Shinjini Bakshi

A Sociological Study of Work-Family Conflict

Introduction and Background

The classic American dream is to have a great job and perfect family. In most cases,

this romanticized family includes having children. In the past, it was easier to maintain this

American Dream job and family because work and family life used to be integrated, in that,

your family used to be involved in working with you. When one or both parents were able to

work from home, in a sense, it was a little easier to maintain job and familial stability. With

the onset of the Industrial Revolution, in the second half of the 18th century, however, the

separation between work and life became more clearly defined. A changing economy

demanded women’s labor, which, in turn, led to changing patterns of gender relationships in

the family. These seemingly small changes in work/family dynamics over the years, in

actuality, have a big influence on family and work life.

Nowadays, half of all married women work and some, even, have very powerful

careers. Also, statistics show that now half of all married women with toddlers work. About

two-thirds of married women who have children, under the age of eighteen, work. Three-

fourths of married women with school-aged children aged six to ten works. Because it is

more common for women to work, women have also adopted strategies to incorporate work

into their lives. By looking at longitudinal studies of single working mothers, we see that

despite the demands of work, women use company resources to maintain employment (Son

2010). Although these single women do not have the support of a spouse, they find support

from family, community, and supervisors. Also, mothers who have flexible work schedules

seemed to have more control of their at-home family life and these mothers put their children

first despite work conflict (Son). There are very distinct struggles that single, and low-income

parents face and the impact on children are obviously profound.

Without someone in the household attending to life issues full-time, parents who are

also employees now have to find time to take care of tasks like childcare or caring for an

elder parent, in addition to their professional workload. But with diversity in both workplaces

and family increasing, it makes it harder for adults in families to find a balance between

home life and work life. As work demand increases, however, so do parenting expectations

(Bovenberg 2005). And because of the economic crisis, economic hardship also puts

additional stress on work and family lives. The changing demographics of who works in the

family and inflexibility of work hours have left parents with insufficient time and energy for

family life (Bianchi 2010). As more employees with families enter the work force, hiring and

recruiting organizations have to be mindful and responsive to the work/family needs of their

workers (Galinsky 1990). Although balancing work and family is not a new concept, the

struggle to maintain this balance has changed drastically through history. Unfortunately,

maintaining this balance has become harder over time due to the ever-changing nature of

work and home life and because the workplace and home life dynamic has continued to

change dramatically, balancing work and life has changed as well.

According to the U.S Census Bureau, in 1996, 50% of married couples with families

had both the husband and wife involved in the labor force. Dual-earner marriage, where the

husband and wife both work, has both pros and cons for both spouses. There are five items

that are considered pros for wives in a dual-earner marriage (Frisco 2010). One, the wife has

a higher amount of self-esteem. Second, she has more independence. Third, she has some

social interaction outside of her home life. Fourth, there is more of a power balance between

the wife and husband. Fifth, it is an easier transition for her when her children leave home.

By working, the wife/mother has something else to focus on when her children leave, instead

of constantly wondering what and how her children are doing. There are only three cons for

women in a dual-earner marriage. First, she may show signs of role overload. Role overload

means that her multiple roles would collide, so she could not meet demands of all her role

responsibilities. Second, she may also have role conflict. This means that her multiple roles

might collide, so that all of her obligations of all her roles are incompatible. Third, she would

have role strain. Role strain means that a single role would overwhelm, so the obligations of

her single role are incompatible (Frisco 2010).

Men, however, also have pros and cons being in a dual-earner marriage. There are

four pros for the man in this situation (Firsco 2010). First, he would have more freedom.

Second, there would be shared financial responsibility. Third, his wife would understand his

stress because she is in the same situation. Fourth, he would get to spend more time with his

children. There are also three cons for the men. First, he would have less career time. Second,

he would also have role overload, role conflict, or role strain. Third, he would have to do

more housework.

As more couples are becoming dual-earners, the traditional household gender roles

are beginning to change. Division of labor and equity combined with the couples’ generated

perceptions of equity influence the couples’ feelings of marital satisfaction (Saginak 2005).

Also, shared responsibility and shared parenting helped people feel successful and happy in

the workplace as well as at home (Saginak). But the relationship between the work-family

conflict (WFC) and job satisfaction is much more complex, in that, it varies by gender.

Ergeneli’s 2010 study showed that job satisfaction of male and female employees with stress-

predisposing interpretive habits were influenced negatively by the WFC, whereas, there was

almost no effect of WFC on the job satisfaction of male and female employees with stress-

resilient interpretive habits. And so, as gender and interpretive habits change, the relationship

between WFC and job satisfaction change as well.

