literature review on work family conflict

The family side of work-family conflict: A literature review of antecedents and consequences

Objective: To review the empirical literature on family antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict.

Background: Over the last decades, family living and working life have changed profoundly, affecting families' needs and expectations towards reconciliation, as well as perceptions of work-family conflict. Previous reviews of the relevant literature in this flourishing field of research have predominantly focused on the work side of sources and consequences of these conflicts. However, a review of the family side of work-family conflict is still missing.

Method: The review of the existing literature followed the guidelines of "PRISMA - Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses." 100 quantitative empirical studies were identified by relevant keywords, including research between 1988-2021.

Results: The review of international and interdisciplinary empirical evidence remarkably shows the heterogeneity in research on family antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict in the directions of family-to-work and work-to-family. In addition, the findings of existing studies are inconsistent, if not ambivalent. However, the review also demonstrates a growing body of literature that considers or even focuses on the family side of work-family conflict.

Conclusion: The family plays an essential role in reconciling the private and the working life, as it is a source of conflict and a resource for dealing with conflicts at the same time.

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Being stressed in the family or married with work? A literature review and clustering of work-family conflict

European Journal of Management and Business Economics

ISSN : 2444-8494

Article publication date: 15 October 2021

Issue publication date: 7 April 2022

Work-family conflict is an important topic which had an evolution, starting from a static definition, where work and family domains were divided, to a more dynamic and complex balance. COVID-19 has influenced society and created a significant distress among families and working activity, and this topic has been characterised by a major interest, considering some old definitions where this balance was considered problematic but not as an enriching opportunity.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used SCOPUS to find all records mentioning work-family conflict, by considering book, article and review, excluding conference paper and considering only records written in English language. After a duplicated and not pertinent record removal, the authors obtained a number of 675 records. The authors considered 437 records from SCOPUS to create a cluster map.

Using SCOPUS and VOSviewer the authors have clustered 5 different areas, which are regrouped in next clusters considering keywords with most co-occurrence and significancy: Work-life balance and burnout gender cluster job stress and performance social and family support job satisfaction.

Research limitations/implications

Cluster map is origined only by SCOPUS database.

Originality/value

This work aims to find a state of art about this topic, creating hypothesis where this problem has been exacerbated by 2020 due to important society modifications created by COVID-19, where recent evolution of work-family balance has been complicated by papers which come back to consider this balance as problematic.

• Work-family balance
• Organisations

Pascucci, T. , Hernández Sánchez, B. and Sánchez García, J.C. (2022), "Being stressed in the family or married with work? A literature review and clustering of work-family conflict", European Journal of Management and Business Economics , Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 239-265. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJMBE-06-2021-0191

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Tancredi Pascucci, Brizeida Hernández Sánchez and José Carlos Sánchez García

Published in European Journal of Management and Business Economics . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

Conflict view, born during early 1900, adopting a structural-functionalist approach, is based on a clear and static role separation between gender and functional roles in society and family.

The compensation view, introduced in the late 1970s, is based on a more fluid separation between family and work roles, wherein the individuals adopt a compensation strategy and invest more energy to resolve a lack of satisfaction

The balanced view, initiated in the late 1980s, grants a connection between work and family roles, which have to be balanced, enriching this new approach with the gender role theory, which considers the different female components in marital and family entities, for a long time considered as individuals who had to passively accept their role and not be involved in the working world. Women are involved in this approach, wherein the family and working roles have to be in contrast, not on a continuous alternation, but have to coexist and enrich each other.

We think that the three distinct approaches to this topic, which theoretically follow a chronological progression, still coexist, while also considering the influence of the cultural context in which they are threatened ( Hemmert et al. , 2019 ) and have an important influence on human resource management which is interested in pursuing employee satisfaction ( Hennessy and Lent, 2008 ; Binde and Coad, 2013 ; Minnotte et al. , 2015 ; Elrehail et al. , 2020 ).

In the past, most family roles, especially within the middle class, were more linear than today, as a family had just one income from the male's work, while the woman had her role at home, managing the house and educating children. Since the beginning of the XIX and XX centuries, social and economic changes have modified the familiar equilibrium, which was revealed to be unsatisfactory, especially in the second half of 1900, with feminist movements which requested equal treatment and rights. Society has become more complex, less linear, sometimes disorienting ( Bauman, 2000 ) and the first approach of conflict view cited before became insufficient; families got in trouble because some partners could not manage this change, but others also created new families and creative adaption strategies. During the last decades, some families maintained traditional roles, recalling the conflict view that we mentioned before, which did not tolerate a change in family and social structure; others created new families, where work mostly maintained fundamental importance not only on the economic side but also in placing an important border between marital and working problems, where each working partner had his or her private space, properly managed with a flexible strategy by the working organisation itself ( Boiraha et al. , 2020 ). It also worked for couples who were working together, because even in the same workplace, there was the possibility to be separated, having different functions within the organisation. The new way to treat and analyse the interaction between work and family is considering a balance and not a conflict, even if means to increase complexity ( Carlson et al. , 2006 ; Willis et al. , 2008 ; Peters et al. , 2009 ; Elwart and Konradt, 2011 ; Zhao Roy and Mattilla, 2013 ; Crom and Miller, 2018 ; Boiraha et al. , 2020 ; Yang and Cheng, 2020 ). The COVID-19 pandemic which plagued China and the rest of the world in 2019 has changed life in almost all countries. Beyond the medical risk of killing many people, this pandemic – as most epidemic diseases – has created economic, political and social damage which will have negative consequences even after the end of the pandemic. Countries infected by this virus are not only in danger of human losses, but also of important limitations that most world governments have created to face this disease. If it can be a macrosocial impairment in terms of economic loss and institutional credibility, it can be a problem even in the lives of individuals and their families, increasing the work-family conflict risk ( Burke, 1994 ; Liu et al. , 2019 ; Osadchuck et al. , 2020 ). While nations that have reduced their services and movement of people or continued their pre-COVID activities have paid in terms of life losses and the overload of their hospital structures and sanitarian personnel ( Bergman et al. , 2008 ; Yildrim and Aycan, 2008 ; Blomme et al. , 2010 ; Takeuchi and Yamazaki, 2010 ; Nelson, 2012 ; Battistelli et al. , 2013 ; Ruokolainen et al. , 2014 ; Sharma et al. , 2016 ; Dinibutun, 2020 ; Manzano-Garcia and Ayala Calvo, 2020 ), countries that have significantly restricted people's movement to just going out for essential activities have forced their citizenship to cope with important stress. Quality of life changed, and this adaptation was predominantly negative if we consider substance abuse ( Taylor et al. , 2021 ), family violence ( Griffith, 2020 ) and psychic suffering ( Fellows et al. , 2016 ; Banerjee et al. , 2021 ; Jokic-Begic et al. , 2021 ; Szmulewitz et al. , 2021 ). Most families restricted their activities and movement in 2020, administering a significant change in their work and free-time management.

This problem has been relevant in countries conducting the lockdown strategy, forcing people to suspend or convert their work activities to remote mode. This means that many people, who used to leave their houses to go to the workplace, interact with clients, colleagues and superiors and create a daily routine, have to stay at home with their partners and sometimes with their children ( Battistelli et al. , 2013 ; Beham et al. , 2015 ; Kim and Wollensbe, 2018 ). Using a psychoanalytical similitude, there is a precise setting regarding the physical workplace, invested by psychological meanings, and these meanings help the worker to separate the job from the family both physically and psychologically. If the worker is forced to work in the same place where he/she works with his/her family, this separation decreases, and the conflict risk increases. This study stresses on a bio-psycho-social approach ( Engel, 1977 ). There is no supremacy between any of these three dimensions, but it is important to understand that they have different kinds of evolution: while the biological risk related to COVID-19 will be vanquished in 1–2 years, thanks to the creation and administration of a proper vaccine, psychosocial consequences regarding individual, socioeconomic and interpersonal aspects will be elaborate with a different timing and mode. Work-family conflict, in this case, can be harmful, creating an emotive contagion between workers ( Wang et al. , 2020a , b ) and damaging coordinators ( Wilkinson et al. , 2017 ; Dixon et al. , 2020 ).

2. Study design, exclusion/inclusion criteria and used instruments

Arts and humanities

Engineering

Biochemistry

Mathematics

Agricultural and biological sciences

Pharmaceutical

Material sciences

Computer science

Veterinary.

We have started to use English as the only language since it is used in 90% of the publications in this area. In Figure 1 we represent our records selection procedure with PRISMA statements ( Mother et al. , 2009 ) (see Figure 2 ).

3. Database description

The first mention of this topic concerns work-family conflict during parenthood transition ( Belsky et al. , 1985 ). As shown in Figure 3 , there has been a mild constant growth in the last 20 years in works that talk about this kind of conflict, stating that it is an important matter. However in recent decades, sometimes this growth is reduced or elevated; for example, around the world financial collapse of 2009, due to the economic/working stress among families, a significant down in the next year and then a new incrementation trend to the rearrangement which probably influenced the family lifestyle and role. It is likely that an economic crisis can also affect the family system, and family problems can interfere with job performance, but a global crisis can trigger family suffering ( Repetti et al. , 2002 ; Richter et al. , 2010 ; Chelariu and Stump, 2011 ; Richter et al. , 2015 ; Canet-Giner et al. , 2020 ; Dong et al. , 2020 ; Wang et al. , 2020a , b ). Research has also produced an assessment instrument to measure the intensity of this conflict ( Kim et al. , 2019 ). The most important increasing trend is during 2020, the first year of this pandemic, and consequently, an important modification of social interaction around the world.

Considering the 13 most prolific countries around the world regarding this matter, it is unavoidable to consider the United States, officially the first country in the world to record the most COVID-positive people and COVID-related deaths. The USA is already the most prolific country in almost every area, but we underline here a significant superiority of papers about this topic, stating again how much this pandemic is socially, psychologically and economically disruptive, even more than from a simple medical point of view.

The gap between the USA publications and others is more evident when we consider the entire sum of every publishing and compare it with the record number of the others in Figure 4 .

This research line is quoted in many journals in Table 1 , regarding social science, human resources and organisational behaviour. The sensitivity of inner individual conflict is important because personal problems, even if related to extra-working life, risk being an excessive stress load for the worker, who could have a significant working performance deficit or decide to leave a job. That is why organisations have to consider the need to create a work routine that is not excessively demanding, avoids the efficiency obsession, or does not force workers to neglect their free time and families.

The most important researchers investigating this topic are from different countries. Most of them are Americans, but some authors are from other countries, where this issue has received attention. We think that the work-family conflict has not only psychological and organisational importance, but also cultural relevance in Western countries and is particularly sensitised in Israel and Finland, and Islamic countries such as Turkey, where there is actually a “work in progress” regarding female rights. For example, work-family conflict is an emerging matter in hospitality management, wherein hotel managers of a particular culture are used to a specific family model — for example, based on a traditional asset where women do not work ( Kasper et al. , 2005 ; Wang et al. , 2010 ; Fackrell et al. , 2013 ; Nasurdin et al. , 2013 ; Lee et al. , 2019 ; Morgan and Pritchard, 2019 ; Tobak and Nábrádi, 2020 ). Hospitality workers often treat them differently from how they behave in the family, creating a dissonance between their work and family roles ( Karatepe and Uludag, 2008a , b ; Karatepe, 2013 ; Karatepe and Kilic, 2015 ). Most studies are oriented to organisational and working psychology ( Griggs et al. , 2013 ; Allen et al. , 2019 ; Hunter et al. , 2019 ), educational psychology ( Cinamon et al. , 2005 ; Cinamon, 2009 ), social psychology ( Mauno and Ruokolainen, 2017 ; Wayne et al. , 2019 ) gender psychology ( Cinamon et al. , 2002 ; Lee et al. , 2017 ) and hospital psychology ( Rantanen et al. , 2013 ) (see Table 2 ).

4. Cluster analysis

Cluster 1: Work-life balance and burnout (12 items, 24%)

Cluster 2: Gender cluster (10 items, 26%).

Cluster 3: Job stress and performance (8 items, 53%).

Cluster 4: Social and family support (seven items, 10% co-occurrence)

Cluster 5: Job satisfaction (5 items, 16% co-occurrences).

A happy worker is a positive element within an organisation. Is fundamental to preserve job satisfaction ( Deng and Gao, 2017 ; Cazan et al. , 2019 ; Nielsen et al. , 2020 ) to grant positive working feedback. A worker needs to effectively invest in his or her organisation, without considering its working activity with the only goal of earning money ( Chan and Fung, 2015 ). A proper organisation that could reduce role ambiguity and assign the right role division between workers, avoiding an excessive workload to some of them and constant supportive activity by the supervisor rational organisation reduces work-family conflict and turnover intention ( Karatepe and Udulag, 2007 ; Culbertson et al. , 2009 ; Ngah et al. , 2010 ; Hammer et al. , 2011 ; Karatepe and Azar, 2013 ; Proost et al. , 2010 ; Mihelic, 2014 ; Chen et al. , 2016 ; Schierman and Glavin, 2017 ; Zhu and Li, 2016 ; Raza et al. , 2018 ; Talukder, 2019 ), acting positively on working stressors.

5. Conclusions

This paper begins with a consideration of the topic of work-family conflict, which has evolved during the last century and the social evolution and complexification of society. The first conception of work-family conflict stresses the word “conflict” because work and family are different domains in a linear society, which must be strictly separated and divided. The evolution of the family, passing through a series of family members, needs to create new and innovative ways to consider work and family interactions. Recent years have also included Eastern and developing countries in the research, although their cultures are still evolving in the definition of family roles. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has stressed world societies beyond the biological risk, disorientating people and organisations, creating poverty, anxiety, anger, depression, as well as weakening beliefs and strong institutions we used to consider as solid. Our cluster analysis shows that most clusters, such as 1 and 3 ( Figures 6 and 7 ), are embedded in the ancient and negative conception of work-family conflict, wherein a superior complexity among families and society brings distress due to difficulties in facilitating change. Previously, this separation between work and families was clearer, with men mostly dedicated to work and women within domestic walls. However, during recent centuries, this situation has been modified in industrialised countries, creating a new role disposition with many decades of debate and manifestations for civil and women's rights, which are still in progress. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced millions of people to reduce or change their activities, sometimes resulting in job loss or significant money and job reduction and an increased state of insecurity or job stress. This change has also been felt inside the family, with an unexpected modification in daily life and activities. The COVID-19 pandemic did not create work-family conflict, which already existed by the end of the last century, but it hit on different points of weakness in the modern system, as it overcharged some National Health Systems which were already vulnerable because of lack of financial funds, corruption, disorganisation, structural and equipment obsolescence, or personnel inadequacy. Similarly, work-family conflict was a significant matter before the 2020 pandemic and was caused by different factors, such as individual psychological difficulties, organisational problems which created excessive stress, lack of separation between work and private life, insecurity due to socioeconomic factors and a lack of serenity. Work-family conflict studies are vital to formulating prevention protocols to limit this psychological suffering and are useful for finding some diagnostic criteria to determine these warning bells as well as for creating a better working environment or allowing the worker to have a personal space to “destress” ( Spencer et al. , 2019 ) before returning to the family.

This last part is not practical with a worker forced to work remotely at home every day, but this aspect has to be managed gradually, an aspect which has not been applied in many countries that have suddenly adopted radical lockdowns and hasty reopenings. It is noteworthy that this discomfort has created another psychological wound without adopting an immediate and premature return to pre-COVID routines, demonstrating that collective trauma ( Nadler and Ben-Shusham, 1989 ) is not sufficiently elaborated but rather removed, although this element also emerges as a more complex way to create a balance, not a conflict between work and family. Gender studies ( Figure 8 ) are dedicated to this topic, with women as the main characters involved and valuable members of the family, being competent in working activities, but characterised by a special sensitivity to both work and family ( Cardella et al. , 2020 ), allowing the family to be a resource for support and not only a problematic and stressful element ( Figure 9 ). The family, following more recent studies on this topic, can become an element of enrichment in this case (see Figure 10 ).

PRISMA statement selection flow

Publication trend during last years

Representation of 15 most active countries publishing papers about the article's topic

Comparison between USA and the rest of the world publishing countries

Cluster map

Work-life balance/burnout

Job stress and performance cluster

Gender cluster

Social and family support

Job satisfaction cluster

Representation of the 10 most prolific publishing journals

Table of 10 most active Authors

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The relationships between work-family conflict and life satisfaction and happiness among nurses: a moderated mediation model of gratitude and self-compassion.

• 1 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
• 2 Human Sciences and Design, Family Sciences Dept., King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Background: Researchers and practitioners are concerned with the impact of work-family conflict on the well-being of workers, including those in the health care sector, and previous research suggested that nurses were experiencing a range of negative outcomes.

Aim: To investigate the potentially mediating role of self-compassion and moderating role of gratitude in the relationships between work-family conflict and both life satisfaction and happiness among Saudi nurses.

Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 368 nurses (men age = 35.18, SD = 6.67, 70.65% of females). Nurses were recruited via social media using convenience sampling techniques. They completed the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Subjective Happiness Scale, the Gratitude Questionnaire–6, the Self-Compassion Scale, and the Work-Family Conflict Scale, as well as a set of demographic questions. The data were analyzed using PROCESS MACRO model 4 and 8, and the reporting followed STROBE checklist.

Results: As expected, the study found a negative relationship between work-family conflict and both life satisfaction and happiness. These relationships were mediated by self-compassion. For the relationships between work-family conflict and life satisfaction and happiness, and between family-work conflict and happiness, this mediation was moderated by gratitude.

Conclusion: This study built on positive psychology and demonstrated that the positive personality traits of self-compassion and gratitude can engender enhanced life satisfaction and happiness among Saudi nurses.

1 Introduction

Researchers and workplace organizations have been concerned with the interference between work and family roles for quite some time. It is challenging for workers to achieve a balance between work and family responsibilities ( 1 ), which may produce work-family conflict. It has been well-established by prior research that work-family conflict is a threat to the well-being of workers. Many studies have reported direct and indirect negative relationships of work-family conflict with life satisfaction ( 2 – 4 ) ( 5 – 8 ). Prior research has reported additional negative effects of work-family conflict on workers, including burnout ( 9 ), physical health problems ( 10 ) ( 11 ), and psychological issues ( 12 ) ( 13 ; 11 ).

Nurses deal with more and greater challenges than many other workers, such as long periods of shift work, heavy workload, and a great deal of pressure ( 14 – 16 ), which may make them more prone to work-family conflict. In studies among nurses, Burke and Greenglass ( 17 ), ( 18 ), and ( 19 ) all reported that work-family conflict was associated with negative well-being effects. Different negative experiences have been reported in Saudi nurses in previous research. Turnover in Saudi nurses were estimated at a rate of 20%, which is higher than other countries such as England ( 20 ). In a region of Saudi Arabia, it was reported that nurses had decreased job satisfaction, and a 40% rate of turnover was reported in the study ( 21 ). Another study found that Saudi nurses had moderate levels of quality of life ( 22 ). It is therefore important to investigate factors that can mitigate this distress among nurses.

