could vary from the(possibly wider) range of responses of independent men and women had they been the studyparticipants. Despite this limitation, numerous work-family studies have relied on couple dataas it almost always throws up interesting comparisons.


Table III. ANOVA Analyses of Effect of Participant Age and Gender on LRSS Scores

Variable

Occupational rolereward value (ORRV)

Occupational rolecommitment (ORC)

Parental role rewardvalue (PRRV)

Parental rolecommitment (PRC)

Marital role rewardvalue (MRRV)

Marital rolecommitment (MRC)

Homemaker role rewardvalue (HRRV)

Homemaker rolecommitment (HRC)

Main effects olparticipant age

SignificanceF

0.38

0.79

7.66

1.27

0.36

4.56

0.32

0.23

of F

.69

.46

.001

.28

.70

.012

.73

.80

Main effects ofparticipant gender

SignificanceF

4.25

14.61

2.21

1.85

0.13

1.56

0.67

2.94

of F

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.000

.14

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.72

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.42

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Two-way interactioneffects Age x Gender

F

0.47

0.37

0.72

0.07

0.87

0.27

0.60

0.09

Significanceof F

.63

.69

.49

.93

.42

.76

.55

.91

Because main effects of participant's age were evident only with regardto marital role commitment and parental role reward value. Proposition 2was only partially supported. In other words, of the family roles, attitudestowards the marital role and the parental role varied significantly over thelife cycle. However, attitudes towards the homemaker role, in terms of eitherreward value or role commitment, did not vary with age. In fact, t tests onthe entire sample supported the main effects of gender reported above andindicated that homemaker role commitment tended to differ across gendergreater for women than for men (although not to a significant degree att = —1.67, p < .09; see Table I). Additional ANOVA analyses on the home-maker role revealed that for men alone, reward value derived from the oc-cupational role (ORRV) significantly exceeded their reward value from thehomemaker role (HRRV; F = 3.09, p < .03). In contrast, for women therewas no significant difference between their reward value from the occupa-tional and homemaker roles. But the reward value from the occupationalrole for women significantly exceeded their reward value from the maritalrole (MRRV; F = 2.53, p < .05). All other (within gender) comparisons ofLRSS scores indicated no significant differences.

Propositions 3a and 3b were examined using t tests to compare meanLRSS scores of men and women falling in each age group. Results are givenin Table I, and revealed that there was no significant difference in the LRSSscores of men and women participants in the <30 years age group. However,commitment to the work role was greater for men than for women during


the settling-down years (30^0 years age group), at t = 2.72, p < .01, thuslending some support to Proposition 3a.

Contrary to Proposition 3b, in post-middle-adulthood years the atti-tude towards the work role continued to be more positive for men than forwomen. For instance the occupational role reward value scores for men in the40+ years age group significantly exceeded the scores of women falling inthe same age group (/ = 1.78, p < .08). Similarly, occupational role com-mitment scores of men significantly exceeded the score of women for the40+ years age group (t = 2.60, p < .01). Thus Proposition 3b predicting re-versal of role preferences and a greater occupational role reward value andgreater occupational commitment for women than for men, postmid-life, didnot receive any support.

An examination of Propositions 4a and 4b using t tests also shown inTable I revealed the following results: There was no significant difference be-tween the scores of men and women participants on the reward value fromand commitment to the three family roles namely, the parental, marital,and homemaker roles, for the <30 years age group as well as for the 30-40 years age groups. Hence Proposition 4a suggesting greater involvementof women with the family, during the phase of early adulthood and thesettling-down years before midlife, was not supported. Similarly, there wasno significant difference between the scores of men and women participantson the reward value from and commitment to the three family roles namely,the parental, marital, and homemaker roles, for the 40+ years age group.Hence Proposition 4b suggesting a reversal of roles postmid-life, with greaterinvolvement of men than that of women in family roles, was not supported.

