LOVE AND WORK - CAREER-FAMILY ATTITUDES OF NEW ENTRANTS INTO THE LABOR-FORCE

This paper reports the development of the Career-Family Attitudes Meas ure (CFAM), a new 56-item instrument for measuring individuals' attitu des towards managing the career and family interface. The measure was administered to a large sample of high school students and factor anal yzed to reveal six dimensions of career and family attitudes, which we re then scaled. Females in the sample had significantly more positive attitudes towards Balance and Independence than did males, while males had significantly more positive attitudes towards Dominance and Spous al Support than did females. Antecedents such as parental employment h istory and educational aspirations were significantly related to sever al of the scales. Results indicated that career-family attitudes invol ve preferences for the integration of career and family rather than fo r trade-offs between them. Research to establish the validity and expl ore the many applications of the CFAM is needed. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.