Recent research suggests that positive psychology constructs may protect nurses from this distress. A meta-analysis on positive psychology interventions among nurses concluded that mindfulness interventions reduced anxiety among nurses ( 23 ). Among healthcare workers, it was reported that mindfulness positively impacted on job satisfaction ( 24 ). Another quasi-experimental study reported that nursing students benefited from an empathy intervention program during internship ( 25 ). Further, positive psychology constructs, such as hope, resilience, and optimism were found to protect nurses from distress ( 26 ). People with high levels of self-compassion used emotion regulation strategies better ( 27 ). Self-compassionate people are open to experiences of pain and distress and approach them with self-kindness ( 28 ). Further, self-compassion makes people aware of their negative experiences, and they get to acknowledge that other people have these experiences too ( 29 ). This means that when self-compassionate individuals experience work-family conflicts, they deal with the situation by being compassionate to themselves, which enhances resilience and well-being.

According to the Socioecological Theory ( 30 ), the intersection between individual and contextual variables exerts an influence on behavioral and prosocial outcomes of people. As such, when work-family conflicts impact on the well-being of people through self-compassion, individual variables such as gratitude may be playing a role as well. Grateful individuals have higher odds of experiencing frequent and intense emotions and positive perspectives of their environment, which helps achieve better well-being ( 31 ).

Given the links between work-family conflict and negative individual and organizational outcomes, researchers have been concerned with policies, interventions, and practices that can improve workers’ well-being ( 7 , 32 , 33 ). Many of these interventions and programs target the organizational level ( 34 ), and interventions for individuals have received comparatively little attention. If indeed workplace organizations do not invest in programs that improve employees’ individual well-being, it is important for workers themselves to find ways to improve their sense of well-being. Positive psychology asserts that there are personal psychological traits and resources that can buffer individuals from negative or stressful circumstances and promote enhanced well-being, and gratitude and self-compassion occupy a central role in these discussions ( 29 , 35 ). This notion can be applied to reducing work-family conflict ( 36 ).

Although previous research has established a negative relationship between work-family conflict and the well-being of workers ( 7 , 37 , 38 ), potential mediating and moderating mechanisms are not fully understood. The purpose of this study was to construct a moderated mediation model according to Hayes ( 39 ) in order to test the mediation role of self-compassion and the moderating role of gratitude in the relationship between work-family conflict and happiness and life satisfaction among nurses in Saudi Arabia.

2 Literature review

2.1 work-family conflict, life satisfaction, and happiness.

As women increasingly enter the labor market while maintaining family and household responsibilities, the incidence of work-family conflict may increase for female workers ( 40 ) and indeed for both male and female workers when partners both work and share responsibility for family care-giving ( 41 ). In Saudi Arabia, the Brookings Institution estimated an increase of 20 to 33% of women entering the workplace in 2021 ( 42 ). Balancing family life and work life has, therefore, been increasingly challenging in Saudi Arabia. This is especially true for nurses whose jobs entail psychological and physical demands associated with heavy workloads, attention to multiple patients, and the need to display positive emotions regardless of their mood ( 43 ).

The notion of work-family conflict originates in role theory ( 44 ) and the role strain hypothesis ( 45 ). Conflict can exist in both directions, work responsibilities interfering with family life (that is, work-family conflict, or WFC) and family responsibilities interfering with work life (family-work conflict, or FWC) ( 46 ). Among nurses, it was revealed that work-family conflict acted as a path through which toxic leadership impacted on distress of the nurses ( 47 ). To capture a fuller understanding of the interference between work and family responsibilities, researchers have suggested examining both WFC and FWC ( 33 , 48 ).

As established earlier, WFC has been shown to be a critical factor impacting life satisfaction. Tang et al. ( 38 ) reported its negative impact on workers’ happiness, as well. FWC has also been negatively associated with life satisfaction ( 37 ) and happiness ( 49 ). Studies have highlighted the negative impacts of work-family conflict on nurses’ well-being in particular: WFC has been positively associated with nurses’ turnover intentions ( 50 ), job stress ( 51 ), and anxiety and depression ( 52 ). A negative relationship was also found among nurses between work-family conflict and both life satisfaction ( 53 – 55 ) and job satisfaction ( 56 ). Accordingly, the first hypothesis of this study is as follows:

Hypothesis 1 : WFC and FWC will be negatively associated with life satisfaction and happiness.

2.2 The mediating role of self-compassion

The aforementioned research notwithstanding, there have been studies that found no relationship between work-family conflict and life satisfaction ( 57 , 58 ), which suggests that there may be other pathways through which WFC impacts life satisfaction. Indeed, Taşdelen-Karçkay and Bakalım ( 54 ) found a mediating effect of work-life balance in this relationship. This relationship was also reported to be mediated by emotional exhaustion ( 60 ) and coping strategies ( 61 ). Others have also reported a mediation role of emotional exhaustion in the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction, a construct that is related to life satisfaction among workers ( 62 ). However, there have been no studies that investigated the mediation role of self-compassion.

Self-compassion is a positive personality trait that involves treating oneself with a sense of care and kindness rather than self-criticism, especially in the face of adversity and failures ( 29 , 63 ). Neff ( 64 ) adds that self-compassion includes cultivating a sense of connectedness with others rather than of isolation, and a mindful practice of not overly self-identifying with one’s painful thoughts and feelings ( 64 ). Self-compassion has been found to benefit individuals’ well-being ( 65 ). Self-compassion is linked to adaptive functioning, especially in times of loss, failure, and stress ( 66 ). ( 67 ) reported that self-compassion is correlated with positive mental health outcomes, such as less depression and anxiety and greater life satisfaction. Neff and Faso ( 68 ) reported a positive relationship between self-compassion and well-being in parents of children with autism. And ( 69 ) found a negative relationship between self-compassion and work-family interference.

It has been argued that self-compassion protects people when a negative situation is beyond their control or even when they are responsible for the negative circumstances ( 66 ); thus, nurses who are self-compassionate may be less affected by work-family conflict regardless of the situation. In previous research specifically with nurses, it was reported that self-compassion was positively associated with job satisfaction and negatively related to burnout ( 70 ). Further, self-compassion was an important predictor of relationship satisfaction and conflict resolution ( 71 ) and family functioning ( 72 ) among nurses. The study’s second set of hypotheses is as follows:

Hypothesis 2a: Self-compassion will negatively mediate the relationship between WFC and life satisfaction.

Hypothesis 2b: Self-compassion will negatively mediate the relationship between WFC and happiness.

Hypothesis 2c: Self-compassion will negatively mediate the relationship between FWC and life satisfaction.

Hypothesis 2d: Self-compassion will negatively mediate the relationship between FWC and happiness.

2.3 The moderating role of gratitude

Gratitude is the emotion or state of being thankful. In one sense, it can be defined as the emotion that people feel when they receive something that they perceive as valuable, altruistic, or even costly ( 73 ), and more broadly can be defined as an attitude or disposition by which one notices and appreciates positive experiences and achievements ( 74 , 75 ). The broaden-and-build theory ( 76 ) posits that positive emotions, including gratitude, help individuals’ build enduring personal physical, intellectual, and psychological resources. It has been postulated that people with high levels of gratitude experience more frequently and intensely positive emotions and use positive coping mechanisms, which enhance their mental well-being ( 31 , 75 , 77 ). Others have claimed that gratitude leads people to interpret other people’s behaviors in a positive way, perceive other people as supportive and available, which benefits both parties ( 74 , 75 , 78 ). Randolph ( 79 ) posited that expressing gratitude is essential for nurses to cope with the challenges of work and to enhance family relationships. Prior research has reported that gratitude increased happiness ( 80 ), resilience, job satisfaction, and a healthy work environment among nurses ( 81 ). Further, gratitude was claimed as beneficial at workplace. In a sample of 411 employees, Mahipalan and Garg ( 82 ) reported that gratitude moderated the relationship between workplace bullying and psychological capital of employees. A study involving 112 female employees in India found that gratitude was linked to family enrichment ( 83 ), and to spiritual well-being and distress ( 84 ). In a sample of healthcare employees in India, Garg et al. ( 85 ) concluded that gratitude moderated the relationship between workplace toxicity and turnover intentions. Gratitude was also related to vitality with a mediation of resilience ( 86 ). Gratitude was also reported as a moderator in the relationship between teasing and depression ( 87 ). Among nurses, gratitude was reported to mitigate the negative impacts of FWC on work engagement ( 88 ). Parallelly, it was claimed in previous research that the relationship between self-compassion and happiness was moderated by gratitude ( 89 ). Therefore, it is possible that the mediation effect of self-compassion may be different at different levels of gratitude. Accordingly, the third set of hypotheses for our study was as follows:

Hypothesis 3a: Gratitude will moderate the relationship between WFC and self-compassion.

Hypothesis 3b: Gratitude will moderate the relationship between WFC and life satisfaction.

Hypothesis 3c: Gratitude will moderate the relationship between WFC and happiness.

Hypothesis 3d: Gratitude will moderate the relationship between FWC and self-compassion.

Hypothesis 3e: Gratitude will moderate the relationship between FWC and life satisfaction.

Hypothesis 3f: Gratitude will moderate the relationship between FWC and happiness.

3.1 Sample and procedure

Nurses were recruited via social media using convenience sampling techniques. The design of this study is cross-sectional. The questionnaire was sent to respondents via email, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter. Nurses were approached through their hospitals whose managers provided their emails; nurses were then asked to send the link of the questionnaire to other nurses they knew via different media platforms. The data were collected from December 10, 2022 to January 28, 2023 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A total number of 425 participants returned the completed survey, but only 368 surveys without missing data were used in the study. The mean age of the surveyed nurses was 35.18 with a standard deviation of 6.67. 70.65% were female, 28.2% were single, 65% were married, 5.7% divorced, and 1.1% widowed. About 34.2% had a diploma degree, 8.7% had a diploma after university degree, 52.7% had a university degree, 3.8% had a master’s degree, and 0.6% possessed a doctorate. Around 83.4% were working in the government sector, 3.6% in a semi-government sector, and 13% were working in the private sector. Around 90.2% were full-time workers, 2.7% part-time, and 7.1% were working irregular hours. About 5.2% had less than 1 year of experience, 5.7% had 1 to 3 years of experience, 16.3% 3 to 6 years, 16% between 6 and 9 years, 21.2% between 9 and 12 years, 13% between 12 and 15 years, and 22.6% had more than 15 years of experience. Around 8.7% had monthly income of less than 5,000 RS (Saudi Riyal), 31.2% had income between 5,000 and 9,000 SR, 31.5% between 9,000 and 13,000 SR, 17.4% between 13,000 and 17,000 SR, 5.4% between 17,000 and 21,000, 4% between 21,000 and 25,000, and 1.6% had monthly income greater than 25,000 SR. Finally, 62% were Saudi citizens, 22.8% were residents from non-Arab countries, and 15.2% were residents from other Arab countries.

3.2 Measures

Study participants completed questionnaires which included a set of demographic questions as well as the Satisfaction with Life Scale ( 90 ), the Subjective Happiness Scale ( 91 ), the Gratitude Questionnaire–6 (GQ-6) ( 74 ), the Self-Compassion Scale ( 92 ), and the Work-Family Conflict Scale ( 93 ).

3.2.1 The satisfaction with life scale

This is a five-item measure for self-evaluations of overall satisfaction with one’s life. This scale is measured on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) for each item ( 90 ). Thus, total scores range from 5 to 35. In this study, the scale exhibited a good internal consistency reliability ( α  = 0.85).

3.2.2 The subjective happiness scale

This measure consisted of four-item measure scored on a 7-point Likert scale. Each item presents the respondent with a sentence fragment and two polar characterizations that complete the sentence. Respondents select a number from 1 to 7 to indicate the extent to which the characterizations describe themselves.

Total scores for the Subjective Happiness Scale range from 4 to 28 ( 91 ). In this study, the scale had adequate internal consistency reliability ( α  = 0.65).

3.2.3 The gratitude questionnaire–6

This is a six-item scale that measures respondents’ self-evaluations of gratitude. Each item of the scale is scored on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Thus, total scores range from 6 to 42. Items 3and 6 are reversely scored ( 74 ). This scale exhibited good internal consistency reliability ( α  = 0.73).

3.2.4 The self-compassion scale

This scale consisted of 12-item instrument designed to measure how compassionate people are with themselves and is score on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always) for each item. Total scores range from 12 to 60 ( 92 ). This scale exhibited an acceptable internal consistency reliability ( α  = 0.74).

3.2.5 The work-family conflict scale

This is a short instrument comprised of two related subscales with five items each: the work-to-family conflict subscale (WFC) and the family-to-work conflict subscale (FWC). Each item is rated on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging between 1 (very strongly disagree) and 7 (very strongly agree). The total scores for each subscale range between 5 and 35 ( 93 ). The scale exhibited adequate internal consistency reliability with ( α  = 0.82 for WFC and α  = 0.79 for FWC).

3.3 Statistical analysis

All the data analyses were conducted using the RStudio software ( 94 ). For much of the analysis, an add-on software package called Process, developed by Hayes ( 39 ), was used. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations between the study variables were gathered first. Secondly, a mediation analysis was conducted using Model 4 of the Process software, and a moderated mediation analysis was performed using Process Model 8. We used 95% confidence intervals with 10,000 bootstrap samples. 95% confidence intervals that do not contain zero indicate statistically significant conditional indirect effects. The Process software also allows centering of variables that are part of the product terms, to set conditional effects for different levels of the moderator variables (mean-1SD, mean, and mean + 1SD), and to bootstrap results against violations of normality and homoscedasticity assumptions. It has been established by previous studies that age and gender were significantly associated with life satisfaction and happiness ( 95 – 97 ); therefore, we included these variables as covariates.

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committees on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Approval for conducting this study was obtained from the ethics committee of Institutional Review Board of King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia (No 343-253-1443). Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

4.1 Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations

The results of the descriptive statistics and the Pearson correlations are summarized in Table 1 . The mean scores of participants on the scales were as follows: 24.15 for life satisfaction (SD = 6.48, range = 5–35), 31.7 for gratitude (SD = 5.75, range = 5–42), 20.09 for WFC (SD = 5.62, range = 5–35), 14.71 for FWC (SD = 7.14, range = 5–35), 41.73 for self-compassion (SD = 7.02, range = 12–60), and 19.31 for happiness (SD = 4.10, range = 4–28). As expected, life satisfaction was positively correlated with gratitude, self-compassion, and happiness, and negatively correlated with WFC and FWC. Happiness was positively correlated with life satisfaction, gratitude and self-compassion, and negatively correlated with WFC, and slightly with FWC. Finally, gratitude and self-compassion were positively correlated.

Table 1 . Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations between study variables.

4.2 Testing for the mediation model

To answer Hypothesis 1, that is, WFC and FWC will be negatively associated with life satisfaction and happiness , we used the mediation analysis module of the Process software package with gender and age as covariates. The results show that WFC was negatively associated with life satisfaction ( β  = −0.15, p  < 0.05, 95% CI [−0.21 to −0.09]) and with happiness ( β  = −0.07, p  < 0.05, 95% CI [−0.12 to −0.03]) in the absence of a mediator. FWC was similarly negatively related to life satisfaction ( β  = −0.16, p  < 0.01, 95% CI [−0.22 to −0.11]) and happiness ( β  = −0.03, p  < 0.05, 95% CI [−0.11 to −0.03]) in the absence of a mediator. Therefore, Hypothesis 1 was supported.

When the mediator was included, WFC was negatively associated with life satisfaction ( β  = −0.15, p  < 0.01, 95% CI [−0.29 to −0.06]), but not with happiness. Similarly, FWC was negatively associated with life satisfaction ( β  = −0.17, p  < 0.01, 95% CI [−0.25 to −0.07]) but not with happiness. Self-compassion was related to life satisfaction ( β  = 0.29, p  < 0.001, 95% CI [0.17 to 0.35]), happiness ( β  = 0.29, p  < 0.001, 95% CI [0.23 to 0.34]), WFC ( β  = −0.30, p  < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.50 to −0.26]), and FWC ( β  = −0.31, p  < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.40 to −0.21]). As shown in Table 2 , these relationships were established in the presence of covariates.

Table 2 . Mediation effects of work-family conflict on life satisfaction and happiness.

To test the mediation model, we used the bootstrap method and the results are summarized in Table 3 . The indirect effect of self-compassion was −0.10 (95% CI = −0.13 to −0.04) on the relationship between WFC and life satisfaction, −0.08 (95% CI = −0.14 to −0.04) on the relationship between FWC and life satisfaction, −0.15 (95% CI = −0.21 to −0.09) on the relationship between WFC and happiness, and − 0.16 (95% CI = −0.22 to −0.10) on the relationship between FWC and happiness. None of these confidence intervals contained the value zero, which indicates that the indirect effects were statistically significant. Therefore, our hypotheses that self-compassion will mediate these relationships (Hypotheses 2a, 2b, 2c, and 2d) were supported.

Table 3 . Bootstrapping indirect effect and 95% confidence interval (CI) for the mediation model.

4.3 Testing for the moderated mediation model

To check the gratitude as moderator hypotheses (3a through 3f), we used the moderated mediation analysis module of the Process software package with gender and age as covariates. WFC was negatively associated with self-compassion ( β  = −0.28, p  < 0.001), and the interaction with gratitude was statistically significant ( β  = −0.03, p  < 0.001). Thus, Hypothesis 3a was supported. WFC was also negatively associated with life satisfaction ( β  = −0.13, p  < 0.05), but the interaction with gratitude was not statistically significant. Thus, Hypothesis 3b was not supported. On the other hand, WFC was not related to happiness and the interaction with gratitude was also not statistically significant. Therefore, Hypothesis 3c was also not supported. FWC was negatively related to self-compassion ( β  = −0.21, p  < 0.001) and the interaction with gratitude was not statistically significant. Therefore, Hypothesis 3d was not supported. FWC was negatively related to life satisfaction ( β  = −0.12, p  < 0.01) and the interaction with gratitude was not statistically significant. Therefore, Hypothesis 3e was also not supported. Lastly, FWC was negatively associated with happiness ( β  = −0.06, p  < 0.01) and the interaction with gratitude was statistically significant as well ( β  = −0.009, p  < 0.01). Thus, Hypothesis 3 was supported ( Table 4 ).

Table 4 . Moderated mediation effect of work-family conflict on life satisfaction and happiness.

