This book discusses the major challenges facing dual-career couples—a substantial proportion of modern society—and suggests ways for both individuals to achieve career success by re-evaluating traditional styles of working and focusing on productivity, flexibility, and negotiating win-win solutions. Women are becoming increasingly influential in the workforce; the era of men being the primary or only income-earner in a partnership is all but gone. Today, people tend to meet their spouse or domestic partner at school or at work. High achievers tend to pair with other high achievers, often in similar fields. This leads to couples in which both individuals are strongly motivated to have successful careers. What happens when they become parents or when one—or both—individuals need to consider relocating for their job? Many mid-career, college-educated people, especially women as well as undergraduate and graduate students, are concerned about developing a plan to mesh their career with a partner and are seeking guidance. This book offers a gender-neutral guide for 21st-century couples that will benefit men as much as women. The author provides career-management guidance for people in dual-career relationships in which both parties are ambitiously attempting to pursue equally important, high-powered careers, presenting examples of alternative solutions and arguing that many "women's issues"—including parenting and limited geographic mobility—are more appropriately managed in a gender-neutral way as dual-career couple issues. Readers will understand how to make better decisions regarding difficult situations, such as whether to accept an opportunity that adversely impacts their personal lives, choosing to take a leave of absence or to quit, investing a large amount of one person's salary for domestic assistance and childcare, taking paternity leave, and leveraging flexible work arrangements—for example, telecommuting.

"The" handbook for improving the lives of military spouses

For better, for worse, for Uncle Sam . . . Today’s military has changed dramatically—and spouses need to be prepared. Approximately half of our 1.4 million fighting men and women are married. And for a military spouse, information and support are not easy to find. Included here is: • How to enroll in the Child Development Homes program • What to do before a permanent change of station (PCS) • How to prepare for the deployment—and the return—of a spouse • Easy ways to calculate benefits, allowances, and special pays

What can we learn from looking at married partners who live apart? In Commuter Spouses, Danielle Lindemann explores how couples cope when they live apart to meet the demands of their dual professional careers. Based on the personal stories of almost one-hundred commuter spouses, Lindemann shows how these atypical relationships embody (and sometimes disrupt!) gendered constructions of marriage in the United States. These narratives of couples who physically separate to maintain their professional lives reveal the ways in which traditional dynamics within a marriage are highlighted even as they are turned on their heads. Commuter Spouses follows the journeys of these couples as they adapt to change and shed light on the durability of some cultural ideals, all while working to maintain intimacy in a non-normative relationship. Lindemann suggests that everything we know about marriage, and relationships in general, promotes the idea that couples are focusing more and more on their individual and personal betterment and less on their marriage. Commuter spouses, she argues, might be expected to exemplify in an extreme manner that kind of self-prioritization. Yet, as this book details, commuter spouses actually maintain a strong commitment to their marriage. These partners illustrate the stickiness of traditional marriage ideals while simultaneously subverting expectations.