One of the trends evident in analyses of social change in Australia involves greater numbers of married couples in which both partners intend to maintain their professional careers. Perhaps they intend to remain childless or to have only one or two children and not allow child-bearing and rearing to interrupt the professional development and career of both parents.

Such couples will reveal this kind of intention in their responses to the background questions about how many children they want and when they want to have children. Further information about their attitudes will be indicated in their individual and couple scores in the Children and Parenting category. Look for any items on which there is uncertainty or disagreement - these will be useful areas for clarification and the couple will be very likely to gain great benefits from exploring these issues. They will need to have consensus and confidence about the mutuality of the their attitudes and goals if they are to succeed in their dual-career orientation.

Additionally, recent research (Perrone, K., & Worthington, E., writing in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2001, 48, 3-9) has shown that marital quality and good coping strategies for dual-career couples are linked to being able to reduce role strain (the tension caused by conflicts and pressures associated with balancing family and work roles).

The implication is that dual-career premarital couples will need to be encouraged to recognise how important it will be for them to have good communication and conflict resolution skills, not only in general, but specifically in relation to handling role strain. Their scores in the Communication and Conflict Resolution categories of PREPARE should provide a good starting point for such explorations, but it will be important to encourage the couple to think particularly about how they will need to handle role strain issues throughout their relationship.