WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new Cornell University study on work and the family finds that support from supervisors and a sense of control over work schedules and workloads are becoming more and more important to today's workers as they struggle to work and raise families in antiquated work structures.

"Couples are managing as best they can, given the existing culture and organization of work and of career paths," said Cornell's Phyllis Moen, an author of the study, speaking at a special symposium today (June 15) on working families sponsored by at the Economic Policy Institute and the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. Moen is director of the Cornell Employment and Family Careers Institute, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She is also the Ferris Family Professor of Life Course Studies at Cornell.

Today's workers, she said, are struggling to raise families while constrained by antiquated work structures that are based on the outdated male breadwinner/homemaker model. But concerns of contemporary workers in two-earner households no longer reflect those in breadwinner/homemaker households. As a result, she said, more and more workers say they plan to leave jobs that don't give them more control over their schedules.

"Most workers would rather work fewer hours -- time has become the new scarcity for American families," Moen said.

Moen based her remarks on the findings of the Cornell Couples and Career study of 913 employees and 813 spouses, all from dual-earner couples, in upstate New York.

"These findings point to the need for diverse and alternative time options and greater flexibility in the workplace," Moen said. "We are witnessing today new cultural prototypes of family, community, work and career, and need to identify the circumstances at work that work for contemporary two-earner couples and single-parent families in all life stages. These will promote both workforce effectiveness and life quality in the next century."

She called for a restructuring of the workplace across society, reflecting the reality that today's workers have family responsibilities but no full-time homemaker at home. Such a restructuring would allow more options for timing of work and would help promote productivity, competitiveness and profitability, Moen said.

"Restructuring would reduce the stress of work for families, which, in turn, would affect life choices and life quality of children and adults alike," she commented.

Among the major findings of the couples and career study:

• Couples without children work long hours, but among couples with children, women work nine fewer hours a week than men.
• Both men and women want to work on average about 12 hours less a week.
• Supervisor support is strongly related to employee life quality and loyalty, as well as their ability to coordinate work and family roles.
• Among the respondants in the study, health care workers tend to have the least control over their work time; those in higher education have the most control.
• Working with the Chamber of Commerce Community Partnership Committee, Park fellows are helping to design, develop and deliver quantitative methods to assist non-profit organizations to measure their achievements in ways that will enhance their competitiveness for future funding.
• Regardless of job sector, men report greater control over their work hours and scheduling in every life stage. Men in all job sectors also report having lighter workloads than those reported by women.
• When couples struggle with juggling careers and families, wives typically scale back. Only 15 percent of men in the sample report priority being given to their wives' careers, compared with 50 percent of women who say their husbands' careers have priority.
• Factors related to workers expecting to change jobs include workload, lack of control over scheduling and lack of opportunities for flextime and telecommuting.