The Interplay of Careers: Dentists, Spouses and Practice Location

Objectives: This paper explores male and female dentists and spousal careers, focusing on the relative earnings of working spouses, the weight given to spouses' career needs, and other factors when making practice location choices.

Methods: A voluntary survey was mailed to 849 University of Minnesota dental school alumni who graduated from 1994 through 2004. A response rate of 41.2% (350) was obtained; the sample was judged representative of the population. Depending on the variables in question, ANOVA, Chi-square statistics, or Fisher's exact test (2X2 table) were used to assess differences.

Results: Practice patterns were similar for males and females, although the latter reported working roughly 6 fewer hours per week (p<.00001). Of 41 dentists with non-working partners, 90% were male. Slightly more than 86% of the dentists had partners who worked outside the home. Male dentists tended to report higher incomes (p<.05). The reported incomes of female dentists' partners tended to be higher than those of their male dentist counterparts (p <.00001). Female dentists were more likely than males to view their spouse's career needs as “more important” than their own in the choice of a practice location. This holds if the working spouse earns less than the dentist (p < .0098) or earns more (p < .0093). Females were twice as likely to report having taken their spouse's career needs into account in relocation decisions. Males were nearly a third again as likely to report having made such decisions to better their own career.

Conclusions: Despite careers which place them on par with their male counterparts, female dentists appear more inclined than males to consider their spouse's career needs when making practice location decisions. Whether they do so out of a sense of career mobility, individual flexibility, and independence or as a result of other cultural and psychological factors could not be determined from this research.