New Career Trend: She Goes, He Follows

James Schroeder, a cerebral, 52-year-old lawyer in Washington, gets a bang out of being compared with hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, 27.

No, Schroeder hasn’t taken to the ice for a new career.

But like Gretzky--who stunned the sports world by agreeing to move from Edmonton, Canada, to Los Angeles, partly so he could spend more time with his actress-wife Janet Jones, 27--Schroeder did something that might have gotten him elected Wimp of the Year in any number of bars nationwide.

In 1972, Schroeder decided to follow his wife, Patricia, to Washington when she took her new seat in the House of Representatives.

Schroeder left his partnership with a Denver law firm, searched for a new home, then helped pack the couple’s tots for the trip East. Once the family arrived, he helped his wife settle into her office. Not until the move’s turmoil eased four months later did he hunt for a job for himself, practicing international law for a Washington firm.

Schroeder’s relocation experience, while sometimes trying, is becoming more common. An increasing number of men are moving for love, following their wives to their new, better jobs.

A Look at the Figures

Statistics on the trend are rare. But the best-available figures from the Employee Relocation Council in Washington show about 33,000 husbands relocate annually for their wives’ careers. That is about 6% of the estimated 550,000 employee transfers nationally.

The percentage of women employees who were transferred for jobs rose to 13% this year, from 11% in 1986 and 5% to 6% in 1980, said Anita Brienza, the council’s public relations and advertising director. One study predicts that by 2000, that figure will reach 24.2%.

Brienza said experts figure that most married women workers who were transferred moved with their husbands, creating a trend that has been detected by some.

“We’re seeing a lot more husbands relocating with their wives,” said Patricia Cooney Nida, an Atlanta consultant who for a decade has set up corporate programs to aid dual-career families.

Husbands following wives is “a big issue (and) it’s going to get bigger,” Nida said, noting the trend can be exceptionally stressful over time for men because it challenges their traditional role as breadwinner.

“People just tend to have heart attacks when they find out you’re following your wife across the country,” Nida said.

Men who relocate to aid their wives’ careers find “guys at work making snide remarks, neighbors being nasty and family members saying, ‘My God, do you know what you’re doing?’ ” Nida said, adding that the “punishing” comments suggest to men: “How could you be so wimpy as to follow her?”

In reality, such moves generally take strength for men, who unlike women, are unaccustomed to re-starting their careers.

“When (men) go through the demeaning procedure of having to ask for a new job, and it takes them a long time, which it usually does, they get much more discouraged and depressed and withdrawn and quit trying,” Nida said.

Men who follow their wives routinely encounter a “thinly disguised suspicion” about their job skills, the nagging question being, “How good can this guy be if he’s left a position” for his wife, said Cornelia Strickland, who formely headed the board of a consortium of local employers who established a spouse employment assistance program.

Strickland, now affirmative action officer of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, said that it takes a spouse in her area an average of 5 1/2 months to find a job. That makes men very anxious.

“Occasionally if people are superstars like Wayne Gretzky, jobs for spouses are going to be found,” she said. “That’s always been the case. But if you’re not a superstar, no one’s going to fashion a job for an accompanying spouse.”

Counselors suggest one ingredient is crucial for a move to work for husbands and wives: The couple, especially the man, must be concerned with the welfare of the family as a unit.

That idea has worked for Leonard Chusmir, a management professor at Florida International University in Miami.

In 1982, he moved with his wife, Janet, 58, from Miami to Boulder, Colo., when she became one of the few women to hold the job of newspaper publisher for a major newspaper chain.

Moving Back to Miami

Five years later, when she became one of the handful of women chosen for the job of running the newsroom of one of the nation’s major metropolitan newspapers--executive editor of the Miami Herald--he returned to Miami.

“Janet and I have always considered our dual careers as a partnership and we always do what is best for the partnership,” said Chusmir, 61.

“In 1957,” he said, “we moved from Providence, R.I., with our children to Miami. That was a major move. She was not working. She did the traditional thing and picked up and started her life all over again. My feeling was, ‘Heck, she did it for me and no real complaint. It was my turn.’

“The second time, both of our children were grown and on their own. . . . (But) it would not have stopped us if the children were younger. I think it’s important for families to think of themselves as a unit. . . . If you put it together and it’s really going to be best for the family, you make the move.”

