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

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Abstract

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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Notes

  1. We ran all models with household income as a control. This resulted in no differences in statistical significance, and negligible value changes (e.g., β = .63 to β = .62). Thus, reported results are not adjusted for this covariate.

  2. We also ran the main model as a multigroup model comparing families in which both partners work to families in which only one partner works. Most model parameters were similar across the two models. The only statistically significant differences were as follows. For two-worker families, decision authority was negatively associated with conflict, while this pathway was not significantly related for one-worker families. For one-worker families, social support was positively associated with work-family conflict, while this pathway was not significantly related for two-worker families. These differences suggest that the benefits of decision authority and social support found in the present study may be more applicable to two-worker families than to one-worker families.

  3. We were unable to examine gender-by-time interactions due to the small overlap in the samples.

  4. Chi-square tests are inaccurate for SEM models with more than 400 cases (Kenny 2015), as in the present study, and thus were not included.

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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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  1. Department of Psychology, West Virgina University, 53 Campus Drive, Morgantown, WV, 26506-6040, USA

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

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  1. Rachel R. Stoiko
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  2. JoNell Strough
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Correspondence to Rachel R. Stoiko.

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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.

Conflict of Interest

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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