Our study indicated that the only significant results in the stagewise com-parison of scores between men and women pertained to the occupationalrole. During the settling-down phase of middle adulthood (30-40 years) com-mitment to the work role was higher for men than for women. Thus onlyProposition 3a was supported. Proposition 4a suggesting higher scores forwomen on family roles for the early adulthood and settling-down years ofthe life cycle were not supported. Propositions 3b and 4b also received nosupport, as LRSS scores did not indicate any reversal in attitudes towardswork and family roles between men and women when compared to scoresof the early adulthood stage. In fact, occupational role commitment of mencontinued to be higher than that of women during the thirties and forties.

Because parental role reward value and marital role commitment scoreswere the only scores to vary significantly across the life cycle, these wereexamined more closely. The analyses revealed interesting results. For theentire sample, parental role reward value was significantly lower during earlyadulthood (<30 years) as compared to the settling-down period of middleadulthood (30^0 years) as also the postmidlife years (40+ years; t = —2.95,


p < .004 and t = -3.08, p < .003, respectively). In contrast to this, mar-ital role commitment scores depicted a reverse trend across the three agegroups. Marital role commitment value was significantly higher for the entiresample in the early adulthood years, as compared to the middle adulthoodand post-middle-adulthood years (r = 2.68, p < .008 and/ = 2.99, p < .003,respectively).

I

DISCUSSION

In this paper the authors attempted to understand attitudes towardswork and family roles of professional men and women in India. Proposi-tions based on the adult development theories of men and women, regard-ing reward value derived from and commitment made to the occupational,parental, marital, and homemaker roles over the life cycle, were tested.

Some Things Change With Time Whereas Others Remain the Same

Our study suggests that the evolving work and family roles for profes-sional men and women in India present an intricate web of attitudes towardsthese roles, some of which change with time, whereas others remain tena-ciously stable over the years. This appears at odds with the predictions ofWestern development theories discussed earlier. The following section in-terprets our results in the context of the Indian culture in which the studywas embedded. Our results indicated that as far as the work role was con-cerned, attitudes towards the role did not vary with changes in life stage.Instead they varied depending on gender. Reward value and commitmentto the work role was greater for men than for women, and it stayed thisway throughout the life span of individuals. Tliis suggests the perpetuationof traditional beliefs in the midst of change. While women acquire profes-sional training and play professional roles, in comparison to occupationalroles the salience of women's commitment to family roles—so often em-phasized in the Indian culture as being central to their very being—remainsundiminished.

With regard to roles within the family domain, there were some age-related differences. Thus attitudes towards the parental role seem to changeover the life cycle depicting an increasing trend. Attitudes towards the mari-tal role too changed over the life cycle, and in general there was a decreasingtrend in marital role commitment. However, attitudes towards the home-maker role did not vary across the life cycle. In general, commitment to thisrole appeared to be higher among women than among men.


The above results indicate that in the Indian context, attitudes towardswork and family roles of professional men and women can be better un-derstood by looking at the forces of gender role socialization rather thanthe processes of adult development. It appears that even in the case ofdual-career couples where both partners are equally qualified and work-ing in professional jobs, the work identity is more strongly developed amongmen, whereas the homemaker identity is relatively more strongly devel-oped in women. Such discrepancies between husband and wife regardinghousehold labor and family identity appear to support results of other stud-ies (e.g., Aryee & Luk, 1996; Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson, 2000).What is noteworthy from this study is that these identities are '"sticky"—they do not change with age. Men enter the work-family role system witha certain understanding about their involvement and commitment to thework role and the homemaker role, which stays constant. The same is truefor women. It is almost as though men and women have notional "fixedquotas" about the time and energy they will spend on these roles andabout the kind of expectations that they will carry about these roles. Thereis relatively little or no give-and-take within the couple (dyad) as well aswithin themselves (individual), between their work and homemakerroles.

It should be noted at this point that couple data may have confoundedresults causing attitudes to the work and homemaker roles to appear morestatic than is really the case. Because the participants were members of dual-career families, it is likely that the choices of one partner constrained thechoices of the other partner resulting in a stability of responses and attitudesover the life course. Working couples have been known to compete with eachother at least initially, before adopting a pattern of allocating responsibilityfor work and home roles along traditional lines because it is more functionaland efficient to do so (Parson & Bales, 1955). Future studies could attemptto overcome this limitation in method by relying on independent samples ofmen and women.

