Social Problems

1. DUAL BREAD EARNER AND
CONFLICT IN FAMILY
Family bondage gets legal recognition with the marriage ceremony of a male and
female. With the advancement of civilization individuals are becoming more self
centered and self dependent that is why both the male and female attempt to attain
economic solvency for smooth arrangement of bread and butter before coming under
the conditions of marriage. In the east, it is more or less admitted that male members
perform outdoor works for lively hood hand to hand female are engaged in household
activities. It is also universally accepted that finance or money in most of the case is
the determinant of decision making materialistic world. It gives acute feature in the
east because there is large number of poverty striven people. Here bread earner
makes and takes all the decisions in all respect. The negligible numbers of female
earners acquire decision making power in family affairs. So we may presume that
money plays pivotal role in decision making at every sector of life. The more one
member earns money the more s/he attains dominance in decision making.
History says human contacts over ever wider geographic areas have expanded the
variety of resources, products, services, and markets available to consumers. We have
altered the way we want and expect to live, and we’ve become more deeply affected
(positively or negatively) by conditions outside of our immediate domains.
Researchers emphasized on seven factors that enforce globalization in the twenty first
century. These are- Increase in and expansion of technology, Liberalization of
cross-border trade and resource movements, Development of services that
support international business, Growing consumer pressure, Increased global
competition, Changing political situations and Expanded cross-national
cooperation (Daniels et al 2009).
During last quarter of the twentieth century industrialized society witnessed a
dramatic metamorphosis in the roles men and women in the workforce. To a lesser
extent at home this change was fueled by the Women’s movement, which
successfully advocated for the equal opportunity for women in the workplace and by

2. the steady decline in the earning power of men’s wages, making women’s
employment a necessity for many families. Beginning in the 1960s the traditional
breadwinner-homemaker lifestyle, which was the norm for middle-class, married
couples, at first slowly and then with gathering momentum, to the duel-earner couple,
dyads in which both members work for pay. Because of their dual responsibilities,
working couples are particularly vulnerable to the problems of work-family spillover,
conflict and crossover. Work-family spillover, which can be negative or positive and
is bidirectional, involves the transfer of mood and behavior from one domain to the
other. For example, negative work-to-family spillover occurs when an employee is
distracted and irritable at home because of pressures at work.
Type of Spillover Example
Negative Family-to-work Disagreement with spouse leads to poor
performance at work
Work-to-family Heavy workload leads to distraction and
irritability at home
Positive Family-to-work Positive relationships at home energize and
improve ability to cope at work
Work-to-family Experience at work makes one more
interesting at home
Table 1: Work-Family Spillover
Source: Duel-Earner Couples 2003 by P.V. Roehling & P. Moen
Work-family conflict occurs when the responsibilities of work and interfere with one
another. For example, work-family conflict occurs when a parent must leave work to
attend to a sick child, or when an employee brings work at home to complete during
family time. Crossover a third concept relevant to dual-earner couples occurs when
events at the workplace influence the mood or behavior of earning spouse. For
example, negative crossover occurs when a disagreement at work leads to tension
among the employee and the employee’s family members ultimately that affects
family life.
Universally accepted working time for full time employee is eight hours a day
excluding the journey, so children of duel earner families enjoys less company of their
parents. So they miss the normal family behaviors, like religious norms, cultural
attitude, and social behavior and remains in communication gap. Aftermath of
communication gap leads many duel earner dyads to take divorce. Even their children
sometimes become drug addicted. Here we should bear in mind the proverb “Spend