The indirect effects of self-compassion at different levels of gratitude are summarized in Table 5 . The indirect effect of self-compassion on the relationship between WFC and life satisfaction was not statistically significant for participants with low levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.009, 95% CI = −0.002 to 0.0007), but was statistically significant for participants with medium levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.02, 95% CI = −0.06 to −0.001) and with higher levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.05, 95% CI = −0.011 to −0.003), which indicates that the indirect effect of self-compassion on the relationship between WFC and life satisfaction was stronger for those with higher levels of gratitude. Similarly, the indirect effect of self-compassion on the relationship between WFC and happiness was not statistically significant for participants with low levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.01, 95% CI = −0.04 to 0.01), but was statistically significant for participants with medium levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.05, 95% CI = −0.08 to −0.03) and higher levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.10, 95% CI = −0.015 to −0.06). Thus, the indirect effect of self-compassion on the relationship between WFC and happiness was also stronger for those with higher levels of gratitude.

Table 5 . Conditional indirect effects of work-family conflict on life satisfaction and happiness for different levels of gratitude.

The indirect effect of self-compassion on the relationship between FWC and life satisfaction was not statistically significant for participants with low levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.01, 95% CI = −0.03 to 0.0008), medium levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.02, 95% CI = −0.04 to 0.0006) or higher levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.02, 95% CI = −0.06 to 0.0007). The indirect effect of self-compassion on the relationship between FWC and happiness was statistically significant for participants with low levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.03, 95% CI = −0.06 to −0.003), medium levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.04, 95% CI = −0.07 to −0.02) and higher levels of gratitude ( β ind  = −0.06, 95% CI = −0.09 to −0.03). Thus, the indirect effect of self-compassion on the relationship between WFC and life satisfaction was beneficial for all levels of gratitude. These conditions are plotted in Figures 1 , 2 .

Figure 1 . Conceptual Research Model.

Figure 2 . Relationship between FWC and self-compassion for 3 gratitude conditions.

5 Discussion

This study demonstrated moderating and mediating mechanisms impacting the association between work-family conflict and happiness and life satisfaction among a sample of Saudi nurses. The main findings indicated a statistically significant negative relationship of WFC and FWC with both life satisfaction and happiness. The results also showed that self-compassion negatively mediated the relationship between WFC and life satisfaction, between WFC and happiness, between FWC and life satisfaction, and between FWC and happiness. The results also indicated that gratitude moderated the mediation of self-compassion in the relationship between WFC and life satisfaction, between WFC and happiness, and between FWC and happiness. These results yield theoretical and practical implications for the well-being of workers in general and nurses in particular.

The negative relationships found between work-family conflict and both life satisfaction and happiness corroborate prior research enumerated earlier in this paper. However, some studies reported no statistically significant association between work-family conflict and life satisfaction ( 57 , 58 ). This inconsistency in findings may suggest cultural differences or other mechanisms underlying or impacting these relationships. This study found that these relationships were negatively mediated by self-compassion, such that the impacts of WFC and FWC on life satisfaction and happiness were mitigated through self-compassion. ( 59 ) reported that self-compassion diminishes the emotional exhaustion dimension of work burnout, and a longitudinal study by Schabram and Heng ( 98 ) found that self-compassion was a remedy for work-related emotional exhaustion. Others have reported that self-compassion enables people to enhance their emotional resilience ( 99 ), which enhances well-being. Self-compassion incorporates evaluations of unpleasant situations with a sense of tolerance and understanding, which may explain why self-compassionate individuals are able to find happiness and satisfaction in their lives ( 100 ). Accordingly, nurses who experience WFC and FWC may nonetheless be happier and satisfied with their lives if they are self-compassionate.

We found that this mediation of self-compassion varied with differing levels of gratitude. The results suggest that self-compassion strongly mitigated the negative impacts of work-family conflict on well-being for nurses with high levels of gratitude. The explanation may be the fact that people who are grateful take better care of themselves, are more compassionate and kind, are more resilient in times of adversity, and have healthier sleep ( 79 ). According to the broaden-and-build theory ( 101 ), when individuals experience positive emotions such as gratitude, they build cognitive and emotional resources needed to deal with any circumstance. Fredrickson and Joiner ( 102 ) claimed these positive resources help individuals to develop and grow, and lead to effective responses to new circumstances, including work and family situations and conditions. The efforts of this study speak, therefore, to the call of Nicklin et al. ( 36 ) to consider gratitude among the positive resources that can facilitate healthy work-family balance.

This study joins previous theories, the role theory ( 44 ) and the role strain theory ( 45 ) and postulates that conflicting roles at work and at family create strain for employees, and yet joins again the broaden-and-build theory ( 76 ) and socioecological theory ( 30 ) to posit that gratitude and self-compassion create lasting physical and psychological resources that can mitigate the strain and facilitate employees’ well-being.

5.1 Implications of the study

This study has theoretical and practical implications. For theoretical implications, this study contributed to the literature by establishing evidence of the role of self-compassion and gratitude in protecting nurses from work-family conflicts among a Saudi sample. These findings have practical implications for organizations in general and hospitals in particular. For hospital HR, it is important to plan programs to enhance self-compassion and gratitude of the nurses. These positive psychology interventions have proved their effectiveness, and it is crucial that Saudi hospitals plan effective interventions to promote nurses’ well-being, which would increase their performance. Gratitude and self-compassion are trainable and can therefore be practiced and enhanced, and they present affordable targets for interventions to enhance the well-being of workers in general and nurses in particular. Therefore, managers should consider bringing into the workplace positive psychological interventions focusing on growing gratitude and self-compassion. Further, workers themselves should learn about these positive interventions and attempt to integrate them into their psychological, work, and family lives.

5.2 Limitations

Despite the contributions of this study, there are limitations that should be mentioned. First, the design was cross-sectional. Longitudinal designs are recommended for future research. Second, the study used convenience sampling and may have yielded sampling and selection bias, which hampers generalizability of findings; random sampling is recommended for future research. Third, the proportion of females was relatively high in the sample and it is advised that a more proportionate sample be tested. Fourth, the Subjective Happiness Scale has a relatively low Cronbach’s alpha and results should be interpreted bearing this in mind. Fifth, the data collection was made via online platforms, we cannot know in which conditions the respondents were when the completed the questionnaire. Further, the recruiting process via social media is beyond any control of who has participated and what the respondents are representing. Future research should use also other means of data collection to facilitate data cross-validation. Sixth, this study relied on subjective data, future research should include also objective measures.

6 Conclusion

Work-family conflict remains an important concern for the well-being of workers and for the performance organizations that employ them. Previous research has established different pathways through which these relationships operate. This study built on positive psychology and investigated the underlying mediating role of self-compassion and moderating role of gratitude in the relationships between work-family conflict and life satisfaction and happiness among Saudi nurses. The results showed a mediation role of self-compassion on the impact of work-family conflict on the well-being of nurses. Moreover, this mediation was moderated by gratitude. Gratitude and self-compassion are positive constructs that are able to bring positive benefits to the lives of nurses and workers in general. These findings suggest that interventions and programs targeted at enhancing the well-being of nurses should include these positive psychology constructs, self-compassion and gratitude. Nurses are also advised to seek to grow self-compassion and gratitude within themselves, since they are trainable and teachable and can be self-administered. The current healthcare system seems to be built on the exploitation of HCPs, following the premise that they will find their own ways to optimize their resilience and endurance. However, without changes in the organizational structure, this demand for self-optimization is self-limiting and will easily result in “organized” burnout.

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics statement

Approval for conducting this study was obtained from the ethics committee of Institutional Review Board of King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia (No 343-253-1443). Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Author contributions

ME: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. ES: Data curation, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Writing – review & editing.

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research work was funded by the Institutional Fund Projects under grant no. (IFPIP: 343-253-1443).

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge technical and financial support provided by the Ministry of Education and King Abdulaziz University, DSR, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: family-work conflict, gratitude, happiness, nurses, life satisfaction, self-compassion, work-family conflict

Citation: El Keshky MES and Sarour EO (2024) The relationships between work-family conflict and life satisfaction and happiness among nurses: a moderated mediation model of gratitude and self-compassion. Front. Public Health . 12:1340074. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1340074

Received: 17 November 2023; Accepted: 16 January 2024; Published: 21 February 2024.

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Copyright © 2024 El Keshky and Sarour. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Mogeda El Sayed El Keshky, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Understanding “His and Her” Work-Family Conflict and Facilitation

• Published: 22 March 2016
• Volume 36 , pages 453–467, ( 2017 )

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• Rachel R. Stoiko 1 ,
• JoNell Strough 1 &
• Nicolas A. Turiano 1  

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Work-family conflict (negative spillover between work and family) and work-family facilitation (positive spillover between work and family) are two aspects of the work-family interface. Prior work has established that these constructs are statistically and conceptually distinct, but less is known about what work and family characteristics are associated with conflict versus facilitation. Understanding who is most at risk for conflict and most benefiting from facilitation is necessary for establishing effective workplace policies. We used structural equation modeling to determine whether (1) work-family conflict and facilitation have different (statistical) predictors, and (2) whether these predictive relations are moderated by gender. Perceiving more work demands predicted greater work-family conflict, but was unrelated to facilitation. Perceiving more skill discretion at work and being married predicted greater work-family facilitation, but was unrelated to work-family conflict. Perceiving more decision authority and social support at work, and having more children, predicted less conflict and more facilitation. Most predictors were stronger for men than for women. We discuss implications of these results for designing effective policies to increase work-family facilitation and decrease work-family conflict for men and women.

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Acknowledgments

The MIDUS I study (Midlife in the U.S.) was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development. The MIDUS II research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (P01-AG020166) to conduct a longitudinal follow-up of the MIDUS I investigation.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Rachel R. Stoiko declares that she has no conflict of interest. JoNell Strough declares that she has no conflict of interest. Nicholas A. Turiano declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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Stoiko, R.R., Strough, J. & Turiano, N.A. Understanding “His and Her” Work-Family Conflict and Facilitation. Curr Psychol 36 , 453–467 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9434-2

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Examining the association between work–family conflict and the work attitudes of job satisfaction and organizational commitment among Chinese correctional staff

Eric g. lambert.

a Department of Criminal Justice, The University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, NV, USA

Jianhong Liu

b Department of Sociology, The University of Macau, Macau, China

Shanhe Jiang

c Department of Criminal Justice, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA

Thomas M. Kelley

Jinwu zhang.

Considerable empirical research has shown that work–family conflict has a negative effect on the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of United States correctional staff. This study is the first to examine the effect of work–family conflict on job satisfaction and organizational commitment for staff at Chinese prisons. Findings from ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses indicated that strain-based conflict, behavior-based conflict and family-on-work conflict had negative effects on the job satisfaction of Chinese prison staff. Also, strain-based conflict and behavior-based conflict had negative effects on organizational commitment. Overall, the results support the conclusion that work–family conflict was generally perceived as stressful by Chinese prison staff and negatively impacted their job satisfaction and organizational commitment, as has been found among United States staff.

A growing body of research has examined the relationship between different workplace variables with job satisfaction and organizational commitment among correctional staff. The issue of work–family conflict has been one of these variables. Work–family conflict occurs when the work domain and home domain encroach on one another and cause conflict (Triplett, Mullings, & Scarborough, 1999 ). To date, the vast majority of the research concerning how work–family conflict affects job satisfaction and/or organizational commitment has focused on correctional staff in Western nations, particularly the United States. The People’s Republic of China (henceforth, China) is the most populous nation in the world and a major nation on the world stage (World Factbook, 2018 ). The association between work–family conflict and the two work attitudes among correctional staff in China has received very little, if any, empirical attention; therefore, the current study was undertaken to fill this void. Jowell ( 1998 ) pointed out that ‘the importance and utility to social science of rigorous cross-national measures is incontestable. They help to reveal not only intriguing differences between countries and cultures, but also aspects of one’s own country and culture that would be difficult or impossible to detect from domestic data alone’ (p. 168). The ability of cross-cultural research to result in paradigm-shifting realizations should not be underestimated. International studies are not only capable of narrowing the gaps between nations, but can also help bridge those gaps so that information flows more freely (Cao & Cullen, 2001 ). Conducting international research allows scholars to determine whether the association of a workplace variable, such as work–family conflict, with a salient work attitude, such as job satisfaction and/or organizational commitment, is universal (i.e. cuts across nations) or contextual (varies between cultures).

The current study examined how different dimensions of work–family conflict are associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment among staff at two prisons in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. It builds upon studies that have examined the association of work–family conflict with the work attitudes job satisfaction and organizational commitment among United States correctional staff by examining how the different dimensions of work–family conflict are associated with these important work attitudes among Chinese prison staff. As noted by Lindsay and Ehrenberg ( 1993 ), ‘[r]eplication is little discussed in the statistical literature nor practiced widely by statistically minded researchers. It is needed not merely to validate one’s findings, but more importantly, to establish the increasing range of radically different conditions under which the findings hold, and the predictable exceptions’ (p. 217). In order to place the current study into context, a brief overview of Chinese prisons and how they compare to United States prisons is needed.

Correctional institutions in China and the United States

Chinese prisons are closed institutions, and until recently no access was granted to outsiders, including Chinese scholars (Wu, 2003 ). As in Western nations, including the United States, China utilizes correctional facilities to incarcerate offenders to both punish and rehabilitate. Correctional facilities have a long history in China, with prisons being traced back to the Xia dynasty (2029−1559 BC; Jin, 1997 ). China has two types of correctional institutions: detention centers and prisons. Detention centers, similar to jails in the United States, hold persons having a sentence less than one year, awaiting trial, and pending transfer to prison to serve their sentence. Detention centers are under control of the Ministry of Public Security (China.Org.Cn, 2016 ; Hill, 2006 ). Prisons hold offenders who have been sentenced to imprisonment for more than one year and are under the direction of Bureau of Prison Administration in the Ministry of Justice (Hill, 2006 ). Chinese prisons tend to emphasize punishment, treatment and education of inmates to reform them (Jin, 1997 ).

There are approximately 1.65 million inmates confined in about 680 Chinese prisons, an incarceration rate of 118 inmates per 100,000 citizens, including 35 female prisons and 31 juvenile prisons, employing approximately 300,000 staff (Shao, 2011 ; World Prison Brief, 2018a ). For comparison, there are approximately 1.5 million adult inmates confined in almost 1700 United States correctional institutions, an incarceration rate of 655 inmates per 100,000 citizens, employing about 430,000 staff (University of Albany, 2018 ; World Prison Brief, 2018b ). Unlike the United States, which often classifies prisons based on security levels (e.g. minimum, medium and maximum), Chinese prisons do not have a set security level but instead distinguish inmates using different custody levels and sentence lengths. In the United States, the term correctional staff is frequently used. In China, the preferred terms are prison staff, prison police or corrections police (Hill, 2006 ; Wu, 2003 ). The classification of Chinese prison staff also differs from that in Western nations. For example, in the United States, correctional staff are broken down into custody (e.g. correctional officers) and non-custody (e.g. counselors, food service, business office, etc.). Although Chinese prisons have different sections, there are no clear divisions among Chinese prison staff. Chinese staff are expected to carry out assigned duties across the entire spectrum of prison work. Duties and tasks within the prison are assigned by need and individual and not by position (Hill, 2006 ; Wu, 2003 ). All Chinese prison staff wear uniforms, regardless of job duties or supervisory level (Wu, 2003 ). Perimeter security in Chinese prisons is provided by Chinese People’s armed police, a separate entity under the Central Military.

Chinese prison staff are civil servants with good job stability (Wang & Kong, 2006 ). Nevertheless, like their Western counterparts, Chinese prison staff work in a challenging work environment compared to other jobs. They are responsible for controlling and directing offenders who are being held against their will. Staff must be ready at all times to deal with disturbances, violence and emergencies. Prisons operate 24 hours a day, every day of the year, including holidays. Chinese prison staff work approximately 12-hour shifts each day, while other Chinese non-correctional government employees typically work 8-hour shifts (Hu, Wang, Liu, Wu, Yang, Wang, & Wang, 2015 ; Wang & Kong, 2006 ). The occurrence of work–family conflict among Chinese prison staff is a real possibility, as it is for Western correctional staff. What is not clear is how different types of work–family conflict affect the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of Chinese correctional staff. Although work–family conflict, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and the other latent variables of interest were primarily defined and studied in Western countries, the operationalization of the variables was kept consistent to allow cross cultural comparisons.

Literature review

The literature review is divided into four subsections. The first provides a definition of job satisfaction and lays a foundation for why it is important to examine how workplace variables are associated with it. The second provides a similar background and foundation for organizational commitment. The third discusses work–family conflict, including past correctional studies on how work–family conflict is related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment among correctional staff, with the vast majority of this research focusing on among Western, mainly United States, prison staff. The fourth subsection provides the hypotheses concerning how the different types of work–family conflict would be associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment among Chinese prison staff.

Job satisfaction

Locke ( 1976 ) defined job satisfaction as ‘a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences’ (p. 1300). Muchinsky ( 1987 ) viewed job satisfaction as an emotional, affective response resulting from the extent to which a person derives pleasure from his or her job. According to Spector ( 1997 ), job satisfaction is ‘the extent to which people like or dislike their jobs’ (Spector, 1997 , p. 2). Job satisfaction is a positive affective (i.e. emotional) work attitude that relates to workers’ perceptions that their jobs meet their wants and needs (Lambert, Barton, & Hogan, 1999 ). Job satisfaction refers to employees’ perceptions of overall satisfaction from the job rather than from specific facets of the job (Camp, 1994 ; Lu, Barriball, Zhang, & While, 2012 ). Job satisfaction is an important work attitude reported to be related to greater support for treatment of offenders, lower job burnout, increased life satisfaction, higher engagement in organizational citizenship behaviors (going beyond what is expected at work), lower turnover intent/turnover, reduced absenteeism, increased workplace creativity, more willing to support organizational changes and higher work performance (Byrd, Cochran, Silverman, & Blount, 2000 ; Farkas, 1999 ; Fox, 1982 ; Griffin, Hogan, Lambert, Tucker-Gail, & Baker, 2010 ; Jurik & Winn, 1987 ; Lambert, 2010 ; Lambert, Edwards, Camp, & Saylor, 2005 ; Lambert, Hogan, Paoline, & Baker, 2005 ; Lambert, Jiang, Liu, Zhang, & Choi, 2018 ; Leip & Stinchcomb, 2013 ; Matz, Wells, Minor, & Angel, 2013 ; Robinson, Porporino, & Simourd, 1997 ; Whitehead & Lindquist, 1986 ; Wright, 1993 ).

