Real Partnership is Powerful: Understanding What Women Want and What They Know About Family Work and Communication

Abstract

Women provide the vast majority of unpaid family care, resulting in relationship dissatisfaction, depressive symptoms, thwarted career advancement, and diminished earning power (Cooke & Hook, 2018; Jung & O’Brien, 2019; Woods et al., 2019). The PARTNERS video intervention (Trovato & O’Brien, 2022) was created to educate heterosexual college women about family work distribution and healthy partner communication. The intervention was effective in improving knowledge of family work and communication and enhancing confidence in communicating with a partner for 303 college women. This study builds upon prior research by Trovato and O’Brien (2022) to assess specific differences in knowledge of family work, desired partner characteristics, and communication resulting from the PARTNERS intervention, as well as to identify ways to improve the PARTNERS intervention. Results of this study indicated that that the PARTNERS intervention educated undergraduate women about family work inequity between women and men and the effect of family work distribution on women’s relationship satisfaction, changed their desired partner characteristics to align with communication-related factors, and taught women key PARTNERS communication strategies. Future directions for research and clinical implications are discussed.