How Career and Non-Work Goal Progress Affect Dual Earners’ Satisfaction: A Whole-Life Perspective

Abstract

Many career self-management models assume that career goal progress promotes satisfaction, but research on the topic has yielded mixed results. Adopting a whole-life perspective, this study examines how career and non-work goal progress relate to career, non-work, and life satisfaction and explores crossover effects and gender differences between dual-earner partners. We tested our research model using Actor-Partner Interdependence Modeling on a two-wave dataset of 190 heterosexual dual earners (i.e., 95 couples). Career goal progress was not related to any of the satisfaction indicators. For men, non-work goal progress was marginally positively related to career and non-work satisfaction and positively related to life satisfaction. For women, non-work goal progress was not related to any satisfaction indicator. Between partners, men’s non-work goal progress was positively related to women’s non-work and life satisfaction, whereas women’s career goal progress was negatively related to men’s life satisfaction. Implications for research and career practice are discussed.