Organizational commitment

Organizational commitment refers to the bond between the staff member and the employing organization (Lambert, Keena, May, Haynes, & Buckner, 2017 ; Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982 ). There are different types of organizational commitment based on how the bond is formed, with continuance commitment and affective commitment being two major types (Griffin & Hepburn, 2005 ; Lambert, Griffin, Hogan, & Kelley, 2015 ). The bonds for continuance commitment form because of investments staff make in the organization, such as pay, benefits, retirement, nontransferable job skills, promotions and past missed opportunities (i.e. lost job opportunities with other organizations), which bond the person to the organization to protect the investments (Allen & Meyer, 1990 ; Jaros, Jermier, Koehler, & Sincich, 1993 ).

Affective commitment, another major type of organizational commitment, is an affective psychological bond that forms because of workers’ perceptions that the organization treats them in a positive manner and that the overall work experience is positive (Allen & Meyer, 1990 ; Lambert, Hogan, & Jiang, 2008 ; Lambert et al., 2017 ). This type of commitment is based on the reciprocity principle, which contends that employees who are treated in a positive manner by the organization and have positive overall work experiences will develop favorable views of the organization and are more likely to trust the organization and psychologically bond with it (Kramer, 1999 ). This type of commitment is voluntary and includes identification with the organization, internalization of organizational goals, acceptance of organizational core values and willingness to put forth effort to help the organization be successful (Lambert, Hogan, & Keena, 2015 ; Meyer & Allen, 1984 ; Mowday et al., 1982 ). As noted by Allen and Meyer ( 1990 ), ‘employees with strong affective commitment remain because they want to and those with strong continuance commitment because they need to’ (p. 3).

Affective commitment has been linked with a wide array of positive outcomes, and it is the most common form of organizational commitment studied among correctional staff (Lambert, Hogan, & Jiang, 2008 ). Among correctional staff, greater levels of affective commitment are associated with lower absenteeism, reduced turnover/intent, greater life satisfaction, higher prosocial behaviors (i.e. going beyond what is expected at work) and improved job performance (Camp, 1994 ; Culliver, Sigler, & McNeely, 1991 ; Lambert, Edwards, et al., 2005 ; Lambert & Hogan, 2009 ; Matz et al., 2013 ). Conversely, there is evidence that some staff members with high continuance commitment may feel trapped in the job, resulting in negative effects on staff and the correctional organization, such as job stress and job burnout (Lambert, Griffin, et al., 2015 ; Lambert, Kelley, & Hogan, 2013 ). The current study’s focus was affective commitment.

Work–family conflict

Work and home are the two major domains for most adults. In a perfect world, these two domains are balanced. In reality, this not the case (Hogan, Lambert, Jenkins, & Wambold, 2006 ). Work–family conflict occurs when one domain encroaches on the other and causes conflict (Brough & O’Driscoll, 2005 ; Hsu, 2011 ). As defined by Greenhaus and Beutell ( 1985 ), work–family conflict is ‘a form of inter-role conflict in which the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respect. That is, participation in the work (family) role is made more difficult by participation in the family (work) role’ (p. 77). Work–family conflict is bidirectional, in that problems at work can cause conflict at home, and problems at home can cause conflict at work (Armstrong, Atkin-Plunk, & Wells, 2015 ; Hsu, 2011 ; Netemeyer, Boles, & McMurrian, 1996 ). The first direction is referred to work-on-family conflict, and the second is referred to as family-on-work conflict (Armstrong et al., 2015 ; Hogan et al., 2006 ).

Work problems sometimes follow the person home, resulting in work-on-family conflict. The three major types of work-on-family conflict are time-based conflict, strain-based conflict and behavior-based conflict (Lambert, Hogan, Camp, & Ventura, 2006 ; Netemeyer et al., 1996 ). Time-based conflict occurs when the amount of time or work schedule interferes with home life, causing conflict (Armstrong et al., 2015 ; Hsu, 2011 ). As noted earlier, regardless of country, correctional facilities need to be staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including holidays and during major family events. Work schedules may not integrate well with the schedules of other family members. In addition, correctional institutions may require mandatory unexpected overtime to cover posts for absent staff and to deal with emergencies. In the end, this may result in time-based conflict for people, such as having to miss major family events and obligations (Lambert et al., 2006 ).

Strain-based conflict occurs when work issues and problems follow a staff member home and cause conflict, decreasing the quality of home life (Armstrong et al., 2015 ; Lambert et al., 2006 ). As noted by Armstrong and Griffin ( 2004 ), ‘few other organizations are charged with the central task of supervising and securing an unwilling and potentially violent population’ (p. 577). This type of occupation is more likely than other occupations to involve contentious conflicts and violent episodes. These types of work problems can raise the frustration level of staff and make it difficult for staff to shut off these negative feelings at the end of their shift. For example, a staff member who used necessary force on an insolent inmate who refused to follow orders can result in adrenalin spikes and heightened stress, which can follow the staff member home, resulting in tension and conflicts with family and friends (Lambert, Hogan, & Altheimer, 2010 ).

Behavior-based conflict results when work and home behaviors and roles are not compatible with one another and cause problems for the staff member (Armstrong et al., 2015 ; Lambert et al., 2006 ). As noted by Greenhaus and Beutell ( 1985 ), ‘specific patterns of in-role behavior may be incompatible with expectations regarding behavior in another role’ (p. 81). The behavioral roles used in correctional facilities, such as being suspicious and emotionally detached, may not work well when interacting with friends and family (Lambert et al., 2006 ). For example, conflict is likely to result if a staff member barks orders at family members or questions their actions. Likewise, roles of being loving, supportive and forgiving are likely to be necessary for dealing with family and friends but are not likely to be acceptable in a prison. In a prison, a staff member is expected to be detached, be objective, and have their guard up. For many, quickly switching roles between work and home may not be possible.

Family-on-work conflict is possible for correctional staff (O’Driscoll, Brough, & Kalliath, 2006 ). Correctional staff can have home problems, such as arguments with family members, divorces, financial issues and illness of friends or family members, which are likely to affect staff negatively and are difficult to leave at home. Home problems can result in problems at work, such as being in a bad mood, argumentative, or distracted from work. For example, a staff member who had a nasty fight with his or her spouse at home may come to work angry, taking it out on inmates or coworkers, with new work problems arising (Liu, Lambert, Jiang, & Zhang, 2017 ).

As institutional corrections work involves a good possibility for work–family conflict, previous research has examined the effects of correctional work–family conflict. Among U.S. correctional staff, behavior-based, strain-based and family-on-work conflict have been observed to raise the level of job stress and job burnout (Armstrong et al., 2015 ; Lambert et al., 2006 , 2010 ; Triplett et al., 1999 ). Strain-based and behavior-based conflict have both been found to be positively related to Chinese correctional staff job stress (Liu et al., 2017 ). Time-based, strain-based and behavior-based conflict and family-on-work conflict have been reported to have negative effects on U.S. staff job satisfaction (Armstrong et al., 2015 ; Lambert, Hogan, & Barton, 2002 ; Lambert et al., 2006 ). Further, time-based, strain-based, behavior-based and family-on-work conflict have been found to have a negative effect on affective organizational commitment of U.S. prison staff (Lambert et al., 2006 ; Lambert, Hogan, Kelley, Kim, & Garland, 2014 ). In another study of United States staff, strain-based conflict and family-on-work conflict both had negative relationships with organizational citizenship behaviors (Lambert et al., 2013 ).

A composite measure of work–family conflict (i.e. combining the different types into one variable) has been found to be related with greater stress, job burnout and depression for United States staff (Griffin, 2006 ; Lambert & Hogan, 2010 ; Lambert, Hogan, & Griffin, 2007 ; Obidoa, Reeves, Warren, Reisine, & Cherniack, 2011 ). Likewise, a composite measure of work–family conflict has been associated with reduced organizational commitment and life satisfaction for U.S. correctional staff (Hogan et al., 2006 ; Lambert, Hogan, Barton, Jiang, & Baker, 2008 ; Lambert, Hogan, Elechi, Jiang, Laux, Dupuy, & Morris, 2009 ; Lambert, Hogan, et al., 2005 ). A composite measure of work-on-family conflict had a negative association with job satisfaction for Taiwanese correctional staff (Hsu, 2011 ). Additionally, a composite measure of work–family conflict was associated with reduced support for treatment of inmates by staff at a United States prison (Lambert & Hogan, 2009 ).

Several conclusions can be gleaned from past studies. First, work–family conflict is a stressor (i.e. something that causes strain) with no known positive effects. Second, the effects of the different types of work–family conflict tend to vary by the outcome being examined and across studies. Third, there has been limited research to date that has examined the effects of the four types of work–family conflict on correctional staff, including their job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and there is a need for additional research in this area. Fourth, there has been little published research on the effects of the different types of work–family domain spillover on correctional staff in nonwestern nations, including China. As such, it is unclear what, if any, effects the different types of work–family conflict would have with the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of Chinese correctional staff.

Research hypotheses

As each type of work–family conflict tends to be a stressor, the following hypotheses for Chinese correctional staff were made for the current study.

Hypothesis 1: Time-based conflict will have a negative effect on job satisfaction. Hypothesis 2: Strain-based conflict will have a negative effect on job satisfaction. Hypothesis 3: Behavior-based conflict will have a negative effect on job satisfaction. Hypothesis 4: Family-on-work conflict will have a negative effect on job satisfaction. Hypothesis 5: Time-based conflict will have a negative effect on organizational commitment. Hypothesis 6: Strain-based conflict will have a negative effect on organizational commitment. Hypothesis 7: Behavior-based conflict will have a negative effect on organizational commitment. Hypothesis 8: Family-on-work conflict will have a negative effect on organizational commitment.

Participants

Data were collected from two prisons located in province of Guangdong in China. The first prison employed 280 staff members and housed approximately 1500 inmates. The second prison employed 160 staff and housed approximately 700 inmates. Each prison contained inmates classified into different levels of custody (i.e. highly intensive/maximum custody, intensive/medium custody and general/minimum custody). For both Chinese prisons, the staff worked in different sections of the facility as teams, and weekly team meetings were held. The surveys were distributed during the team meetings. The back method of translation was used, wherein survey materials (cover letter and survey) were translated into Chinese by one bilingual author, and a second bilingual author translated the materials back into English to determine whether there were any translation problems. A third bilingual scholar who was not an author checked both translated surveys for issues. Further, the survey was pilot tested to determine whether there were issues of understanding, and none were found. Staff were informed of the purpose of the study, that participation was voluntary, that any question could be skipped, that answering the survey could be ended at any time, that there were no rewards or punishments for participation and that all responses would be anonymous.

For the first prison, 205 of 280 surveys were returned, which was a response rate of approximately 73%. For this prison, about 67% of respondents were male, and 33% had a bachelor’s degree or higher. The typical respondent had worked in his or her current position for 6.5 years and was 45 years old. In terms of rank, 7% were a staff member (i.e. similar to a new/probationary person in a U.S. prison), 47% were a senior staff member (i.e. similar to a non-probationary person in a U.S. prison), 42% were a principal staff member (i.e. similar to a senior person in a U.S. prison), and the remaining 4% held supervisory or other ranks. For the second prison, 117 of 160 surveys were returned, which is a response rate of about 73%. For this prison, 10% were men, and 43% had a bachelor’s degree or higher. The typical respondent had worked in his or her current position for 6.6 years and was 45 years old. In terms of rank, 13% were a staff member, 44% were a senior staff member, 41% were a principal staff member, and the remaining 3% held supervisory or other ranks.

For the combined completed surveys, the overall response rate was 73%, about 46% were men, and 37% had a bachelor’s degree or higher. The typical respondent had worked 6.6 years in his or her current position and was 44 years old. In terms of these personal characteristics, the only significant difference between the respondents of the first and second prisons was gender (χ 2  = 103.58, p  ≤ .01), which was expected because the majority of staff at the second prison were women. As such, a dichotomous variable representing the prison where the participant worked was included to control for any differences between the two prisons in the multivariate analysis (i.e. so the effects of a variable will be independent of the shared variance of the other variables). About 64% of those who responded were from the first prison, and 34% were from the second prison, which was expected since 63% of the 440 surveyed staff worked at the first prison. According to human resource sources, the responding staff at each prison appeared to be representative to the overall staff population at each prison based on gender, age, tenure and educational level.

Individual items for the indexed variables are listed in the Appendix , along with the response options for the items used to measure latent concepts.

Dependent variables

The two dependent variables in the current study were the work attitudes of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and both variables were additive indexes. Job satisfaction was measured using three items from Brayfield and Rothe ( 1951 ). The items had a Cronbach’s alpha value of .92. The affective dimension of organizational commitment was measured by five items from Mowday et al. ( 1982 ) and had a Cronbach’s alpha of .85.

Independent variables

The independent variables of focus were the different types of work–family conflict. The work–family conflict items were based on the work of Bohen and Viveros-Long ( 1981 ) and Higgins and Duxbury ( 1992 ). The Cronbach’s alpha values for time-based conflict, strain-based conflict, behavior-based conflict and family-on-work conflict were .88, .93, .88 and .93, respectively. The responses for each particular type of work–family conflict were summed together to form an additive index.

Finally, past studies have included measures for personal characteristics, such as age, tenure, gender, educational level, marital status, having a child/children under 16 living at home and prison of employment. These variables were included in the study more as control than explanatory variables. Age and tenure with the correctional agency were measured in years as continuous variables. Gender was a dichotomous variable representing whether the participant was a women (coded 0) or a man (coded 1). Educational level represented whether the participant had earned a bachelor’s degree (coded 1) or not (coded 0). Marital status was coded as married as = 1 and currently not married as = 0. Having a child/children under 16 living at home was coded as 1 = yes and 0 = no. Finally, a dichotomous variable representing which prison the participant worked at was included (first prison coded as 1 and second prison coded as 0).

Approximately 70% of the prison staff from the two prisons completed and returned the survey (i.e. 322 usable surveys were returned). The median age of participants was 45 years, ranging from 24 to 58 years of age, and the median tenure with the agency was 20 years, ranging from 1 to 40 years. Approximately 46% of the participants were men, and 54% were women. In terms of highest educational level, 63% of the participants reported having less than a college bachelor’s degree, and 37% indicated that they had earned a bachelor’s or higher degree. About 88% marked that they were currently married, and 42% indicated that they had one or more children aged 16 or younger living at home at the time of the survey. According to the Human Resources offices at each prison, the participants appeared similar in terms of gender, educational level, age and tenure compared to the overall prison staff population; about 48% of the overall prison staff were male, and 40% had a bachelor’s degree. Neither Human Resources office could provide information on marital status or percentage of employees with a child under 16 living at home for the overall prison staff population.

The descriptive statistics and coding for the variables used in the study are reported in Table 1 . There appeared to be significant variation in the dependent and independent variables (i.e. none were constants). Statistical tests indicated that the variables were normally distributed. Using SPSS, the skewness values for age, tenure and the latent index variables (e.g. job satisfaction) ranged from −0.58 to 0.32, and the kurtosis values for these variables ranged from −0.74 to 0.32, which are within acceptable ranges and are within the ±3 rule of thumb (George & Mallery, 2010 ). Likewise, the median and mean values for the variables are similar to one another, also suggesting a normal distribution. For the index variables, the Cronbach alpha values were .85 or higher, and .70 is viewed as good (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994 ). The items for each latent index variable were entered into a factor analysis, and the items loaded on a single factor, indicating unidimensionality of the items (Gorsuch, 1983 ). In addition, the factor loading scores for each index are presented in Table 1 .

Descriptive statistics.

Note: WFC = work–family conflict; org = organizational; α = Cronbach’s alpha value. The total number of participants was 322. The factor loadings for the index variables are presented in brackets.

The correlations for the study variables are presented in Table 2 . Gender and the four types of work–family conflict all had statistically significant correlations with job satisfaction. Men generally reported lower satisfaction with the job than women. The four types of work–family conflict all had negative correlations, which means that increases in time-based conflict, strain-based conflict, behavior-based conflict and/or family-on-work conflict were associated with reductions in reported job satisfaction. Age, tenure, educational level, marital status, having a child under 16 at home and prison of employment all had nonsignificant correlations with the job satisfaction variable. Age, tenure, gender, time-based conflict, strain-based conflict, behavior-based conflict and family-on-work conflict each had a significant correlation with organizational commitment. Increases in age and tenure were associated with greater commitment. In general, female staff reported a greater affective bond with the organization than their male counterparts. All four work–family conflict variables had negative associations with this dependent variable. Finally, educational level, marital status, having a child at home and prison of employment each had a nonsignificant correlation with commitment.

Correlation matrix of study variables.

Note: Educ lev = educational level; marital st=marital status; child=having one or more child under 16 years of age living at home; time = work–family conflict, time-based; strain = work–family conflict, strain-based; behavior=work–family conflict, behavior-based; family=work–family conflict, family-based; job sat = job satisfaction; org com = organizational commitment. See Table 1 for the coding and descriptive statistics of the variables.

* p  ≤ .05. ** p  ≤ .01.

Two ordinary least squares (OLS) regression equations were estimated, one with job satisfaction as the dependent variable and the other with organizational commitment as the dependent variable. For both equations, the independent variables were age, tenure, gender, educational level, marital status, having a child under 16 at home, the prison where the participant worked, time-based conflict, strain-based conflict, behavior-based conflict and family-on-work conflict. Listwise deletion was used for missing cases. The results are reported in Table 3 . Multicollinearity (i.e. when two or more variables share too large an overlap in variance) is seen as a problem when variance inflation factor (VIF) scores exceed 6 (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2013 ). Based on the VIF scores reported in Table 3 , multicollinearity was not a problem. In addition, the issues of outliers, influential cases, normality, linearity and homoscedasticity of residuals, and independence of errors in the regression analysis were tested and were not a problem (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2013 ).

Ordinary least squares regression results with job satisfaction and organizational commitment as the dependent variables.

Note: B  = unstandardized regression slope; β  = standardized regression slope; VIF = variance inflation factor score (a measure for multicollinearity); WFC = work–family conflict; df  = degrees of freedom. For missing cases, listwise deletion was used. The number of cases for the job satisfaction regression equation was 298, and the number of cases for the organizational commitment regression equation was 288. See Table 1 for the coding and descriptive statistics of the variables.

The statistic R 2 (also known as coefficient of determination or the coefficient of multiple determination for multiple regression) indicates the percentage of the variance in the dependent variable that the independent variables collectively explain once their shared effects are held constant, and this statistic ranges from 0 to 1, calculated as the amount of explained variation in the proposed regression model divided by the total actual variation observed in the dependent variable (Berry, 1993 ). The R 2 value for the OLS regression equation for job satisfaction was .32. Tenure was the only personal characteristic to have a significant effect. Increases in tenure with the correctional agency were associated with greater satisfaction from the job. Consistent with Hypotheses 2, 3 and 4, strain-based conflict, behavior-based conflict and family-based conflict each had significant negative effects, which means that increases in any of these variables were associated with a reduction in job satisfaction. Contrary to Hypothesis 1, time-based conflict did not have significant effects on the job satisfaction index.