There are overlapping tasks to do within both a person’s job and a person’s family

life. In order to handle it all, there are seven strategies that are practiced among families today

(Frisco 2010). In the super-person strategy, a single person will work hard and efficiently to

meet all of the work and family demands. This strategy consists of three distinct shifts. The

first shift is paid work. The second shift is household and childcare; and, the third shift is

emotional work and management. By using the cognitive restructuring/rationalizing strategy,

the person or people view the entire situation of both work and family life in positive terms.

A third strategy is delegating responsibility. Each partner, and/or children has a specific

responsibility to complete. This strategy’s goal is to reduce individual responsibility. The

fourth strategy is planning and time management. People use these strategies simply by

prioritizing and making lists (Frisco 2010). Another strategy is shift work. Shift work is when

one parent works days, while the other parent works nights. Role compartmentalization is a

sixth strategy that families use. With this strategy, people would completely separate their

work and family roles. The final strategy families’ use is the passing on of demands. This is

where one would hire or depend on outside help to complete all of their responsibilities.

Some families make use of any combination of these strategies to accomplish the balance

between their work and family life.

Sometimes spouses do not even have to use these strategies to help balance work and

family life because of government implemented policies. The United States government

created two acts to help American families accomplish balance. In 1978, the Federal

Pregnancy Discrimination Act made it illegal for employers with fifteen plus employees to

fire, demote, or penalize a pregnant employee. The government also created the Family and

Medical Leave Act, that states that employers with fifty plus employees must have twelve

weeks of unpaid, job-protected, annual leave, and benefit coverage available to their

employees. Conditions that fall under this act include: following childbirth or adoption, care

for seriously ill family members, and recovery after serious illness. The employer must also

guarantee that the employee will return to a current or equivalent job after their leave of

absence. The benefit to this is that employees no longer lose jobs due to illness, childbirth, or

parental leave. And as more women enter the work force, the government will have to

implement measures to help mothers balance their responsibilities to their children while still

working. But research also indicates that children perform better when mothers work part-

time rather than full-time and an additional twenty hours per week of mother’s employment

during the first three years of life harms the reading and math performance of five and six

year olds by about .10 standard deviations (Bovenberg 2005). The reconciliation of work and

family, therefore, goes beyond child-care facilities and parental leave during the family phase

and involves the entire life-course. Despite these efforts from the government to make the

balance easier for families, parents still feel the struggles of the work and family conflict

taking a toll on both home and work life.

The nature of jobs and people’s perception of their workplace environment, however,

has a significant impact on the ability of workers to balance work and familial obligations.

Workers who experience high intrinsic rewards from their jobs believe that the company is

helping them balance their work and family lives (Berg 2003). But we must not disregard the

impact of organizational expectations and managerial styles on work family support and work

family balancing in accordance to cultural beliefs. Parents in countries such as China, Japan,

Britain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Israel, as well as the United States regard balancing work

and family as important (Clancy 2005). Overall, all nations are endeavoring to balance career

and home, however, these other countries in comparison to the United States differ just in

how far they have achieved the gender role transition.

The Current Study

Balancing work and family is a growing problem in today’s world. It is becoming

harder for families to maintain the balance between their work-lives and their family-lives as

the importance of earning and maintaining a job is becoming more important for economic

survival. It has become harder because if either work or home receives too much emphasis

this means that the other is being neglected, which is when problems arise.

Our central focus was to examine how perceptions of the family/work conflict have

changed for different generations and genders. Our survey was formatted so that the answers

to the thirty-five questions would give us information about the person in relation to their

children, job, and spouse, so we could have a comprehensive look at how each of the three

influence balancing work and family. A solution for one family, however, might not work for

another family. There is, however, some sort of solution or role strain stress relief out their

tailored for every family. The survey, not only, asked questions about perceived balance of

family and work life, but also, helped the surveyor figure out what balancing options would

best suit their lifestyle and what type of life balance they would ideally want to achieve. The

survey was designed to answer these central questions:

1) Do people believe that their jobs are providing home/ workplace flexibility?

2) Has parental time with child decreased or not due to increased work hours?

3) Does balancing work and family differ between genders?

4) Is balancing work and family more difficult today than 50 years ago?

The responsibilities of balancing family and work vary based on socio-economic status,

family characteristics, employment, gender, and ethnicity. Due to the nature of family

changes over the past decade, the ability for parents who are employees to balance their work

and family lives depends on the characteristics of their jobs and workplaces, as well as on

their family situations.

