Fewer job openings force more couples to live under two roofs

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Jon Dodson planned to join his wife and four sons in their new home in southwestern Michigan as soon as he could find a job there. But seven months later, he spends his weeknights in a Chicago apartment while, any day now, Meagan Dodson expects to give birth to their first daughter.

The employment prospects for her husband, a computer technician in Evanston, fizzled after companies that might have hired him started laying off people, Meagan Dodson said. So for now he is hanging onto what he has and making the 200-mile round trip to St. Joseph, Mich., on weekends.

“The lifestyle is really different,” she said of their long-distance marriage. “The biggest challenge is the kids want him around. ... They don’t understand why he doesn’t come home every night.”

As the economy continues to stumble and new jobs become harder to find, it’s likely that more couples will find themselves stuck in commuter marriages, or at least considering the possibility as a financial lifeline, experts say.

Reginald Richardson, vice president of the Family Institute at Northwestern University, said he has seen the number of married couples who are struggling to maintain two households increase by about 30 percent during the last few years. The reasons vary, he said, but now include limited job openings.

“People are much more open to sending their r sum s out of state,” said Richardson, a marriage counselor. “In this sort of job market, people are going to take care of their families. This may be what they’re forced to do.”

Precise figures on how many couples are commuting during the recession are difficult to find. The U.S. Census Bureau hasn’t released 2008 statistics on the number of married Americans living apart, and previous reports on the subject predate the current downturn. But academic and counseling experts say the next round of data could well show an upward trend in long-distance marriages.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Eva Ponder, a licensed clinical social worker at Cornerstone Counseling Center of Chicago, who said it may take a little more time for the stresses and problems associated with long-distance marriages to surface.

Caroline Tiger, author of “The Long-Distance Relationship Guide,” said she used to hear mainly from unmarried college students and adults in their early 20s, but in recent months inquiries have come chiefly from married couples.

“One spouse had to move for a job because they couldn’t pass it up, and people are taking anything,” she said.

Among this group are Mark and Kristen DeBlock, who thought they would be back under the same roof two months ago. Now they would consider themselves lucky if both are living in their North Aurora home when their first baby is born in five months.

Mark DeBlock, a surgical sales specialist, accepted a job with heavy travel requirements, thinking it would act as a springboard to a better position in the Chicago area in nine to 12 months.

If the company were still expanding its sales force, such a position almost certainly would have opened up, he said. But this year the medical-device company reduced positions, leaving DeBlock, who is based in Phoenix, stuck. He and his wife see each other every weekend.