The R 2 statistic for the organizational commitment multivariate OLS regression was .28. The variable representing the prison had a significant association. Staff at the first prison tended to have a lower level of commitment than staff at the second prison. Consistent with Hypotheses 6 and 7, strain-based and behavior-based conflict each had significant negative effects, which means that increases in either were associated with a reduction in psychological commitment with the correctional organization. Contrary to Hypotheses 5 and 8, neither time-based conflict nor family-on-work conflict had significant effects. Finally, age, tenure, educational level, marital status and having a child under 16 at home all had nonsignificant effects on organizational commitment.

Overall, the current results provide support for the contention that work–family conflict is a stressor that has negative effects on the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of correctional staff. The overall finding that work–family conflict has negative effects among Chinese staff is consistent with findings among United States correctional staff. The effects of the specific types of work–family conflict did vary in the current study, which is also consistent of what has been found in past United States studies. Five of the eight hypotheses (specifically Hypotheses 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7) were supported by the multivariate regression analyses. Specifically, three of the four job satisfaction hypotheses were supported, while two of the four organizational commitment hypotheses were supported. Work–family conflict may have a slightly greater effect on one work attitude than the other because of what each represents. Job satisfaction represents the degree that a staff member likes his or her job, and commitment represents the affective bond to the organization. Work–family conflict, when viewed as a stressor, could detract from the overall satisfaction gained from the job. Conversely, the worker may not attribute much blame for this stress to the organization and, as such, continues to accept the goals of the organization and put forth effort.

Three of the four types of work–family conflict had significant negative effects on job satisfaction among the surveyed Chinese prison staff. As hypothesized, strain-based, behavior-based and family-based conflict reduced satisfaction. Being upset at home from work experiences and having poorer interactions with family and friends not only is a negative experience, but appears to detract from the pleasure gained from the job. Strain-based conflict is not a pleasant experience, so it is not surprising that it detracts from overall satisfaction from the job. Similarly, work and home roles that encroach on one another are linked to reduced satisfaction. Staff may blame their job for this form of conflict. Family harmony is important in China, and both strain-based and behavior-based conflict interfere with harmony at home. Family-on-work conflict also appears to reduce satisfaction. Being distracted at work likely reduces the level of productivity and interactions with others, in the end reducing job satisfaction.

Except for time-based conflict, our findings are consistent with findings among United States correctional staff. As previous noted, time-based, strain-based, behavior-based and family-on-work conflict have negative effects on job satisfaction among United States correctional staff (Armstrong et al., 2015 ; Lambert et al., 2002 , 2006 ). In the current study, time-based conflict had statistically significant negative effects on job satisfaction in the bivariate but not the multivariate results. The effects of time-based conflict could vary across different correctional organizations. It is important to note that not all United States correctional staff studies have found that time-based conflict impacts job satisfaction when other types of work–family conflict are included. For example, Armstrong et al. ( 2015 ) found strain-, behavior- and family-based conflict were significantly related to both job stress and job satisfaction, and time-based conflict had no significant effects on either job stress or job satisfaction. While found not to have direct effects, time-based conflict may have indirect effects. It is also possible that time-based conflict affects strain-based conflict, and, in turn, strain-based conflict reduced the level of satisfaction. There is a significant bivariate correlation between these two variables of .71, p  ≤ .001 (see Table 2 ). As noted by Liu et al. ( 2017 ), being kept away from family and friends and important home events may result in strain for the staff member. The association between time-based and strain-based conflict needs to be studied using a longitudinal design.

As hypothesized, strain-based and behavior-based conflicts had negative effects on affective commitment in the regression analysis. These findings are not surprising because strain-based and behavior-based conflicts are negative and unpleasant feelings. It is likely the organization is being held responsible for these two forms of domain conflict. It is hard to form an affective bond with an employing organization if you are experiencing strain-based and behavior-based conflict. The finding that these two forms of work–family conflict reduced commitment among Chinese correctional staff is consistent what was found among U.S. staff. The negative effects that strain-based and behavior-based conflict have on affective commitment appear to cut across nations, at least the United States and China. Additional research on the effects of these stressors is needed in other nations to determine whether they are universal.

Contrary to our hypotheses, neither time-based nor family-on-work conflict had significant effects on organizational commitment (i.e. Hypotheses 5 and 8 were not supported). These findings differ from what is typically found for United States correctional staff. It is possible that the effects of time-based conflict vary across countries. Only two published studies could be found that examined the effects of time-based conflict on commitment, and both focused on Midwestern United States prison staff (Lambert et al., 2006 , 2014 ). The issue of time appears to be less of an issue for Chinese prison staff than it is for United States staff. As was the case with job satisfaction, time-based conflict may have indirect effects on commitment through strain-based conflict. As previously noted, time-based conflict has a significant positive correlation with the strain type of work–family conflict. Upon further reflection, it makes sense that family-based conflict would not have a significant negative relationship with commitment. This type of work–family conflict represents family issues and problems resulting in conflict at work. While this is likely to cause problems at work, which could (and did) impact job satisfaction, these problems are less likely to be the result of something the organization did wrong. As noted earlier, affective commitment generally results because of positive things done by the organization, such as being fair with staff, allowing for input into decision-making, job variety and clear communication. Our results confirm this. While this type of work–family conflict reduced job satisfaction, the organization was not blamed because family-based conflict had a nonsignificant effect on affective commitment in the regression model. While the current finding is contrary to the Lambert et al. ( 2006 ) study that reported that family-on-work conflict affected commitment among United States correctional staff, Lambert et al. ( 2014 ) reported no significant association between this type of work–family conflict and United States private prison staff commitment. There has been so little research on the types of work–family conflict and commitment that a firm conclusion cannot be drawn at this time. Additional research on the effects of time-based, strain-based, behavior-based and family-based conflict on affective commitment across a wide array of correctional institutions in various nation is required.

Of the personal characteristics, only two had significant effects in the two regression analyses. Tenure had a positive effect on satisfaction. Those with a longer time have decided to stay with the organization and probably have found a job they like. The variable representing the prison of employment had a significant negative effect on organizational commitment. Specifically, staff at the second prison reported greater commitment than their colleagues at the first prison. The second prison appears to operate in a different manner that results in a stronger bond between the staff and the organization in general than in the first prison. The reason for the stronger level of commitment among staff at the second prison than among staff at the first prison is not entirely clear, and additional investigation is needed on why the prison variable was a significant predictor to determine what is being done differently so changes can be made to enhance commitment. The finding that personal characteristics as a group were not significant predictors is consistent with research on United States correctional staff. Moreover, this is good news for correctional administrators. It is neither possible nor ethical to change personal characteristics, such as age or gender, or to increase job satisfaction and/or affective commitment of staff. Our findings indicate that correctional administrators need to be aware of work–family conflict and undertake efforts to reduce it for their staff.

Based on the current findings among Chinese staff and past findings among Western staff, there are implications. The issue of work–family conflict and its negative effects need to be addressed in corrections in both Chinese and Western correctional institutions. Efforts need to be undertaken to reduce the occurrence of work–family conflict, particularly in terms of strain-based, behavior-based and family-based conflict. Those newly employed need to be made aware that work–family conflict may arise. It is important to investigate how strain-based conflict develops among correctional staff in order to reduce its occurrence. Further, workshops should be provided so staff are aware of strain-based conflict and how to deal with it in positive manner, such as providing information on positive and effective coping strategies and providing workplace support groups. Likewise, training should be offered to staff on the issue of behavior-based conflict and how to best deal with work roles and home roles conflicting with one another. Mental health specialists at the prison need to provide interventions to help staff deal with strain-based, behavior-based and family-based conflict. Employee assistance programs can help staff deal with these forms of domain conflict. In addition, intervention and support services need to be offered to help staff deal with family and home problems. Supervisors need to be trained to identify the different forms of work–family conflict among staff and how to encourage staff to use the support services offered by the correctional organization. Researchers need to study which interventions and programs work the best for the different forms of domain conflict. In addition, new approaches are needed. Not all possible interventions have been used and tested in the field of institutional corrections. New interventions need to be developed and studied. Regardless of the nation, doing nothing will not solve the issue of work–family conflict and the negative effects its different forms have on satisfaction and commitment of staff.

Although single studies are rarely definitive, the current study helps fill a knowledge gap in the empirical literature. Nonetheless, the current study had limitations, and there is a need for additional research in the area. This is not to imply that work–family conflict among correctional staff should be ignored. As found in past studies and the current study, work–family conflict in terms of strain-based, behavior-based, and family-based conflict reduced staff satisfaction and commitment. The current study focused on staff at Chinese prisons, and past studies focused on staff in Western prisons. Future research needs to examine how different forms of work–family affect the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of correctional staff in other nations. The current study and the past United States research suggest overall that the effects of strain-based, behavior-based and family-based domain conflict may be universal, while time-based conflict is not. What is not clear is whether the results would differ by cultures yet to be studied. While based on past research and a theoretical foundation, a cross-sectional design was used. Longitudinal studies are needed in order to empirically demonstrate the causal effects of different forms of work–family conflict on correctional staff job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Moreover, research is needed to identify potential causes for work–family conflict so effective interventions can be instituted to reduce the conflict spillover. In addition, research is needed to examine the utility of these possible interventions to either reduce work–family conflict or show how to deal with work–family conflict effectively and positively. Finally, future research is needed to examine the effects on other salient outcomes among correctional staff, such as job involvement, job burnout, turnover, absenteeism, work performance, organizational citizenship behaviors and life satisfaction.

In closing, correctional staff are an important resource for correctional facilities, including those in China. Work and home are two important domains for staff. While ideally there is balance between these domains, this is not the case for all staff. For some, there is spillover between the domains, resulting in work–family conflict. The current study examined the effects of time-based, strain-based, behavior-based and family-based conflict on the work attitudes of job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment among staff at two prisons in the Guangdong province of China. Of the four types of work–family conflict, strain-based, behavior-based and family-on-work conflict were found to reduce job satisfaction in a multivariate regression analysis. For commitment, strain-based and behavior-based conflict were observed to have negative effects in a multivariate regression equation. The results indicated that correctional administrators need to be aware of the issue of work–family conflict and examine possible ways to reduce it. While this study found interesting and needed information to help administrators and scholars, there is a need for more studies on work–family conflict for correctional staff, not only in China, but across the world in nations other than the United States. At the very least, we hope the current study will spur more interest and research on the subject of work–family conflict among correctional staff. With research, work–family conflict can be effectively combatted.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the reviewers and editorial staff for their comments. The authors also thank Janet Lambert for proofreading this paper.

Items for the indexed variables and response options

The response options for the items was a six-point Likert scale of strongly disagree (coded 1), disagree (coded 2), somewhat disagree (coded 3), somewhat agree (coded 4), agree (coded 5) and strongly agree (coded 6).

Job satisfaction: (1) Most days I am happy about my job; (2) I find real satisfaction in my job; and (3) I feel satisfied with my job.

Organizational commitment: (1) I am proud to tell people that I work for the (name of the prison system); (2) I find that my values and the (name of the prison system) values are very similar; (3) I really care about the fate of the (name of the prison system); (4) The (name of the prison system) really inspires the best in me in the way of job performance; and (5) I tell my friends that this is a great organization to work for.

Time-based conflict: (1) My job keeps me away from my home too much; (2) I often have to miss important family or social activities/events because of my job; and (3) The uncertainty of my work schedule interferes with my family and/or social life.

Strain-based conflict: (1) Due to all the work demands, sometimes when I come home, I am too stressed to do the things I enjoy; (2) Work makes me too tired or irritable to fully enjoy my family social life; (3) When I get home from work, I am often too stressed to participate with family or friends; and (4) I find that I frequently bring home problems from work.

Behavior-based conflict: (1) The behaviors I use at work do not help me to be a better person at home; (2) The behaviors I learned at work do not help me to be a better parent, spouse, friend, and so forth; and (3) The behaviors that are effective at home do not seem to be effective at work.

Family-on-work conflict: (1) Because of family/social concerns, I sometimes have a hard time concentrating at work; (2) Due to stress at home, I am often preoccupied with family matters at work; (3) Tension from home often follows me to work; and (4) Due to the pressures at home, it is sometimes hard for me to do my job well.

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest.

Eric G. Lambert has declared no conflicts of interest

Jianhong Liu has declared no conflicts of interest

Shanhe Jiang has declared no conflicts of interest

Thomas M. Kelley has declared no conflicts of interest

Jinwu Zhang has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participating prison staff.

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Article contents

Work-family conflict and work-life conflict.

• Ellen Ernst Kossek Ellen Ernst Kossek Basil S. Turner Professor of Management, Krannert School of Management, Purdue University
•  and  Kyung-Hee Lee Kyung-Hee Lee Krannert School of Management, Purdue University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190224851.013.52
• Published online: 26 October 2017

Work-family and work-life conflict are forms of inter-role conflict that occur when the energy, time, or behavioral demands of the work role conflicts with family or personal life roles. Work-family conflict is a specific form of work-life conflict. Work-family conflict is of growing importance in society as it has important consequences for work, non-work, and personal outcomes such as productivity, turnover, family well-being, health, and stress. Work-family conflict relates to critical employment, family, and personal life outcomes. These include work outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover), family outcomes (e.g., marital satisfaction and family satisfaction), and personal outcomes related to physical health (e.g., physical symptoms, eating and exercise behaviors), and psychological health (e.g., stress and depressive symptoms, life satisfaction). Many different theoretical perspectives are used to understand work-life conflict: starting with role theory, and more recently conservation of resources, job demands and resources, and life course theories. Many methodological challenges are holding back the advancement of work-family conflict research. These include (1) construct overlap between work-family conflict and work-life conflict, and work-life balance measures; (2) measurement issues related to directionality and operationalization; and (3) a lack of longitudinal and multilevel studies. Future research should include studies to (1) advance construct development on linkages between different forms of work-family and work-life conflict; (2) improve methodological modeling to better delineate work-family conflict mechanisms; (3) foster increased variation in samples; (4) develop resiliency interventions that fit specific occupational contextual demands; (5) increase integration and sophistication of theoretical approaches; and (6) update work-family studies to take into account the influence of the growing prevalence of technology that is transforming work-family relationships.

• work-family conflict
• work-life conflict

The Growing Societal Importance of Work-Family Conflict

Work-family conflict is a growing challenge for modern society, as a vast majority of men and women report that work interferes with their family responsibilities (Glavin & Schieman, 2012 ). Work-family conflict is rising due to the changing work and family demographic trends in the United States and around the globe, including growing numbers of mothers with children under 18 in the labor force; the rapid rise in elder care demands due to an aging population; and an increase in men’s involvement with family caregiving demands, particularly in developed Western countries (Kossek & Distelberg, 2009 ; Kossek & Ollier-Malaterre, 2013 ). Work-family conflict is also growing due to the spread of technology that has increased boundary blurring and the pace of daily life, due to the prevalence of personal electronic communication devices that can keep individuals constantly connected to work and family concerns 24-7 (Kossek, 2016 ).

Work-family conflict directly and indirectly affects most of the world population. Even single people and those without children—will report having some work-family conflict as all individuals may be sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, or may live with friends who function as family (Casper, Weltman, & Kwesiga, 2007 ). Work-family conflict also has rising indirect effects as studies show work-family conflicts may cross over to job colleagues (O’Neill et al., 2009 ) and families (Westman, 2001 ).

We organize this article by beginning with a definition of work-family conflict and noting that it is a specific form of work-life conflict. Next we discuss why work-family matters: its consequences. Then we consider theoretical perspectives of work-family conflict; methodological issues; and its mechanisms, including antecedents and mediators/moderators; and conclude with future research.

Definitions and Consequences

Work-family and work-life conflict.

Work-family conflict is a form of inter-role conflict that occurs when the energy, time, or behavioral demands of the work role conflicts with those of the family role (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985 ). A key assumption of work-family conflict is that the demands and expectations of work (e.g., working late, travel) often conflict with those of the family (e.g., picking up a child after school to be able to attend their soccer practice or music lesson) or taking a parent to the doctor when they are sick and cannot drive themselves. When an individual’s multiple roles such as work and family become incompatible with each other, role conflict occurs (Kahn et al., 1964 ).

Work-life conflict is an extension of work-family conflict reflecting the reality that the work role may interfere with individuals’ other personal life roles and interests. Besides the family role, these can range from time for friends, exercise, military service, education, having time for self and recovery (Kossek, 2016 ), volunteering, or being active in religious organizations. While work-family conflict remains a key factor for many employees, a challenge with current research is that scholars often methodologically and theoretically confound all forms of non-work conflict in the work-family measure (Wilson & Baumann, 2015 ). Consequently, some researchers such as Siegel, Post, Brockner, Fishman, and Garden ( 2005 ) use the term “work-life conflict” to reflect the many additional non-work demands in individuals’ lives that are not restricted to those involving the family. In this article, we use the term work-family conflict and work-life conflict, interchangeably, unless otherwise noted.

Consequences of Work-Family Conflict for Work and Non-Work Roles and Stress

Work-family conflict is related to many critical employment and personal life outcomes. These include work outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover), family outcomes (e.g., marital satisfaction and family satisfaction), physical health (e.g., physical symptoms, eating and exercise behaviors), psychological health (e.g., stress and depressive symptoms), and life satisfaction (Allen & Armstrong, 2006 ; Allen, Herst, Bruck, & Sutton, 2000 ; Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999 ; Kossek, Lautsch, & Eaton, 2006 ; Kossek & Ozeki, 1998 ; Netemeyer, Boles, & McMurrian, 1996 ).

Allen and colleagues’ meta-analysis ( 2000 ) organized consequences of work-family conflict into three main groups: work-related, non-work-related, and stress-related and ranked the relative effect sizes. Among work-related outcomes, turnover intentions ( r = .29) had the strongest relationship followed by job satisfaction ( r = −.24), and organizational commitment ( r = −.23). The non-work-related outcomes were all significant in this order: life satisfaction ( r = −.28) had the strongest relationship, followed by martial satisfaction ( r = −.24) and family satisfaction ( r = −.17). Many stress-related outcomes were significant from alcohol abuse ( r = .17) to all others such as physical health strain and depressive symptoms all being at least r = −.29 and above with burnout being the highest at r = .42.