It can be tough for men, especially when they hear comments from other men, Chusmir said: “There was some questioning by my male friends in Miami. . . . ‘Gee, Len, how do you feel about moving for your wife?’ Which automatically brings up questions in my own mind about how should I feel? Or, ‘How do you feel about your wife making much more money than you?’

“When they ask these questions, it seemed clear that they were concerned.”

Chusmir said he was unconcerned about his ability to deal with such issues in his life.

But he did wonder about his friends, professionals all: “I was really surprised that they were that backward. . . .At that socioeconomic group, this is not exactly the Dark Ages. It surprised me that they were that traditional in their belief systems.”

Dan Clark--a Presbyterian minister who left New York and came to Los Angeles in 1987 to accompany his wife, Peggy, when she became head minister of the Pacific southwest region of the Disciples of Christ--also was dismayed about remarks that arose about his relocation.

He experienced “strange feelings,” he said, when he found himself “known at social gatherings as: the husband of Peggy. You say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a name. You want to know (it)?.’

“They’d say, ‘No, just Peggy’s husband.’ They’d actually say that. . . . I became very sympathetic to . . . all those wives who were married to executives and who just sort of disappeared.”

Clark also complained about jibes he got in the locker room: “Who’s following whose career? What about your career?”

A Bit of a Jolt

“First I kind of joked back with them,” he said. “Then I didn’t joke back. My response was usually, ‘Well, it puts bread on the table.’ We just concluded that it pays our bills and that’s the end of it.”

But such remarks “can catch you off guard because it can destroy your self-esteem,” he said. “You start to look at your job and wonder, ‘Do I have a career?’ You no longer feel you have a career where you’re making incremental steps up.”

The growing number of men who follow their wives in career moves has caused corporate America to make adjustments, such as offering spouse employment assistance, Nida said.

“A progressive corporation will pay for spouse employment assistance for men and women now, but it’s only because men came along,” she said. “I don’t think they would have ever done it just for the women.”

Despite these changes, some observers are skeptical about how much the trend will grow.

It may be much more frequent now that younger men accompany wives in their initial move to graduate school or a first job, said Jean O’Barr, director of the Women’s Studies Program at Duke University. But, she said, “What I do not see yet are couples following the woman’s interest on the second, third and fourth career choices . . . and I do not know if we will see it.”

Men’s moves for their wives need not be tough experiences, said Schroeder, who said he had few self-doubts about his relocation, for which friends praised him.

They said he was so “liberated,” a label he resists: “People over the years have always said, ‘Wasn’t it wonderful what you did?’ And the thing is, I had no choice. We had a 1 1/2-year-old daughter and a 4 1/2-year-old son. What was I going to do? My daughter was in diapers.”

He said he could not stay in Denver because it was too far from Washington. As a lawyer, he said he knew he could “always find something to do.” He had been politically active himself and had encouraged his wife’s ambitions. “I encouraged her to run. I was proud of her and enthusiastic and willing to move back here.”

A Win-Win Situation

For John Hawkins, 37, and Robin Ferracone, 35, her career move ended up benefiting them both.

In 1985, she became a divisional vice president of the Management Compensation Group. She gave up her San Francisco consulting job and moved to Los Angeles, though her husband had no job here.

“She was offered ownership in the company, a super salary and a chance to enhance her career. It was an easy decision for me,” said Hawkins, who owned a small firm he and his partners were selling. “I basically felt that I was very employable.”

Her new company worked with an executive search firm whose president Hawkins met the day they arrived in Los Angeles. Hawkins had an interview set up to interview with Sitmar Cruises the next day. He started work there two weeks later and is now its national accounts director. Meantime, his Fremont, Calif., firm was sold a year later.

“I never thought twice about, ‘Gee, what if I can’t find a job?’ ” Hawkins said, reflecting on his move. “I knew it wouldn’t be too long before the right opportunity came up and we’d both be happily employed or overly employed and not have enough time for ourselves.”

As for Schroeder, his Washington move also has been a plus, in part because it resulted in a better, though sometimes comic relationship for him with his children, said his wife, Patricia: “He clearly was a solo parent a lot more because I would be gone. . . . As a consequence he had to get to know the kids a lot more than he would have otherwise. If I’m not there, he couldn’t defer to me. And some of the funniest things used to be my young daughter’s hair when I used to return from a weekend. . . . He will never be a hair dresser.”