Any give-and-take and variation in attitudes towards work and familyroles that does occur with age for the couple appears to be restricted to thefamily domain and more specifically to the marital and parental roles. TheANOVA procedure revealed main effects of age on marital role commit-ment and parental role reward value, and t tests showed significantly lowerparental role reward value scores during the early adulthood years as com-pared to the middle adulthood and post-middle-adulthood years, whereasmarital role commitment was significantly higher during early adulthood ascompared to later phases of the life cycle. In fact in Figs. 1 and 2 we can seethat the pattern taken up by the parental role reward value scores for menand women participants in the study is a near mirror image of the marital


•PRRVMRC

«30 30-40

Age group (years)

40*

Fig. 1. Parental role reward value and marital role commitment of men-mirror images?

role commitment scores, across the life cycle. As investment in the parentalrole increases, investment in the marital role decreases. As a couple starts afamily and as the parental role becomes more demanding, it appears that thepartners make the extra space for the parental role in their lives by "takingaway" from the marital role.

The traditional Indian concept of marriage as a stable and permanentinstitution (as different from being "a contract") perhaps makes it easier forIndian couples to neglect their spousal roles, as their parental roles becomemore demanding. Because marriage in India is widely regarded as an insol-uble alliance, partners in a dual-career dyad may feel that they could takethe marital bond for granted; it need not be serviced regularly. Thus, whilecoping with severe pressure on their limited time and energy resources thatoften characterizes a dual-career lifestyle, partners seem to place greater

48 1-

•PRRVMRC

<30 30-40

Age group (years)

40*

Fig. 2. Parental role reward value and marital role commitment of women-mirror images?


value on the parental role that requires constant nurturance than does themarital role that can be given a lower priority. What the above analysis sug-gests is that the "reversal in attitudes" rather than appearing between workand family roles restricts itself within the family roles, more specifically, tothe marital and parental roles.

Examining our results from women's career development perspective,the absence of a reversal in the attitudes towards the work roles in partic-ular can be better understood in light of the unique experiences of profes-sional women in India. First, predictions in the adult development theoriesof a resurgence in women's work involvement in the post-middle-adulthoodphase are implicitly based on the assumption that by this time, women wouldhave finished meeting their parenting obligations. However, because in Indiachildren in their teens do not usually leave home to study and work, andgiven the high value attached to women's parental role in the Indian cultureand tradition, Indian women do not indeed lower their involvement in theparenting role in their midhfe phase. Further, in the absence of private andstate-funded institutions for elder care, many women, especially those wholive in traditional joint and extended famihes, are often responsible for thecare of senior members in the family, a "parenting in reverse!" With no clear"empty nest" stage in their lives, therefore, most Indian women continue toshoulder the earlier parental and other family responsibilities. Hence theyare unable to return to work with heightened vigor as postulated by manywestern theorists. Additionally, shifting gears to increase involvement inwork in the postforties years requires organizations to place faith in the abil-ities of such women to continue contributing at the work place in a significantmanner. However many women who have opted for a "go-slow" track tocare for their children find that even if they are ready to invest more time intheir career, organizations are unwilling to provide them with fresh trainingand development opportunities to make the most of their remaining years ofservice.

Thus, the period of postforties depicted, as a phase of "great promise"for women in the Western societies does not find similar professional resur-gence among Indian women, as family obligations require "parenting" carenot only for their teenaged children, but also for elderly relatives. Hence,attitudes towards work and family roles may not depict the reversal that issuggested by the adult development theories of men and women. Our resultsthus highlight the need for new theories to capture multiplicity in attitudesto work and family responsibilities across different cultures. Only when suchstudies are nested in a variety of cultures can we begin to understand thecomplexity and richness of work-family roles and experiences in differentsocieties.


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Attitudes towards work and family roles and their implications for career growth of women

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