Theoretical Perspectives

Having discussed the importance of work-family conflict for individuals, families, and organizations, in this section we turn to its theoretical underpinnings. While its theoretical roots are most attributed to role theory, conservation of resources, demands and resources and life-course perspectives have also been used to understand work-family conflict. Role theory focuses on subjective conflict role demands of work and family domains while conservation of resources theory mainly focuses on individual coping strategies to protect depletion of resources. The demands-and-resources approach is often focused at the job level emphasizes the dual processes of job demands and job resources. While sometimes family resources are included, most of the management literature has emphasized the work domain. The conservation of resources theory relies on individual actions to preserve resources while the demands-resources approach emphasizes the importance of perceptions of the work environment. The life-course perspective integrates historical, social, and family contexts into work-family conflict research.

Role Theory

Grounded in role theory (Katz & Kahn, 1978 ), work-family conflict results from the incompatibility of role demands between work and family from time, strain, or behavior (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985 ). Work role conflict can occur in two directions; from work to family or from family to work (Kossek & Ozeki, 1998 ). It can be asymmetrical in impact as work variables seems to be more strongly related to work-to-family conflict than family variables seem to be related to family-to-work conflict (Byron, 2005 ).

Time-based role conflict occurs when the time demands from work and family compete with each other (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985 ).For example, overtime takes away hours a parent can spend with children (work-to family conflict); and illness of a family member may limit working hours (family-to-work conflict). Recent studies (Clarkberg & Moen, 2001 ; Dugan, Matthews, & Barnes-Farrell, 2012 ) suggest that subjective measures of time, namely, work hours preferences or perceptions of time pressures are key aspects to update measures of work-family conflict. Strain-based conflict occurs when strain in one role constrains individuals’ ability to perform another role (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985 ). For example, a study of professionals found that exhaustion and anxiety from work can spill over to family or life domain (work-to-family conflict) limiting individuals’ role performance (Kinman & Jones, 2001 ). On the other hand, new parents may not get enough sleep, affecting their work performance (family-to-work conflict). Behavior-based conflict occurs when behavior patterns related to work and family are not compatible (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985 ). While some scholars argue that behavior-based work-family conflict may not be relevant to most occupations (Mauno, Kinnunen, & Ruokolainen, 2006 ), it is clear that certain occupations such as military (Britt, Adler, & Castro, 2006 ) or prison guards (Kinman, Clements, & Hart, 2017 ) may require hostile or aggressive interpersonal interactions that may not be suitable in family interactions (work-to-family conflict) (Dierdorff & Ellington, 2008 ). Similarly, needing to be very nurturing with a preschooler may require behaviors that might not fit with a more hard-nosed environment such as being a CEO that has to downsize and fire people or being a police officer that has to arrest people (family-to-work conflict). Thus, there may be occupational variation in the processes and degree to which work-family processes such as positive and negative crossover of roles may operate.

Conservation of Resources Theory

Work-family conflict is typically conceptualized as a type of stress in conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989 ). When individuals are trying to balance the demands of work and family, they may experience or be threatened to experience the loss of resources such as time and energy, leading to stress that is one form of work-family conflict (Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999 ). Conservation of resources theory is based on the premise that (1) individuals seek to gain and protect objective sources or conditions; and (2) stress occurs when the loss of resources is threatened, and investment of resources does not lead to resource gain (Hobfoll, 1989 ). Conservation of resources theory often emphasizes protection of resources such as a good marriage, free time, personal health, self-discipline, financial assets, and tangible family help with work tasks (Hobfoll, 1989 ). Individuals also gain resources by performing a role well (e.g., promotion, higher pay, or self-esteem). However, resource loss has greater impact (negative) on individual outcomes than resource gain (Hobfoll, 2001 ).

According to the conservation of resources theory, there are several coping mechanisms of work-family conflict. One mechanism relates to the cross-domain investment of resources to prevent resource losses. For example, when individuals experience problems at work (e.g., low performance) or home (e.g., a sick child), they may feel they have to invest more resources in the problem area to prevent resource losses. This may increase stress in one domain that can spill over to the other domain (Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999 ) or limit resources for the other domain (Halbesleben, Harvey, & Bolino, 2009 ). A second mechanism relates to when individuals invest large amount of resources to work or experience chronic, minor losses without any return resource gain, and individuals experience personal burnout (Hobfoll, 2001 ). A third mechanism occurs when individuals may guard against future resource loss through proactive coping, which refers to “efforts undertaken to either prevent a potentially stressful event or modify its form before it occurs (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997 , p. 417). Here, individuals strive to attain, maintain, and invest in new resources to be better prepared for potential future loss. The ability to engage in proactive coping may depend on the initial level of resources. Individuals have to have enough resources to be able to invest to gain new resources (e.g., new skills), ultimately protecting them from the future resource loss (Hobfoll, 2001 ).

Demands-and-Resources Approaches

Resources-and-demands approaches emphasize the need to examine demands and resources to understand job strain contributing to work-family conflict (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007 ; Bakker, Demerouti, De Boer, & Schaufeli, 2003 ; Voydanoff, 2005a ). The job demands-and-resources model assumes that job demands may deplete individuals’ resources, resulting in negative individual and work outcomes. On the other hand, job resources have potential to motivate individuals to perform better, leading to positive individual and work outcomes (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007 ). This approach also suggests that some job resources such as social support, autonomy, and supervisor feedback may act as a buffer between job demands and job strain (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007 ). For example, Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, and Schaufeli ( 2007 ) note that high levels of autonomy and support reduce the impact of job demands on burnout among home-care organization employees.

Voydanoff ( 2005a ) extended one-domain demands-and-resources approaches by integrating both work and family domains. Based on person-environment fit theory (Edwards, Caplan, & Van Harrison, 1998 ; French, Caplan, & Van Harrison, 1982 ) and boundary theory (Ashforth, Kreiner, & Fugate, 2000 ), Voydanoff ( 2005a ) proposed that the cross-domain fit (the work demands-family resources fit and the family demands-work resources fit) is the key to decreasing work-family conflict and achieving work-family balance. Fit is achieved when “resources meet, offset, or satisfy” demands (Voydanoff, 2005a , p. 828). There are two mechanisms of work-family conflict. First, the fit between work demands-family resources and the fit between family demands and work resources have direct relationships with work-family conflict. Second, boundary-spanning strategies such as reducing hours, or reducing family or work demands may mediate or moderate the relationship between work-family fit and work-family conflict to enhance fit (Voydanoff, 2005a ).

Life-Course Perspective

The life-course perspective (Elder, 1998 ) provides a unique framework and concepts such as historical time, transitions, or linked lives to examine work-family conflict. First, the concept of historical time and social context captures shifts in workforce and career zeitgeist from the past. Contemporary workers are less likely to spend their whole career and regularly advance in one organization, and feel secure in their jobs than workers from previous decades. Yet they are more likely to customize their timing of retirement, pursue flexible work arrangements such as reduced workload and telework, and seek work-family balance (Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014 ). Given these historical and life-course changes, it is likely to expect changes in work-life conflict processes. Blair-Loy ( 2003 ) found that younger cohorts of female executives reported less work-family conflict than older cohorts, partly because they are more likely to hire someone to do domestic chores. Second, the concept of transition also helps us to understand how changing family demands over time may affect work-life conflict processes. For example, the child care demands for a newborn baby are quantitatively and qualitatively different from those of an adolescent and may require different types of resources. Furthermore, with the growing elderly population, more people provide informal care to elder family members. These elder care responsibilities may delay retirement to ensure financial and health care coverage, which in turn decrease job satisfaction and increase conflict (Dentinger & Clarkberg, 2002 ). Third, the concept of linked lives allows researchers to examine the crossover effect of family member strain from work-family conflict (Westman, 2001 ). For example, husbands’ work stress can decrease the sense of work-family balance in wives (Fagan & Press, 2008 ). Positive crossover effects can also occur as support from a partner can decrease individuals’ work-family conflict (Becker & Moen, 1999 ; van Daalen, Willemsen, & Sanders, 2006 ; Thorstad, Anderson, Hall, Willingham, & Carruthers, 2006 ). Now we turn to methodological issues related to definitions, measurement, and study designs, and then to mechanisms of work-family conflict.

Methodological Issues

Work-family conflict vs. work-family balance.

One main methodological issue is the issue of construct overlap, such as the work-family conflict and work-life conflict issues noted earlier. Work-family conflict and work-family balance are also closely related concepts. While there seems to be a consensus among scholars that work-family balance is distinct from work-family conflict, empirical evidence is scarce (Greenhaus & Allen, 2010 ). One recent study (Carlson, Grzywacz, & Zivnuska, 2009 ) found that work-life balance explained work and family outcomes beyond the variance explained by work-family conflict, supporting the argument that work-family balance is a distinct concept.

Although work-family balance frequently has been defined as the absence of work-family conflict (Grzywacz & Carlson, 2007 ), a growing number of researchers are conceptualizing work-life balance independent of work-family conflict. Work-family balance is defined as equal commitment to and equal satisfaction in work and family (Greenhaus, Collins, & Shaw, 2003 ; Marks & MacDermid, 1996 ). Some scholars focus on satisfaction with work-family balance defined as “an overall level of contentment resulting from an assessment of one’s degree of success at meeting work and family role demands” (Valcour, 2007 , p. 1512). However, Grzywacz and Carlson ( 2007 ) criticized these definitions arguing (1) that individuals do not seek to achieve equality in their work and family; and (2) that using satisfaction to define work-life balance reinforces the individualist views on work-family balance, making it an individual problem. Instead, they proposed the definition of work-family balance as “accomplishment of role-related expectations that are negotiated and shared between an individual and his or her role-related partners in the work and family domains” (Grzywacz & Carlson, 2007 , p. 458).

Conflict and balance are conceptually overlapping because these concepts are defined or imply the absence of the other. Although not overlapping, a new stream of research focuses on work-family enrichment to understand the positive dynamics between work and family to augment the conflict view, which examines negative dynamics. Work-family enrichment is defined by Greenhaus and Powell ( 2006 , p. 73) as “the extent to which experiences in one role improve the quality of life in the other role” Work-family enrichment theory maintains that positive processes and outcomes can occur from being involved in both work and family. They theorize that three possible mechanisms may foster these benefits: the positive additive effects of multiple roles for well-being; the opportunity to buffer roles so that when something is going wrong in one role, the other role can compensate; and the transfers of positive emotions and skills between roles.

Measurement Issues

Directionality.

Since the 1990s, researchers have realized that work-to-family and family-to-work conflict needed to be measured separately (MacDermid & Harvey, 2006 ). A meta-analysis study (Kossek & Ozeki, 1998 ) on relationships between work-family conflict and job-life satisfaction found stronger findings for bidirectional measures (work-to-family and family-to-work) than non-directional general measures. It also found stronger work-family relationships for women than men. Another meta-analysis (Mesmer-Magnus & Viswesvaran, 2005 ) concluded that work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict are related but distinct constructs, warranting separate examination. The bidirectional measures have deepened our understanding of work-family conflict. There is evidence that although work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict are correlated and both are associated with individuals’ well-being (Frone, Russell, & Barnes, 1996 ), work-to-family conflict is more common than family-to-work conflict (Frone, 2003 ; Kossek & Ozeki, 1998 ), suggesting asymmetry in impact on general well-being and health. Moreover, in general, work-related variables are more likely to be related to work-to-family conflict and family-related variables are more likely to be associated with family-to-work conflict (Byron, 2005 ; Frone, Yardley, & Markel, 1997 ; Michel, Kotrba, Mitchelson, Clark, & Baltes, 2011 ).

Operationalization and Measures of Work-Family Conflict

The lack of consistency of the operationalization of work-family conflict across studies has been an issue in work-family conflict literature (Allen et al., 2000 ; Kossek & Ozeki, 1998 ; Netemeyer et al., 1996 ). Different operationalization combined with different measures makes integrating and comparing study findings of work-family conflict challenging. Furthermore, after reviewing 67 studies, Allen and colleagues ( 2000 ) concluded that single-item measures, measures with unknown validity and measures with different foci were prevalent problems (for detailed list of measures, see Allen et al., 2000 ; Byron, 2005 ; Mesmer-Magnus & Viswesvaran, 2005 ). They recommended that measures should be developed that cover both work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict (e.g., Netemeyer et al., 1996 ) and Greenhaus and Beutell’s ( 1985 ) three forms of work-family conflict (time-, strain, and behavior-based conflict; e. g., Carlson, Kacmar, & Williams, 1998 ; Stephens & Sommer, 1996 ).

Cross-Sectional vs. Longitudinal Designs

While there have been many studies identifying antecedents, mediators/moderators, and consequences of work-family conflict, scholars cannot assume causal relationships because most are cross-sectional. Although some longitudinal studies have confirmed some causal relationships between antecedents, work-family conflict, and consequences (Dormann & Zapf, 2002 ; de Jonge et al., 2001 ; Wong, Hui, & Law, 1998 ), other studies found reciprocal or reverse relationships. For example, in a one-year longitudinal study (Kinnunen, Geurts, & Mauno, 2004 ), work-family conflict and well-being variables (job, family, and physical well-being) at time 1 predicted each other at time 2. In another study, general distress predicted work-to-family interference six months later but work-to-family interference did not predict general distress over time (Kelloway, Gottlieb, & Barham, 1999 ). More longitudinal studies are needed to understand causal processes of work-family conflict.

Yet sometimes longitudinal designs are not always appropriate or practical. There are several issues to consider when deciding to design a longitudinal work-family conflict study: (1) whether the research question is related to continuity and change over time, (2) time involved, (3) money involved, and (4) how to deal with missing data (Crouter & Pirretti, 2006 ). Work-family conflict also may be episodic as opposed to an on-going continuous phenomenon. Work-family researchers need to more carefully select the most appropriate study design based on the research question and practical issues.

Mechanisms of Work-Family and Work-Life Conflict

Research on work-family conflict has expanded from simply focusing on identifying antecedents and consequences to unveiling mechanisms or processes by identifying mediators and moderators, and using longitudinal design. Mediators help uncover hidden relationships or eliminate false relationships between variables. For example, many studies found a direct relationship between work-family conflict and turnover intention (Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999 ; Netemeyer et al., 1996 ). However, a study with 171 IT workers, Ahuja, Chudoba, Kacmar, McKnight, and George ( 2007 ) did not find a direct relationship between work-family conflict and turnover intentions, but the relationship was mediated by organizational commitment.

Moderators refine our understanding by highlighting the relationships between antecedent and outcome variables under certain conditions or for capturing variation in levels of sample characteristics. For example, in their study of accountants, Greenhaus, Parasuraman, and Collins ( 2001 ) found that the relationship between work-to-family conflict and withdrawal intentions and behaviors were stronger for accountants with lower levels of career involvement than those with higher levels of career involvement. Now we will briefly review antecedents, mediators/moderators, and consequences of work-family conflict separately.

Antecedents of Work-Family Conflict

Individual characteristics.

Meta-analysis studies (Byron, 2005 ; Kossek & Ozeki, 1998 ; Michel et al., 2011 ) identified some individual characteristics including gender, income, coping skills, and personality as antecedents of both work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict. Male workers tended to report higher work-to-family conflict while female workers tended to report higher family-to-work conflict. Income was only related to work-to-family conflict (Byron, 2005 ). Coping skills have not attracted much attention in work-family conflict literature (Kopelman, Greenhaus, & Connolly, 1983 ) despite some empirical evidence of usefulness in reducing conflict (Burke, 1998 ; Rotondo, Carlson, & Kincaid, 2003 ) and the growing interest in work-life interventions (Kossek, 2016 ). In a meta-analysis study (Michel et al., 2011 ), coping skills had similar effect sizes to work-to-family and family-to-work conflict ( ρ ‎ = .12 and ρ ‎ = .15, respectively), indicating that positive coping skills are valuable resources.

Some recent studies examine the relationships between personality characteristics (Bernas & Major, 2000 ; Grzywacz & Carlson, 2007 ; Stoeva, Chiu, & Greenhaus, 2002 ; Wayne, Musisca, & Fleeson, 2004 ) and work-family conflict. These studies generally were designed based on the assumption that some personal characteristics such as hardiness or agreeableness would be helpful in dealing with stress and strain while characteristics such as neuroticism would exacerbate work-family conflict. In fact, different big-five personality traits seem to have different effect on work-family conflict. For example, in a study with a large random sample (Wayne et al., 2004 ), neuroticism had the strongest positive relationship with both work-to-family and family-to-work conflict among the big-five personality characteristics. While agreeableness and conscientiousness were negatively associated with work-family conflict, extraversion and openness to experience were not. Kossek, Ruderman, Braddy, and Hannum ( 2012 ) found that variation in boundary management styles or how people organized work and non-work interruptions predicted work-family conflict with integrators reporting more work-family conflict than separators, a condition that was stronger under conditions of low job control. Kossek and Lautsch ( 2012 ) theorized a multi-level model suggesting that the more the organizational culture supported customization of work-family boundary management styles and diversity in boundary management style enactment, the lower the work-family conflict.

Family-Related Variables

Characteristics related to family structure including number of children, the age of children, and marital status have been identified as antecedents of work-to-family and family-to-work conflict. More children and having young children tend to be related to increased work-to-family and family-to-work conflict (Byron, 2005 ; Michel et al., 2011 ). Not surprisingly, parents with more children reported more family-to-work conflict than work-to-family conflict. Married workers reported higher work-to-family conflict but lower family-to-work conflict than single workers (Byron, 2005 ). One weakness of using family demographic measures alone, however, is that they measure role occupancy but not necessarily role involvement or the level of involvement in the family role.

Many variables related to the family role have been identified as antecedents of work-family conflict: (1) role involvement (e.g., hours spent, family involvement); (2) stress (e.g., family stress, family conflict, family overload); and (3) family identity (e.g., family identity salience, family centrality). Antecedents related to the family role such as family role involvement, hours spent, family conflict, family stress, and family role overload tend to be related to increased work-to-family and family-to-work conflict (Byron, 2005 ; Michel et al., 2011 ). However, family centrality (prioritizing family over work) was associated with lower levels of work-to-family and family-to-work conflict (Michel et al., 2011 ), suggesting some individuals may adopt strategies to reduce work-to-family conflict to protect the family role (Kossek et al., 2012 ) Family support can also be valuable as meta-analytic studies show that social support from family and spouse was negatively associated with both work-to-family and family-to-work conflict in similar magnitude (Byron, 2005 ; Michel et al., 2011 ).

Job-Related Variables

Many characteristics related to the job (e.g., organizational tenure, salary, work hours, job autonomy, job authority, job rank, blue collar vs. white collar, self-employment) have been examined as possible antecedents of work-family conflict and family-to-work conflict. However, there are conflicting findings on some of these variables. For example, organizational or job tenure tend to lead greater flexibility, leading to lower work-to-family conflict. Longer job tenure tends to be related to job status in the organization and higher job status tends to be related to more responsibilities and, thus, higher stress. Moreover, higher salary may relate to lower work-family conflict yet higher salary is also highly related to higher job status and more responsibilities (Michel et al., 2011 ). Thus these variables should not be looked at in isolation but together and family and work-role involvement must be measured simultaneously. Variables related to work-role involvement such as work hours, work demands, job involvement, job role ambiguity, and work identity have been identified as antecedents of work-to-family conflict (Byron, 2005 ; Dierdorff & Ellington, 2008 ; Michel et al., 2011 ; Voydanoff, 2005b ).

