We humans have a habit of getting attached to each other. People
often connect as couples, who may then form families, and their lives outside
work become closely connected. But the lives of members of a dual-earner couple,
especially professionals each developing their own careers, also become
connected in the work world, for better or for worse. We often hear that
couples with dual careers must make sacrifices and tradeoffs, such as when deciding
where to live and how much to work, which could negatively affect one or even both
partners. Yet some couples seem to have very different experiences: both
members reap benefits in the workplace that emerge from their personal
connection.
A new paper in Administrative Science Quarterly by Jennifer Louise Petriglieri and Otilia Obodaru investigates how members of some
dual-career couples – but not others – grow their professional identities and
careers thanks to each other. They look at how each partner in a relationship can
promote the other’s professional development by encouraging exploration and
being supportive when the exploration has disappointing results. This type of
support ranges from the breakfast conversation about important decisions to the
evening consolation following problems at work.
Petriglieri and Obodaru home in on a feature of supportive
partnerships that we often overlook: who supports, and who receives support?
There is a radical difference between dual-career couples in which one partner
supports the other and couples in which both partners support each other. A
couple with a single supporter is essentially a relation in which support is
traded for dependence. Inevitably the two partners will develop differently,
and they will understand the tradeoffs involved in how much support to give and
how much to receive. The result is likely a relationship with built-in conflict
and weaker professional growth for at least one of the partners.
A couple with two supporters does not have this problem of
unequal trade and dependence because each supports the other, usually in ways
that are different enough to be hard to compare. This not only reduces conflict
but also has another key benefit: because one’s own experience is an important
source of support, mutual support means learning from each other and using the
other’s professional identity to develop one’s own. Often this works well
because partners have complementary skills, so through mutual support and
learning they can grow their professional identities and improve their
professional skills.
This research really is a combination of old and new knowledge.
The old knowledge is that we learn by teaching and that dependence produces
weakness. The new knowledge is that this explains how dual-career couples can
benefit from each other’s professional identity. It should come as good news to
any couple wondering if it’s truly possible to support each other’s careers.
