What Is Needed to Help Women Balance Work and Family Responsibilities?

One of the major challenges for managing human resources in the 1990s is to appropriately respond to employees having to manage the dual responsibilities of home and work (Paris, 1989). Balancing work and family has been considered a women's issue, with the question being whether women could handle both the home demands and the responsibilities of a paid job. Yet the entrance of women into the workforce has also required major role adjustments by their husbands. According to the traditional model of work, husbands prioritize work over family with the wife providing the necessary emotional and physical support to keep the husband in “good working order” (Pleck, 1977). In today's society, this model is no longer widely applicable, as men in dual earner families receive less emotional support than their single‐earner counterparts (Burke, & Weir, 1976; Keith, & Schafer, 1980) and tend to assume greater family responsibilities (Holahan, & Gilbert, 1979; Weingarten, 1978).