General support from supervisors and coworkers have been found to be negatively associated with both work-to-family and family-to-work conflict but the association was stronger with work-to-family conflict than to family-to-work conflict in meta-analysis studies (Byron, 2005 ; Michel et al., 2011 ; Kossek, Pichler, Hammer & Bodner, 2011 ).

Organization-Level and Occupational-Level Variables

Family-supportive work environments help workers to reduce work-to-family conflict (Kossek & Ozeki, 1998 ; Kossek et al., 2011 ; Mesmer-Magnus & Viswesvaran, 2006 ). The number of available work-family policies (e.g., flexible work arrangement, family leave, and dependent care assistant) have been the most common indicators of family-supportive work environments. However, without the organizations’ work-family culture, workers may not utilize the policies for fear of negative career consequences (Behson, 2002 ; Bragger et al., 2005 ). Thus, some scholars argue that the better indication of family-supportive environment is the perceived access to the work-family policy rather than the number of available policies (Kossek et al., 2011 ).

Supervisors play an important role in creating family-supportive environments. First of all, they can inform the employees the available work-family policies. In addition, supervisors who help employees to manage work-family demands can indirectly reduce work-to-family conflict by creating the family-supportive work environments. More importantly, family-supportive supervisors are directly associated with less work-to-family conflict (Hammer, Kossek, Bodner, & Crain, 2013 ; Hammer, Kossek, Yragui, Bodner, & Hanson, 2009 ). Furthermore, in another meta-analysis study, work-family specific support from supervisors was more strongly associated with work-to-family conflict than general supervisor support (Kossek et al., 2011 ).

The interest in occupation-level variables is a new development in work-family conflict literature. Dierdorff and Ellington ( 2008 ) argued that occupations dictate and shape certain role behaviors, which in turn explains the differences in work-family conflict across different occupations. They found that differences in role behaviors (interdependence and responsibility for others) across occupations explained variance in work-family conflict. Individuals with occupations that required higher levels of interdependence (having to interact with others to perform the job) and responsibility for others reported more work-family conflict than individuals whose occupations required lower levels of interdependence and responsibility for others. Occupations are also linked to access to work-family supports such as flexible work arrangements and job demands that may interfere with family life (Kossek & Perrigino, 2016 ). For example, professionals have greater access to telework unlike blue collar workers.

National/Cultural-Level Variables

Countries’ structure and culture are important contexts in understanding work-family conflict (for a comprehensive review, see Ollier-Malaterre & Foucreault, 2017 ). Similar to family-supportive work environments, national culture and policies may have impact on work-family conflict in many different ways. In a recent cross-national study in Europe, den Dulk, Groeneveld, Ollier-Malaterre, and Valcour ( 2013 ) found that national policies related to work-family support were strongly related to the extent that organizations adapted family-supportive policies such as dependent care arrangements (e.g., maternal/paternal leaves, family leave, child care support) and flexible work arrangements. The opposite pattern was found in the relationship between cultural centrality of work and organizations’ adoption of family-supportive policies. Organizations in the countries that value work as central to individuals and society adopted family-supportive policies less than those in the countries with lower levels of cultural centrality of work.

Another cultural value that is related to work-family conflict is individualism versus collectivism. Individuals in collectivistic countries tend to report more family-to-work conflict and less work-to-family conflict than those in individualist cultures (Allen, French, Dumani, & Shockley, 2015 ; Ng & Feldman, 2014 ). More family-to-work interruptions may explain higher levels of family-to-work conflict (Allen et al., 2015 ) while considering work as a necessary sacrifice for the family explains the lower levels of work-to-family conflict (Galovan et al., 2010 ) in collectivistic societies.

Mediators and Moderators of Work-Family Conflict

There is not a clear research literature clarifying identified mediators and moderators of work-family conflict, mostly due to the lack of longitudinal studies. A related issue in work-family conflict research is that the same variables have been used as antecedents and mediators/moderators in different (often cross-sectional) studies, potentially confusing the conceptualization of the mechanisms rather than helping to unveil new mechanisms.

Take personality as an example, which has been identified as an antecedent of work-family conflict. Yet personality has also been included as a mediator and a moderator between antecedents and work-family conflict (Stoeva et al., 2002 ) as well as between work-family conflict and consequences including job exhaustion and depression (Kinnunen, Vermulst, Gerris, & Mäkikangas, 2003 ). Stoeva and colleagues ( 2002 ) found that trait negativity mediated the relationship between stress and work-family conflict. Trait negativity also moderated the relationship so that the relationship between stress and work-family conflict was stronger for individuals with high negativity than individuals with low negativity. In another study (Kinnunen et al., 2003 ), emotional stability of fathers moderated the relationship between work-to-family conflict and well-being (e.g., job exhaustion and depression) and agreeableness moderated the relationship between family-to-work conflict and marital satisfaction. The relationships were stronger for emotionally unstable fathers and less agreeable fathers than their counterparts respectively.

Social support has also been included in work-family conflict studies as an antecedent, a mediator, and a moderator. Citing this as a limitation, Carlson and Perrewé ( 1999 ) tested four different models (social support as a mediator, a moderator, an antecedent of work-family conflict, and as an antecedent of stress) and confirmed that the antecedent to the stress model fit the data the best. However, their findings are not robust because they used cross-sectional data.

Individualism versus collectivism is another example. The relationships between work-family demands (antecedents) and work-to-family conflict found to be stronger in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures (Lu et al., 2010 ). Collectivism also moderates the relationship between work-to-family conflict and depression in the same pattern (Fackrell, Galovan, Hill, & Holmes, 2013 ).

In most studies, individual characteristics such as gender, parental status, and marital status have been used as control variables. However, some meta-analysis studies included these as moderators and some of their findings have practical implications (Byron, 2005 ; Michel et al., 2011 ). For example, Michel and colleagues ( 2011 ) found that married individuals and parents may benefit more from family-supportive organizations (e.g., coworker social support, work schedule flexibility, family-supportive policies) than their counterparts.

Closing and Future Research

This preceding article suggests the need for more nuanced theoretically-based and longitudinal future research on work-family conflict. First, we need more in-depth research on construct development on linkages between different forms of work-family conflict and work-life conflict. For example, Wilson and Baumann ( 2015 ) have developed four new constructs that capture four types of inter-role conflict (work-to-personal, personal-to-work, family-to-personal, and personal-to-family conflict). Further, although there is clear evidence that work-to-family and family-to-work conflict are distinct constructs, they are still sometimes conceptualized and operationalized as one. This leads to the use of less reliable and valid measures and, consequently, hinders integration and comparison of the study findings. More efforts to validate existing measures and to use newer validated and theoretically stronger measures such as the Wilson and Baumann measures noted can help advance theory development and refinement.

Future research should conduct a more fine-grained analysis using these different forms of work-life and work-family conflict. We also need to bring in new measures of work-family balance and link to studies of work-family enrichment that focus on positive work-family relationships.

Second, we need to improve our methodological modeling to better explain and delineate the mechanisms of work-family conflict. While we have ample evidence of the antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict, we lack the understanding of conditions on which the relationships between variables vary. More studies that test mediation and moderation effects are needed. These models also need to consider contexts such as larger organizational, cross-cultural, and societal contexts. Many studies tend to focus on one level and more multi-level research is needed on nested relationships beyond an singular individual and organizational focus. Studies with multiple-level analyses will help us understand how different level variables interact with each other and how certain variables act differently across employee groups.

Although many antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict have been identified, our understanding of the mechanisms of work-family conflict is not complete due to the lack of longitudinal studies and consistent conceptualization. Without longitudinal studies, we cannot infer causal relationships based on study findings. The lack of longitudinal studies also leads to the conceptualization challenges. Because most of the studies that tested mediation or moderation effect used cross-sectional data, it is difficult to interpret or incorporate findings from the studies that used the same variables as antecedents, mediators, or moderators.

Third, we will need to increase the variation in samples and design interventions that fit these samples’ specific occupational contextual demands to better understand how to foster work-life resiliency (Kossek & Perrigino, 2016 ). Most studies still focus on white collar workers and professionals or overlook variation in the nature of job demands. The results may be different with blue collar workers or low-wage hourly workers because their needs are different. For example, Stanczyk, Henly, and Lambert ( 2016 ) observed that many women with an hourly retail job tend to have multiple jobs to compensate for the low wage and it may create additional conflict between work and family because of the scheduling complexity. Given the fact that many hourly workers may not have access to organizational family-supportive benefits such as paid leave and a dependent care assistant, we need to understand more about the work-family conflict processes to find ways to decrease work-family conflict. Research must move beyond simply describing work-family conflict to include interventions in randomized or naturally occurring field experiments to close the research-to-practice gap (Kossek, Baltes, & Matthews, 2011 ; Kossek, 2016 ).

Fourth, we need to integrate and have more sophistication in theoretical approaches. Theories that have guided so many studies in work-family conflict literature such as role theory, resource conservation theory, and life-course perspectives all served the field greatly. However, these theories can be complemented with mini theories. For example, challenge and hindrance stress theory (LePine, LePine, & Jackson, 2004 ) argues that not all stress is the same. They distinguish challenge stress (e.g., new skills, personal growth) form hindrance stress (e.g., role ambiguity, low-value work) and argue that challenge stress may be beneficial to individuals rather than creating negative consequences. Theories like this can help us tease out certain specific conditions that work-family conflict may arise.

Lastly, work-family studies need to catch up with how technology has transformed work-life relationships. With the wide use of smart phones, tablets, and laptop computers, new research is looking at boundary management strategies (Kossek & Lautsch, 2012 ) used by individuals and how these technologies have created more ways for us to interrupt others and to be interrupted by others both at work and home. Because the technologies created ways to be connected 24/7, some supervisors or families may expect their employees to be reachable any time. Moreover, we can take work to family events or vacations, should the need arise. More multilevel studies are needed to understand the full ramifications of these new communication and computer technologies that have fundamentally changed the relationship between the work and family spheres in the digital age (Kossek, 2016 ; Kossek & Lautsch, 2012 ).

Acknowledgment

Shared first authorship as both authors contributed in equal and distinctive ways to this entry.

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Study Protocol

Crossover of the dimensions of work-family and family-work conflict in couples: Protocol for a qualitative study

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation StresLab Research Centre, Institute of Psychology, SWPS University, Warsaw, Poland

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft

Roles Methodology, Writing – original draft

Affiliation Institute of Psychology, SWPS University, Wroclaw, Poland

Affiliations Institute of Psychology, SWPS University, Sopot, Poland, Procome Research Group, Department of Learning, Informatics, Management, and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

• Ewelina Smoktunowicz, 
• Magdalena Lesnierowska, 
• Justyna Ziolkowska, 
• Marta Roczniewska

• Published: September 28, 2023
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290216
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Conflict between work and non-work is a bidirectional and a multidimensional construct that has garnered much attention from researchers and practitioners alike. Previously, studies with a dyadic design demonstrated that interrole conflict can cross over between partners in romantic relationships. The aim of the present study is to explore—from an individual and dyadic perspective—how partners perceive dimensions of interrole conflict (that is: time, strain, behaviour, and possibly others) and whether crossover between partners is dimension-dependent. This protocol outlines a qualitative interview study. Participants ( N = 40) will be dual-earner couples that meet two inclusion criteria: both partners need to be professionally active, and the couples need to have lived together for at least a year. Interviews will be conducted separately with each partner. To analyse the data at the individual level we will use reflexive thematic analysis. To analyse the data at the dyadic level we will apply an adapted version of the framework method. We anticipate that findings of this study will have the potential to advance theoretical models depicting crossover processes and, more generally, the interface between work and family lives. Moreover, insights into how couples experience dimension-based interrole conflict will be important for the development of targeted interventions.

Citation: Smoktunowicz E, Lesnierowska M, Ziolkowska J, Roczniewska M (2023) Crossover of the dimensions of work-family and family-work conflict in couples: Protocol for a qualitative study. PLoS ONE 18(9): e0290216. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290216

Editor: Avanti Dey, Public Library of Science, UNITED STATES

Received: August 9, 2023; Accepted: August 29, 2023; Published: September 28, 2023

Copyright: © 2023 Smoktunowicz et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study. All relevant data from this study will be made available upon study completion.

Funding: This research was funded in whole by National Science Centre, Poland (grant number 2020/39/D/HS6/02131 awarded to ES). The funder did not and will not have a role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Conflict between work and family is a concept that has long interested not only researchers but also, or perhaps mostly, those of us who balance job responsibilities with being a partner, a friend, or a parent. What is less known outside the walls of the scientific community is that interrole conflict does not stop with the person who experiences it but carries tangible consequences for their partner [ 1 ]. Greenhaus and Beutell, in their seminal paper [ 2 ], defined the work and family interface as “a form of interrole conflict in which the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respects” (p. 77). Despite the seemingly straightforward definition, interrole conflict is quite complex. First, it is bidirectional, meaning that we distinguish between work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC). Second, each of these conflicts is thought to be comprised of three dimensions: time, strain, and behaviour [ 2 , 3 ]. Third, interrole conflict affects not only those who experience it but also the people around them in a so-called crossover process [ 1 ]. Hence, for people in relationships, interrole conflict might become a bidirectional and multidimensional dyadic phenomenon.

Distinguishing between six forms of interrole conflict (i.e., time-based WFC and FWC, strain-based WFC and FWC, and behaviour-based WFC and FWC) on the conceptual and measurement level matters as there is evidence that they are differentially associated with antecedents and outcomes [ 2 ]. Less is known about the way those conflicts transmit (i.e., cross over) across persons in close relationships, and specifically, whether crossover mechanisms are dimension specific. It is important to know this because capturing mechanisms behind the dyadic transmission of each dimension could advance theoretical models of crossover and allow them to make better predictions on how interrole conflict of one person in a dyad affects another one. Furthermore, identifying those forms of interrole conflict that are the most detrimental for the well-being of others and the way they transmit might help couples create strategies to address the problem. Subsequently, that might improve their outcomes both at home and at work, such as stress and satisfaction with various domains of life. In the current study we apply qualitative methods to explore dimension-based interrole conflict and we pay particularly close attention to the process of its crossover between partners in dual-earner couples.

Interrole conflict: Directions and dimensions

WFC and FWC vary in their relationships with predictors and outcomes. Meta-analytical findings show that while WFC and FWC are associated with both work and family demands, the effect sizes are larger within domains, that is, WFC is predominantly related to work, and FWC to the family/non-work context [ 4 , 5 ]. Conversely, while a cross-domain pattern was expected for the consequences of interrole conflicts (with WFC mostly affecting the non-work domain, and FWC the work one), data indicates that the consequences of WFC and FWC span across all domains. Although meta-analyses have found that WFC is actually more closely linked with work outcomes, and FWC with family ones [ 6 – 8 ], ultimately, they predict a variety of outcomes, including those that do not clearly belong to one domain only, such as health. Moreover, although gender differences in both WFC and FWC are considered too small to bear meaningful consequences, a meta-analysis has shown that the effect is slightly larger for FWC than WFC: It is more often reported by women [ 9 ]. Finally, a genetic component in interrole conflict explains more variance in WFC than in FWC but, at the same time, controlling for dispositional factors does not significantly reduce the relationship between job demands and WFC, whereas it does for the relationship between family demands and FWC [ 10 ]. Study authors suggest that people might be better at looking at job demands objectively and identifying when they interfere with their family life, but their perceptions of family demands and FWC itself overlap. Taken together, these findings require that both directions of interrole conflict be investigated.

WFC and FWC are even more nuanced; they are conceptualised to be comprised of three dimensions: time, strain, and behaviour [ 2 , 3 ]. Time-based conflict is probably the most intuitive one and occurs when there are pressures in one role that lead to people being either physically unable or too preoccupied to perform in another one. People experience strain-based conflict when demands in one role leave them too anxious or fatigued to meaningfully take part in their other life roles. Finally, a need to behave differently at home and at work, due to external standards, may lead to behaviour-based conflict . A model proposed by Greenhaus and Beutell [ 2 ] and empirical evidence indicate that these dimensions show varying associations with their predictors and outcomes [ 11 – 13 ]. There also seem to be gender differences [ 9 ]. Specifically, men report experiencing more time-based WFC than women, and women report more strain-based WFC and FWC than men. Importantly, interrole conflict dimensions have not received equal attention as there is more data on time and strain dimensions than on behaviour [ 13 ]. It is possible that behaviour-based conflict is less intuitive for people to evaluate, and hence it is imperative to find a way to explore it and deepen our understanding of it.

Potentially, there are more dimensions of interrole conflicts. For example, Greenhaus et al. [ 14 ] added an energy dimension to reflect that performance in one role can be diminished in another due to exhaustion. This would make it different from strain-based conflict, which is a manifestation of symptoms such as irritability, anxiety, and apathy [ 2 ]. Kengatharan and Edwards [ 15 ] proposed that the three existing dimensions did not cover being too preoccupied (emotionally and cognitively) with one life domain to perform adequately in another. Hence, they proposed adding a psychological dimension. Yet, Greenhaus and Beutell [ 2 ] previously included role preoccupation in the time dimension. What stems from these propositions is that the dimensional structure of WFC and FWC might need revising [ 13 ]. One way to do this is to identify manifestations of interrole conflict and see whether they surpass what is captured by the current dimensions of time, strain, and behaviour.

Twenty years after introducing the original definition of work-family conflict, Greenhaus et al. [ 14 ] proposed refining it to highlight that we can only speak about interrole conflict when “(…) experiences in the work (family) role result in diminished performance in the family (work) role” (p. 65). This emphasis on reduced performance seems particularly important when we look at the dynamics of interrole conflict in couples. When one person in a dyad experiences work-family or family-work conflict, this might become salient to the other person only when that experience leads to a less than satisfactory contribution to family life. For example, if a man struggles due to emotionally draining work but still manages to meet demands at home, such as completing household chores or caring tasks, this stress would not be seen as strain-based interrole conflict and might go unnoticed by the man’s significant other and thus not affect them. However, if the same work demands prevent him from performing all these tasks on the family front, then, what we define as strain-based WFC might affect his partner. This across-individuals transmission of experiences, such as stress and interrole conflict, is called crossover [ 16 , 17 ].

