Balancing personal and family trajectories: An international study of dual-earner couples with pre-school children

In general, the nursing literature neglects healthy families and depictions of families are dominated by systems and developmental theory. The preponderance of dual-earner families has changed the meaning of family, however, nurses have given minimal attention to how women and men attend to work and home. Balancing personal and family trajectories is a substantive theory that accounts for how Canadian and English couples with pre-school children managed work and family life. The theory describes their efforts to maximize personal and family development, by using processes that attempted to support and sustain individual and family health, happiness, and fulfillment. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.