Methods and Analysis

In order to be a participant in our study, informed consent was needed. Informed

consent is the idea that all participants were made aware of goals and risks in being involved

and also is given the choice to quit the survey at any time. Our survey took approximately 7-

10 minutes to complete and consisted of thirty-five questions to obtain both categorical and

quantiative data. Sixteen people, half women and half men, by signing the consent form,

agreed to complete the survey to participate in the study. Personal information was ensured

not to be linked back to the person’s name because the consent forms were kept seperate from

the survey responses to maintain anonymity.

To determine the generational differences in viewing the family/work conflict, there

were three age groups in focus: 18-29, 30-64, and 65+ years old. Half of our total sixteen

participants were female and the other half was male. And within each age group, the ratio

between male to female was equal. There were 4 respondents in the 18-29 age group for both

genders, and 2 respondents for both genders in both of the other 2 groups, 36-59 and 60+.

Of our sixteen participants, seven indicated they were from a ethnic minority group.

Four were from the 18-29 category, one from the 30-64 category, and two from the 65+

category. Two were male and five were female. There was one participant (6.25%) who was

Hispanic and six (37.5%) Asian participants.

Overall, the average age of our survey respondents was 39. But for the eight

participants in the 18-29 age group the average age, calculated using the arithmetic mean,

was approximately nineteen years old. The average of the highest expected level of education

was College. Five participants of the eight said college and three participants said Graduate

school. Three of the four females said Grad School, whereas, four of the four males said

college.

For the four participants in the 30-64 age group the average age, calculated using the

arithmetic mean, was approximately forty-eight years old. The highest expected level of

education was college. One of the four said high school, two said college, and one said grad

school. One male said college and one male said grad school, whereas, one female said high

school and one female said college.

For the four participants in the 65+ age group the average age, calculated using the

arithmetic mean, was approximately seventy years old. The highest expected level of

education was high school. One male said graduate school and one male said college,

whereas, both of the participants who said high school were both female.

Out of our sixteen participants, only three opted to answer the question asking average

salary per month. The average of these three participants was $46,767. All three of these

participants were male, but each of them was from a different one of the age groups. The

participant with the lowest salary per month was in the 18-29 age group, age 19, and the

participant with the highest salary per month was in the 30-64 age group, age 52.

The following sample questions from our survey that addressed our topic:

When asked Question 4 “who provided the primary source of income when you were a

child?,” 69% of our participants said father, 31% said both, and 0% said only the mother. Of

the 69% that said father, six were male and five were female. Of the 31% that said both, two

were male and three were female.

When asked Question 6 “who took care of you between the ages of 4-12 when your

parents were not able to?,” two males, 13%, said school services (e.g. daycare,

before/afterschool service), three males and three females, 38%, said relative other than

sibling, 4 females, 25%, said babysitter, and 3 males, 19%, said sibling.

When asked Question 8 “people are getting higher levels of education than they did

int he last 30 years,” on a Likert scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree, overall, our

participants said between strongly agree and agree. 50% said Strongly Agree, 43.75% said

Agree, and 6.25% said Neutral. The average of the males was more towards Agree. The

average of the females was more towards Strongly Agree. In the 18-25 age group,

participants leaned towards Agree. In the 30-64 age group, participants said they felt neutral

towards the question. In the 65+ age group, participants overwhelmingly said Strongly Agree.

When asked Question 18, “your partner’s annual salary was an important factor in

your marriage” on a Likert scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree, the five participants

who were married said “Strongly Disagree.” All five participants were either in the 30-64 or

65+ category and male.

For those partiicpants with jobs, when asked, “Do you consider yourself a work-

aholic?” two out of the nine participants responded yes. Both of the participants who

responded yes, were male. One was from the 18-29 age group and the other was from the 30-

64 age group.

When asked Question 12 “besides going to work, school, and or caring fo your

family, you have independent time (ex: read, haircut, go out to dinner),” on a Likert scale of

strongly agree to strongly disagree, overall, our participants on average said “Agree.” 6.5%

said strongly agree, 81% said Agree, 12.5% said neutral. There was some variation within the

responses of males, whereas, the females all said Agree.

When asked question 13 “from elementary through middle school (approximately

ages 6-15) what percent of your week was spent with your famiy?,” the majority of

participants said 21-40%. Three participants said they spent 0-20% of their time with family,

two were male and one was female. Nine participants said they spent 21-40% with family,

four males and five females. Two female participants said they spent 61-80% with family.

And no one said they spent 81-100% of their weekly time with family.

The question 16 “if you have a job, does it interfere with your chance of meeting a

significant other,” was only applicable through skip patterns to those who were single. This

question was only applicable to only three of our participants. The one female said yes her

job does interfere. The two males said no their jobs did not interfere. Also, all three of these

participants were in the 18-29 age group, so it makes sense that they might have been single

still.