3. more time in taking care of your sons and daughters and converting them into assets
—even if both are liabilities to start with!” (Promod & Vijay Batra-1996)
As dyads earn for their livelihood the ego collision occurs frequently. Though duel
earners are engaging in full time job but in case of household chores many male try to
shift family burden on their better half and they spend their leisure in gossiping with
friend sand peer, so ultimately working women has to shoulder huge household
works. Here we should put emphasis on the famous saying “Remember that
successful marriage depends on two things: (1) finding the right person, and (2)
being the right person.” (Promod & Vijay Batra-1996)
The challenges for new parents become apparent right away when they considered
how they would care for their newborn. To stay home with their infant, parents will
often piece together vacation and sick leave. However, this leaves them without a
cushion if they or the child gets sick after they return to work. In a study 61 percent of
US parents reported having some paid leave. However, only 16 percent had paid
parental leave. The rest used vacation time, sick time and personal days to stay home
with their newborn. When these workers had to miss work because of an illness, some
were “written up” by supervisors and/or docked pay. As a result, new parents worry
that their job is insecure (Maternity Leave- Maureen Perry-Jenkins).
New parents welcome the extra money; compulsory overtime can upset carefully
arranged child care. Mandatory overtime occurs most often in highly supervised, low-
control occupations, such as manufacturing plants. Often, employees are asked to
work overtime with no or little warning. By law, employers are allowed to fire,
demote or otherwise punish a worker for refusing to work overtime. “You literally
find out in the middle of your shift that you need to work until 8 tonight. You are
supposed to pick up your child at 5 and you’ve been given mandatory overtime. Then
you’re in a real bind,” says Perry-Jenkins. “The issue is, if you don’t do the
mandatory overtime, the company can legally dock your pay the next day or for
multiple days. They can demote you. They can do all sorts of things. So, it’s kind of a
mixed bag because many of these lower-income families want the extra money, but
the unpredictability of when it will happen and how to manage child care is really a
problem. All of these issues of time and timing and who has control over it, are really
big challenges for a lot of our families.”(Mandatory overtime- Maureen Perry-
Jenkins)

4. Current increase of the duel earner dyads has been a change in the timing and the rate
of fertility. This is true that women with higher education become ambitious in career
and personal establishment in ego-state lead them to take fewer children. In addition,
because of the difficulty of combining work and family responsibilities, many
professional men and women decide not have children at all.
Dominance is instinct in human, s/he to present importance adopts many means;
bread earning is one of them. In the first world where ego guides decisions, so
personality conflict and clash are common phenomenon there. The more financially
solvent individual is the more self-centered that leads less tolerance in behavior. To
combat these individualism and dogma, sharing of emotion and sacrifice yields more
contentment should be included in education curriculum at secondary and higher
secondary level. We should bear in mind that we attain fulfillment when we are
together, discrete individuals enjoys temporary happiness but for sustainable
happiness and peace a life partner is a must.
Money plays pivotal role in the materialistic world. We can not think a single day
without money. Beginning from ultra rich to ultra poor money is the major
determinant of position of individual or nation as a whole. Although famous scholar
of the east Chanakya commonly known as Koutillya in his famous verses stated “
BIDYA TANCHA NRIPA TANCHA NAIBA TULLYA KADACHANA,
SWADESEY PUJYATEY RAJA BIDWAN SARBATRA PUJYATEY” (Sri
Dhanapati halder) that is a rich man is respected and honored by the people who know
them but the learned men are respected everywhere. Here we could conclude in this
way that we need money to earn knowledge. And the money from where we get, we
get also decision from the provider. So it is inevitable on the part of earner to bypass
the strength of money that s/he spends. We can not avoid power of money but can
make alternate best use of it through learning and knowledge sharing.

5. Reference:
 International Business Environments and Operations by John D. Daniels, Lee
H. Radebaugh, Daniel P. Sullivan, 2009, 20th edition, Pearson Education
International.
 Management Thoughts A Collection by Promod Batra and Vijay Batra 1996,
2nd edition, page 57(205) & 67(241)
 Patricia V. Roehling, Ph.D. Hope College: and Phyllis Moen Ph.D. Cornell
University, Duel-Earner Couples 2003 [Online, retrieved on 2nd December
2009, available at: <http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/encyclopedia__entry.php?
id=229>]
 Brihat Chanakya Sloke Edited by Sri Dhanapati halder Verse-69, Chapter-3,
page-23. General Library and Press.
 Dual-Earner Couples and the Transition to Parenthood: Study Looks at
Challenges Facing Working Class Families A Conversation with Maureen
Perry-Jenkins. [Online, retrieved on 3rd December 2009, available at:
http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/The_Network_News/5-2/TNN5-2_Perry-Jenkins.pdf]