In her influential paper, Westman [ 17 ] proposed that crossover occurred via one of three routes. The first is a direct empathic crossover: When one partner experiences stress, it initiates an empathic reaction from their partner. The second potential mechanism is called a common stressor: When both parties share a stressor (e.g., a sick child) it is likely to elicit a response from both of them. Finally, crossover can be indirect, that is, an effect of one partner’s stress on another one’s well-being can be mediated and/or moderated by factors such as coping strategies, communication strategies, social support, or social undermining. In their spillover-crossover model (SCM), Bakker and Demerouti [ 1 ] propose that negative states and experiences from work can flow to the family/non-work domain via work-family conflict (spillover), leading to loss in well-being. Subsequently, the other person in a dyad becomes affected (crossover) either because negative states cross over directly between partners or indirectly, via mechanisms such as social undermining. Further research on those potential mechanisms in the realm of interrole conflict [ 18 ] has highlighted the role of negative marital interactions. Furthermore, meta-analytical findings [ 19 ] have confirmed both the direct crossover between a person’s WFC and their partner’s psychological distress and family satisfaction, as well as an indirect one; specifically, people who experience WFC tend to reduce their positive social behaviours which is linked to their partner’s well-being. What is missing in this exchange though, is how partners react to those behaviours in terms of their own thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Moreover, although common stressors as a crossover mechanism have not been investigated specifically, Li et al. [ 19 ] acknowledged that some of their findings could be attributed to this mechanism.

There are some important gaps in the current state of the art. First, FWC has been less researched overall, including the studies on crossover. The spillover-crossover model (SCM) [ 1 ] focuses on the flow of experiences from work to family. The authors acknowledge that the transmission can also occur with family demands spilling over to the work domain but when it comes to crossover, they point only to other employees as recipients in this transmission. This is in line with the SCM premise that for the crossover to take place people need to share the domain. Yet, there is some empirical evidence suggesting that FWC might also affect people at home. First, as we mentioned earlier, meta-analytical data show that FWC, just as with WFC, to a certain extent, has consequences in all life domains, including the family domain. Those consequences, in the form of stress or decreased satisfaction with non-work life might affect people at home. More directly, Smoktunowicz and Cieślak [ 20 ] found in their dyadic study with heterosexual couples that men’s family-work conflict mediated the relationship between men’s family demands and women’s family-related perceived stress. Yet, the authors did not test for the mechanisms behind this transmission. In sum, although we have some insight into how the crossover of WFC occurs, we know substantially less about how this process looks for FWC. Second, while the dimensions of interrole conflict manifest varying associations with their antecedents and outcomes, no study has explored whether this dimensionality matters in the crossover process. For example, when one partner is often late from work due to external pressure to put in long hours and is hence not present for the family, their partner might be forgiving of this reduced performance, knowing that ‘the fault’ lies elsewhere. Under such circumstances, it might be less likely that this time-based conflict will cross over through negative family interactions, but it might do so through another mechanism, namely empathy. On the contrary, it is plausible to expect that when behaviour-based WFC manifests in underperformance as a spouse or a parent, this will result in tensions, and subsequently family member well-being will deteriorate. With this qualitative study we aim to explore whether, in their stories about work and family, partners perceive these nuances in interrole conflict and react differently to the various forms it takes.

This study aims to explore the subjective experiences of WFC and FWC in a dyadic setting. The primary goal is to investigate whether, and if so, how the dimensions of WFC and FWC cross over between partners in their narratives about their private life and work. Specifically, we formulated two research questions.

• RQ1: What dimensions of WFC and FWC do partners identify in a) themselves and b) their partners?
• RQ2: How do different dimensions of WFC and FWC cross over between partners?

The secondary goal for this study is to inform a planned internet intervention [ 21 ] that will aim to reduce WFC and FWC at the individual and dyadic level. We know that people utilise strategies to cope with interrole conflict [ 22 ] including negotiating a division of labour, outsourcing demands and seeking social support. Yet, we are not aware of any evidence-based program that would directly target couples’ WFC and FWC. To inform such a program we aim to identify the strategies that dual-earner couples already employ and the situational factors that can facilitate or prevent their participation in an internet intervention. This goal translates into the following two research questions:

• RQ3: What coping strategies with WFC and FCW on an individual and dyadic level do partners identify?
• RQ4: What potential barriers and facilitating factors in participating in an internet intervention designed to reduce WFC and FWC do partners recognise?

Materials and methods

Study design.

This research will employ an experiential qualitative approach to gain an in-depth understanding of lived experience of conflicts between work and family (WFC and FCW) and how they cross over between partners [ 23 ]. The decision to use an experiential approach, results from the study goal of gaining a bottom-up perspective on conflicts between work and family and their crossovers to provide a more nuanced understanding of them. The theoretical paradigm underpinning this research is post-positivism [ 24 ]. We assume that knowledge has a provisional nature and understanding of reality is always limited and subject to change. Still, through reflexivity and careful methodological procedures, we can aim for a reliable understanding of reality [ 25 ].

This protocol follows the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research [ 26 ] and has been preregistered at the Open Science Framework: https://l1nq.com/tLY3E . The study was approved by the departmental Ethical Review Board (decision number 32/2023 issued on July 11 th , 2023). Participation in this study is voluntary and study participants can withdraw at any time. Informed consent that outlines the purpose of the study, the procedures involved, participants’ rights as well as information about confidentiality, anonymity and the storage of the data, will be obtained from each individual before the commencement of the interview.

Participants and recruitment

We plan to recruit 20 heterosexual, dual-earner couples. Sampling will be convenient with inclusion criteria ensuring that we will get a sample that is likely to actually experience a conflict between work and life, that is, a sample of couples who are professionally active and live together. Specifically, both partners need to be employed, work a minimum of 50%, and have lived together for at least a year. These criteria are often applied in dyadic studies on interrole conflict [ 20 ]. We will recruit couples both with and without children and those that live in various places across the country. We do not set any criteria when it comes to partners’ age, relationship length or organisational tenure, yet couples will be excluded if one of the partners is under the age of 18, refuses to participate in the study or does not speak fluent Polish. To determine the sample size, we used the concept of information power [ 27 , 28 ]. We estimated sample size based on: (1) the specificity of study aims, (2) the specificity of the study sample, (3) the theoretical background of the study, (4) the quality of the interviews with study participants and, finally, (5) analysis strategy (cross case vs. case). To avoid confirmation bias and selecting participants who support our expectations, the recruitment of participants will be performed in collaboration with a specialised research agency, which will facilitate access to a relatively diverse sample in terms of inclusion criteria and allow for participant reimbursement while keeping their data anonymous to the researchers. Recruitment will begin as soon as the study protocol is accepted.

Data collection

Data will be collected through semi-structured interviews [ 29 ] with both members of a couple, but separately. We chose the semi-structured interview because it allows for in-depth subjective perspectives from the interviewees, while providing a consistent framework for all interviews to increase the reliability of the data [ 30 ]. The decision to use separate rather than dyadic interviews was based on a literature review of the different types of interviews in dyadic studies [ 31 – 35 ]. As we aim to capture the individual perspective within the dyad without forging a couple perspective, we decided to collect individual interviews, which allow subjective views to be obtained and the opportunity for self-reflection [ 31 , 36 ]. We plan to conduct the interviews with partners simultaneously by two members of the research team, but if this turns out to be unfeasible for a given couple, we will conduct them consecutively, aiming to prevent partners from discussing their interviews beforehand.

The semi-structured interview guide consists of a series of open-ended questions designed to elicit the subjective perspectives of the study participants (see a table in S1 File ). The guide was developed on the basis of a literature review and the study objectives and includes main questions as well as possible follow-up questions. This will allow the interviewer to maintain flexibility during the interview by deepening the interviewee’s narrative and/or developing new topics that emerge during the interview.

Given the characteristics of our study group (working age group), the widespread use of online communication during the Covid pandemic, combined with the advantages of online research interviews (e.g., the possibility of recruiting participants from different parts of the country, cost and time efficiency as well as accessibility), we decided to conduct interviews online using virtual communication platforms and applications such as Skype or Zoom. As we are aware of the challenges associated with such communication channels (e.g., privacy issues, challenges in creating an intimate and private research setting), technological limitations (e.g., access to equipment and software and skills to use them), as well as challenges related to establishing rapport and maintaining contact (for an overview of advantages and disadvantages of online interviewing and recommendations, see, e.g., [ 37 , 38 ]), we plan to implement a number of precautionary measures to mitigate the potential risks. Firstly, the interviews will be conducted by an experienced researcher who has received training in qualitative interviewing techniques and is competent in establishing rapport (including in online settings), using probes, listening and maintaining confidentiality. Secondly, in terms of technological challenges, study participants will be able to choose their preferred platform or application for data collection. They will also receive written instructions on how to use the platforms/applications. Finally, in terms of providing a safe, private and quiet space for an interview, participants will be given instructions on how to prepare for an interview. For example, they will be instructed on how to set a blurred or artificial background on the platform to ensure privacy. In addition to the interviews, we will ask the participants to fill out a demographic survey with basic questions about gender, age, being a parent, and job type, as well as a scale to measure dimension-based interrole conflict [ 39 ]. The objective of the latter is to gather descriptive data about the sample, i.e., to what extent did they experience interrole conflict.

Transcription of the interviews will be anonymised to protect the identity of the study participants, and the audio recordings will be deleted immediately after transcription. Transcriptions will be stored in password protected files that will be accessible only to the research team. Importantly, signed informed consent will be stored separately, in another password protected file, and it will not be possible to link them to the transcripts.

Data analysis

Analyses will be conducted at the individual and dyadic levels. We will employ two forms of thematic analysis (TA) [ 25 ] which is a widely used qualitative method that allows for a nuanced understanding of rich and complex data by identification, analysis, and interpretation of meanings within qualitative data [ 40 ]. At the individual level we will be guided by the principles of reflexive TA [ 40 ]. As we are interested in partners’ lived experiences of complex and multifaceted conflicts between work and family (WFC and FCW), reflexive TA is best suited to obtaining such a bottom-up individual perspective. We will apply reflexive TA to all research questions. With regard to Research Question 1 (RQ1), we will analyse which dimensions of WFC and FWC (i.e., time, strain, behaviour and possibly others) partners identify in themselves and in their partners, e.g., are there differences in how study participants see WFC and FWC in themselves and how they see them in their partners? In relation to Research Question 2 (RQ2), reflexive TA will help us to explore lived experiences of the transmission of different dimensions of WFC and FWC between partners. We will also use reflexive TA to analyse statements about coping strategies at the individual and dyadic level (RQ3), e.g., do partners differentiate strategies according to the level (individual vs. dyadic) or dimension of FWC and FCW? Finally, reflexive TA will also be used to elicit partners’ perspectives on barriers and facilitators to participating in an internet intervention designed to reduce WFC and FWC.

The analysis will be carried out in six stages, as recommended by Braun and Clarke [ 40 , 41 ]. Phase one will be preceded by a transcription of the data and, as part of this phase, team members will familiarise themselves with the data. The second phase will involve the production of preliminary codes from the data. We will use the MAXQDA software to facilitate the analysis. In phase three, two members of the team (ES as a researcher of work-life conflicts and JZ as a qualitative researcher) will review the codes and look for a pattern of meaning (initial themes) from coded and collated data. In the next phase, a revision of the preliminary themes will be undertaken to ensure their correspondence with the codes and patterns identified in the dataset. The fifth phase involves defining and naming themes. So, following Braun and Clarke [ 41 ], an entire research team will seek to identify the ‘essence’ of what each theme is about. Finally, in the writing-up phase, the themes will be linked in a coherent narrative.

At the dyadic level, we will use the framework method (FM) [ 42 , 43 ] as adapted by Collaço et al. [ 44 ]. The FM was chosen because we wanted to complement the analyses at the individual level with a perspective within couple dyads. Thus, the use of the framework method will add to the reflective TA and answer the question of whether the identification of WFC and FWC dimensions match across partners’ narratives (RQ1). In relation to RQ2, the framework analysis will allow us to see how different dimensions of WFC and FWC cross over between partners in dyads (RQ2) and what similarities and differences there are in the stories of coping strategies within dyads (RQ3). The latter will be a very important perspective in the context of the planned intervention. A key advantage of FA is that it allows data to be compared within dyads, with the analysis focusing on overlaps and contrasts in the narratives of the couples. In addition, being more structured and systematic than a reflexive thematic analysis, FA is also efficient and easy to apply even for inexperienced qualitative researchers [ 40 ]. The FA process is based on the adapted by Collaço et al. [ 44 ] version of the framework method [ 42 , 43 ]. The adapted dyadic analysis using the framework method consists of eight stages, the first three of which (transcription, familiarisation with the data and development of a data coding system) are consistent with the steps of reflexive TA. In the next step we will produce tables of themes and sub-themes, including dyadic codes/summaries for each couple. Step 5 analyses of the degree of agreement between the partners in the couple and how each theme influenced the other. On this basis, dyadic codes will be created. Stages 6 and 7 will involve the creation of new themes based on the dyadic sub-codes and then apply them throughout the corpus. The final stage is to analyse and interpret variations in dyadic couples in reference to a theoretical model. As in the reflexive thematic analysis, the leading roles in the analysis will be played by ES and JZ, with the other team members stepping in as a reflexive team.

Trustworthiness

An important part of our study design and analysis is to ensure the trustworthiness of our research [ 44 ]. To enhance the credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability of our study, we follow established procedures in qualitative research [ 44 , 45 ]. Above all, it is the process of reflexivity [ 46 ]. Our research team is diverse in terms of past interests, preconceptions, standard methodology and personal experience. This translates into discussions about the differences between us and their potential impact on the study design, data collection and analytical process. In order to maintain the process of reflection, we will meet regularly to discuss differences between us in relation to the research process. In addition, we plan to incorporate a wide range of strategies to ensure the trustworthiness of our research, as proposed by Nowell and co-authors [ 44 ]. For example, we plan to involve all team members in key stages of the research process. We plan to collect and provide readers with rich, detailed and contextual information about the dataset and the subsequent stages of the research process. The research protocol serves as a peer debriefing. In the later stages of the research, we also plan to use peer debriefing [ 45 ] to get an external perspective.

This paper presents a protocol for a qualitative study aimed at reporting on couples’ experiences with conflict between work and family. Specifically, we are interested in whether people in relationships identify time, strain, behaviour and possibly other dimensions in their own and their partners’ experiences of interrole conflict, and in how those dimensions cross over within couples. Identification of the crossover mechanisms behind dimension-based WFC and FWC is important for the advancement of theoretical models: Those that pertain directly to crossover, such as the spillover-crossover model [ 1 ] and those that attempt to depict work and family lives more broadly, such as the job demands-resources model [ 47 ]. For example, if FWC dimensions of one person in the relationship carry consequences for their partner—directly and/or indirectly—it might imply that SCM should be extended with yet another dyadic exchange. Furthermore, if one of the WFC or FWC dimensions turned out to be more salient than others to partners in a dyadic setting, it would suggest that demands behind such a dimension have far reaching consequences; knowing this would be important from a theoretical but also a practical standpoint. Traditionally, research on mitigating interrole conflict has focused on the organizational side, in particular on flexible work [ 48 ]. While investigating these solutions is essential and should be continued, it is imperative to simultaneously look for means to manage interrole conflict on the family front. This could be achieved through programs dedicated to supporting working couples, and one way to deliver those is online. Internet interventions [ 49 – 51 ] have gained significant popularity over the past three decades with randomised controlled trials repeatedly demonstrating that they are effective in improving people’s well-being, including in the context of work [ 52 , 53 ]. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, no such intervention has targeted interrole conflict and its crossover directly. Findings from this qualitative study have the potential to inform the content of the ensuing intervention, in particular, when it comes to providing examples of how the conflict tends to manifest itself in order to help participants identify the signs and support their partners. Internet interventions are highly accessible, ensure privacy, and can be scalable, which is critical considering that access to evidence-based psychological support is limited [ 54 ]. On the downside, depending on their design, these interventions can suffer from low adherence and high dropout [ 55 ]. It is crucial to foresee and address barriers that potential participants might face, and to enhance those conditions that make it easier for them to join. Hence, our secondary goal in this study is to collect information on what can persuade couples to participate in interventions that are delivered online and dedicated to coping with interrole conflict.

This study has a few potential limitations. First, our study aims require that we explore interrole conflict at the granular level. However, differentiating between directions of the conflict (i.e., WFC vs. FWC) and particularly its dimensions (i.e., time, strain, behaviour and possibly others) might prove difficult for the interviewees. We plan to address this in two ways. Couples will fill out an interrole conflict scale before the interview which will familiarise them with this concept and provide time to reflect. Additionally, we will conduct pilot interviews to test the interview guide to ensure that our questions are clear and that we are able to meet study goals. If necessary, we will modify the interview scenario. The second limitation is that we will only focus on the negative aspects of balancing work and family life, whereas crossover of enrichment is also possible [ 56 ]. We choose to limit our investigation due to feasibility but acknowledge that capturing the work-family interface in its full complexity requires taking into account not only the losses but also the gains. Possible limitations are also related to the design of the study and qualitative methods of data analysis. The main challenge concerns recruitment. Recruiting couples where both partners are willing to share their experiences can be challenging [ 33 , 57 ], particularly as the research interview may involve difficult experiences and couples may be reluctant to share details of work-family conflicts in their relationship. To mitigate the risks of bias in the selection of couples for the study due to potential unwillingness to participate in the study, recruitment was delegated to an external agency. Recruitment by an external agency will also allow respondents to feel more anonymous, as the researchers will not have access to their personal information. Furthermore, given that research interviews may involve difficult experiences for the couple being interviewed, there are challenges associated with the interview and the process of managing confidentiality between partners [ 58 ]. Although we will encourage study participants to maintain their privacy during the interview, we cannot rule out the possibility that participants may overhear each other if there are no conditions for simultaneous interviews, or that they may not consult with each other to establish a shared narrative of their experiences. It will therefore be crucial to ensure that, prior to the interviews, participants receive detailed information about the aims and ethical principles of the study, including how we will manage confidentiality. Equally important will be the competence of the experienced interviewer to manage confidentiality, especially in the face of competing accounts in subsequent interviews with partners. Finally, as we are using two methods to analyse the data at two levels—individual and dyadic—this presents challenges for the analytical process with a potential risk of oversimplifying complex phenomena and reducing the richness of the data [ 40 ]. In order to avoid errors within the research process, a number of trustworthiness strategies are planned.

In sum, this study has the potential to provide a more nuanced understanding of the interface between work and family in dual-earner couples. By performing qualitative interviews with couples, we will gain a more-in-depth knowledge on the facets of the conflicts between the work and non-work domains, as well as how they transfer (cross over) between partners. As a consequence, not only theoretical models could be refined and extended, but also practical implications about how to mitigate the consequences of conflicts and their crossover could be developed for future interventions.

Supporting information

S1 file. interview guide..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290216.s001

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