When asked, on a Likert scale, “I would like to spent more time at home with my

children,” for those participants with children, overall participants leaned towards “Agree.”

44% said said “Strongly Agree,” 45% said “Agree,” 11% said neutral. On average, males said

“Agree” while females said “Strongly Agree.”

When asked, on a Likert scale, “a vacation, with your family, would ease some of the

work stress,” nine participants responded. 56% strongly agreed, half female and half male,

22% agreed, half female and half male, 11% male was neutral.

When asked, “would you take a decrease in your salary for more time at home with

your family?,” ten participants responded. Two participants said no, one male and one

female. Eight said yes, five of them were male and two were female, but this was skip pattern

question only for those who had a family and a job.

Implications and Discussion

Research suggests that the nature of jobs and the work place environment have a

significant impact on the ability for workers to balance their work and family lives. Having

intrinsically rewarding jobs and understanding supervisors despite if the job is high-

performance or not, is shown to help achieve balance for workers (Berg 2003). As the

number of dual-eraner families increase, companies have been forced to adopt family-

oriented policies to meet the needs of their employees. Companies now have a wide variety

of flexible work arrangments and elderly assistance also. The perceptions of the company that

the workers have, also, influence how the person copes with the demands of work and family.

Although the traditional benefits of health insurance, pension plans, and paid vacation

days help workers, flexibility and assistance for child care and expanded leave to spend time

with families is often equally as important. Workers with more complicated family

obligations, such as mothers of dual-career couples often have the greatest difficulty

balancing their worka and family lives. There is often spillover from work into family life,

but when people percieve their work as high-performance they have a greater sense of

personal control and efficacy (Son 2010). This sense of control allows these people to better

control the rest of their lives.

Family-friendly workplace policies tend to drive more positive work attitudes and

behaviors (Ergeneli 2010). There are also significant gendered differences in the perception

of balancing your job and personal life. For females having the problem of child care is

related to negative attitudes toward work responsibilities. Also if this attitude is positive in

women, studies showed that there is less absenteeism. Therefore, parents who feel they have

job secuirty, autonomy in their jobs, supportive supervisors, they have overall less stress

which spills over to the home (Bovenberg 2005). Also, according to a recent survey, more

than 70% of CEOs thought that they could not remain competitive if they didn't help

employees balance their work life and home life. Nowadays, employees are less likely to give

up personal time for the company because employers cannot guarantee life employment. And

so, companies have started implementing flexible work options such as childcare, wellness

programs, and financial planning. These work/life benefits encourage employees to be more

productive and committed to the company while still addressing home life issues.

Parts of our data paralleled current research. The data from question 8, about

if people are getting higher levels of education, females tended to “strongly agree”

with this statement, whereas, males either remained neutral or a few “agreed.” In

Son’s 2010 study “Balancing Work and Family: Equity, Gender, and Marital

Satisfaction,” mothers who came from a variety of socio-economic statuses, low and

high, all believed that women were reaching higher levels of education because they

recognize the strives women have been making towards attaining higher education.

Also, our study supported claims of Clancy 2005, “A Global Perspective on Balancing Work

and Family,” because we see very obvious differences in “what percent of your week was

spent with your family” during childhood between ethnicities. Our study showed that the two

participants who said they spent 50% or more with family identified themselves as Asian and

female. This may have to do with the cultural gender role differences that Clancy also

emphasizes in the study. The data from questions comparing highest level of education

completed versus highest expected level of education, we also see that these people

aged 18-29 are more ambitious than the older genertaions which indicates that, perhaps they

are sacrificing time with family in order to pursue careers. Our study’s finding parallels

Bianchi’s 2010 study titled “Work and Family Research in the First Decade of the 21st

Century,” in which we see that because of the tough job market and economy young people

are pursuing higher levels of education.

Interestingly enough, our other question asking about if your partner’s salary was an

important factor in marriage the majority of people said “strongly disagree,” which would go

against Bainchi’s study showing that people are more aware of their economic situation when

considering marriage. By combining the data from “are you a workaholic” and “do you have

enough independent time,” we see a discrepency because some of those who said they were

workaholics still felt they had enough independent time. According to Berg’s 2003

“Balancing Work and Family: The Role of High-Commitment Environment,” those people in

high performance work practices often felt burnt out and did not have independent time, a

claim which our study goes against.

Through our survey, we discovered interesting data. One, most participants agreed

that they have enough independent time. Independent time meaning time for a hair cut, going

out to dinner, watching TV, etc. However, most participants said that they would rather have

more time with their children or spouse. These two responses seem to conflict with each

other. If our participants were willing to give up more of their independent time, then they

would have more time with their children and/or spouse.

