Work Won't Love You Back: The Dual Career Couple's Survival Guide

By Stevan E. Hobfoll and Ivonne H. Hobfoll

Book Overview

This guide draws on the authors' own experiences to provide a light-hearted solution manual for dual-career couples. It describes the specific stresses that dual-career families experience and offers... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0716725932
• ISBN13: 9780716725930
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: W H Freeman & Co
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Useful and fun book for couples dealing with work & family

I use this book in a college course I teach on work and family. Students tend to really love it - they don't even sell it back! I have also recommended it to friends and family. The book is soundly based in the research and theoretical literature of social sciences and work and family; it makes a great companion to Arlie Hochschild's The second shift. The strength of the book is that it urges the reader to apply the information. The authors have developed numerous checklists and exercises for couples to do to make decisions about work and family that reflect the readers' values. The major weakness of the book is the focus on "dual career" couples; there is a real social class bias toward professional couples who have education and financial resources. To be fair, the authors state this limitation early on. Still, the choice of such privileged couples means that the guidebooks presents options that are not relevant or useful for many of us. I long for a guidebook for single mothers, for example. Other than that, I find the book to be insightful, useful, and provocative to most students. It is way better than typical "self-help" books. I especially appreciate the way the authors write about gender roles and behaviors, and their even handedness on family values. Students find the book entertaining; for example, the chapter related to household tasks in entitled something like, "I'd rather see a man do dishes than dance naked." Information is presented in an accurate, humorous, and personalized way. It is also upbeat and hopeful. Readers are inspired to construct more rewarding ways of managing work and family.