Dual Careers, Doleful Dilemmas

By Anastasia Toufexis

She loved the job. No wonder, then, that Elizabeth Dole agonized long and publicly before stepping down as Secretary of Transportation last month to help her husband, Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, in his bid for the presidency. Her quandary struck a resonant chord in men and women across the nation who increasingly confront the same dilemma: when both spouses enjoy satisfying careers, which one takes precedence?

According to Government statistics, husband-and-wife wage earners now make up 56% of American marriages. Not surprisingly, some traditional expectations are giving way to new realities. It is now the dutiful husband who may find himself resisting the prospect of following his wife's career to a new city. Women, for their part, are no longer as willing to provide unquestioning -- and unpaid -- support for their spouses' career ambitions, a once hallowed given of corporate, academic and political life. Even the military can no longer count on blind obedience from officers' wives. Indeed, two women recently complained that brass at Grissom Air Force Base in Indiana warned them that their husbands' chances of promotion would be jeopardized unless they quit their civilian jobs. Following an investigation, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger this month forbade commanders to intrude in the careers of military spouses.

Wives today are willing to make sacrifices -- but only up to a point. Take Tipper Gore, for instance. Her husband, Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, is in hot pursuit of the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Still, she has not abandoned her decade-long crusade against violence in the media, an involvement that her husband has supported. Gore continues her own schedule of lectures and joins her husband on the campaign trail for perhaps three days a week. "I feel a bit of a conflict," she admits. "But so far I'm campaigning and also being true to myself."

Another long-held assumption is fading fast: that women are ever ready to pack up and travel for a husband's advancement. Now men are often doing the moving. Russ Ringl is giving up his position as vice president of human resources for Playboy in Chicago to follow his wife Karen to Los Angeles, where she has become vice president for nursing services at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan. Finding a satisfying job is proving a slow process, he says, though he remains optimistic. Still, he concedes, "if I was going to have a mid-life crisis, this is the time."

Shari Aigner, an administrator of the Denver-based Independent Relocation Consultants Association, says that of the working couples who use her organization's services, "one in five reject transfers because the trailing spouse cannot find a job." Companies in Dayton and the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., area are now providing information about job openings to help overcome such difficulties.

Some couples solve the problem by living and working apart and seeing each other on weekends. About 700,000 couples in the U.S. have such commuter marriages, says Fairlee Winfield, a professor of business at Northern Arizona % University. Despite the separations, some of which last ten years and longer, infidelity is apparently rare. Of 297 couples she surveyed, only 8% had affairs while apart; most polls put the national norm for adultery at about 26%. "The fact that they're willing to live with the arrangement indicates a high level of commitment to the marriage in the first place," explains Winfield. Also, she adds, "they're too busy with their careers and commuting back and forth."

TV Reporter Mary Nissenson and her husband, Anchor-Reporter Mike Parker, have made good use of moving vans and frequent-flier discounts. Of their seven years together, they have lived in different cities for three years. For 2 1/2 years, Parker worked at a Chicago station while his wife toiled in Miami. Then Nissenson moved to New York City, where Parker joined her for a few months. He was rehired in Chicago, and she joined him. Both are ambitious, but they admit to making career sacrifices for their marriage. "Mike left a weekend anchor position in Chicago to be in New York with me, and I moved to Chicago with a pay cut," acknowledges Mary, who says she has no regrets. "When I'm 60, there isn't anybody in broadcasting who will love me. But Mike will."

Mary and Mike now occasionally appear together as co-anchors on weekend newscasts for WBBM-TV in the Windy City. Officials at some stations who once forbade such arrangements have concluded that employing couples is sometimes good business. Indeed, antinepotism rules are slowly being lifted at companies across the nation. O'Melveny & Myers, one of the nation's largest law firms, has engaged several married couples. Martin Marietta, the giant aerospace and defense contractor, actually has an affirmative hire-a-couple policy. The company believes it is a sound strategy to lure and retain top people. Its Denver division now adds about 100 couples a year, notes Personnel Administrator Joseph Weiner. And there is no charity involved. "Eight out of ten times the recruited person is married to someone with skills we can use," he insists. There are a few rules, however: partners, for example, cannot supervise each other.

While many men still simply accept their wives' careers, others are assuming a more active role by attending business functions and parties with them. John Shutkin, a New York attorney with the accounting firm of Peat Marwick Main, often makes social rounds at the side of his wife, Barnard College President Ellen Futter. "Sometimes I feel like Caesar's wife," % admits Shutkin. "I've got to watch my behavior." Still, he notes that men in his position are often the beneficiaries of a double standard. "I suspect that I get a lot of Brownie points that I probably don't deserve. With a female spouse, it would be a matter of expectation and obligation. Instead I get 'What a guy!' "

With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York and David S. Wilson/Los Angeles