Spending time with family is important. We discovered that only two of our

participants were workaholics. In our survey we asked our participants if they believed that a

vacation would help them balance work and family. As expected, all of our participants

strongly agreed/agreed that a vacation would help them balance work and family. Fourteen

out of sixteen participants said that they believe that balancing work and family has become

more difficult than it was fifty years ago. The two participants who think that it has not

become more difficult were both nineteen years old. They do not have their own children and

life experience to say otherwise.

Another interesting fact is that all participants said that either their father or both of

their parents provided the primary source of family income. This was to be expected. We

would have been surprised if someone said that their mother was the primary source of

family income, because of our culture and society. Along with this fact, our participants said

that the partner’s annual salary did not influence their decision to marry them. This is a good

thing to know. We thought that maybe one or two of our eldest participants might have

agreed with his fact since life was harder years ago and financially supporting a family was

important.

From our final analysis we learned that there were some weaknesses to our study and

survey questionnaire. We learned that there is some categories of information people do not

like to disclose about themselves. In our survey, numerous people generally did not want to

disclose their salary. Whether it makes people uncomfortable or they just did not want to

write it down, we cannot tell, but all we know is that it was not written down for almost every

applicant. This may also have to do with the fact that the format of this salary question was

open ended, perhaps if there were options of a salary break down people would have been

more likely to answer the question.

Also, we had an inaccurate representation of age groups. The percentage of

respondents in the 18-29 age group is the largest, which may be why a lot of our data was

biased towards younger people. This was not the best age to survey because the average

eighteen to twenty-four year old is not married yet, or in a serious relationship and also may

not have a steady job yet, so it is not effective to ask these people questions about balancing

family and work. This affected our study because we see intergenerational differences in

moral and personal values.

Another survey question-related problem we had involved the need for more possible

option choices. In one occurrence, we asked if the participant’s parents’ marital status and we

did not have an answer choice for “deceased.” Also, since we only surveyed a limited number

of participants we fell into the problem that we did not have as much information as we

would have ideally liked to make conclusions off of. We took into account our weaknesses

when doing the data analysis, for example, we realized that our survey really did not have

enough general questions about family change in comparison to the number of questions we

specifically asked about balancing work and family.

But our survey was very specific and gave us most of the answers we were looking

for. From the members in our group being of three different races, it allowed us to include a

diverse selection of nationalities and relationship statuses connected with these specific

nationalities. Also, gender in all age groups was equal which made our survey unbiased

towards one gender over another. The American population is made up of different races and

ethnic groups, and to be able to understand the overall American household, it’s key to get

suggestions and ideas from diverse races. The ideas from different races came along with

many different opinions, which is crucial to understanding the cultural differences in

perception of balancing work and family life because gender roles could be different. This

variety allowed us to understand how a larger sums of people think. The survey used a

variety of types of questions effectively and the skip patterns included in our work were

essential. This made asking many questions easier so that if one question did not apply to a

person, they could skip it without giving us superfluous information. If a person was not

married we did not ask them any of the questions about, for example, spending time with

your spouse alone. The questions asked in our survey gave us a wide range of information

about the person’s childhood all the way into the present.

Overall, keeping a job, spending time with your children and providing quality time

with your spouse is a very difficult task. Families, across the world, struggle with this

phenomenon. Sometimes priorities take over and one aspect of family life gets the short end

of the stick. As we see the dynamics of the work and family change over the years, efforts of

managers to enhance workplace commitment may help workers better cope with the demands

of work and family. Only when we recognize the problems and things we can do to improve

our family life, can we make better decisions towards a perfect balance. Nobody can spend

every hour of their life concentrating on solely work or only family because they naturally

overlap, but companies can be more sensitive to the demands of each.

As more studies show the benefits for businesses implementing flexible policies, we

see several companies making attempts to help workers out. Several well-known companies

all have adopted policies for flexibility in the workplace for employees. These companies see

lower rates of unscheduled absence and tardiness as well as other company benefits

(Galinsky 1990). We see that working too many hours is not the thing employees are

complaining about, it is more of a problem when employees perceive that there is an

insufficient control of their job and flexibility in the workplace.

Overall, there needs to be greater dialogue about the work family conflict, more

specifically, between worker and employer. Jobs with autonomy, flexibility, meaning,

manager support, and a chance for advancement often result in enhanced job satisfaction,

commitment, and retention, which, in turn, make balancing home life easier. But as balancing

work and family is becoming more difficult, we also, luckily, see that companies are making

efforts to take into consideration this influential conflict.

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