Gender, Accuracy About Partners’ Work–Family Conflict, and Relationship Quality

Abstract

How accurately do U.S. couples assess the level of work-family conflict that their partner experiences? With much research on work-family conflict focused on individuals, couple-level analysis is underdeveloped. In this chapter, we examine how couples perceive each other’s work-family conflict, how these perceptions are gendered, and how inaccurate perceptions are related to relationship quality. We develop a theoretical framework and assess our predictions using a national sample of dual-earner heterosexual couples from The Married and Cohabiting Couples 2010 Study (N = 545). Findings indicate that over half of partners overestimate or underestimate each other’s work-family conflict. Perhaps reflecting beliefs about how women “should” feel, men are more likely to overestimate than underestimate, their partners’ work-family conflict. Men’s overestimating their partners’ work-family conflict is related to their perceptions of better relationship quality. Women’s underestimating their partners’ conflict, perhaps in accordance to beliefs about how men “should” feel, relates to both their own and their partners’ perceptions of poorer relationship quality. The chapter discusses complexities for dual-earner couples today, with changing gendered expectations surrounding work and family responsibilities.

Author Note: Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at Pilot Data Conference, National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, August 4, 2011, and the Work and Family Researchers Network Inaugural Conference, New York City, June 14–16, 2012. The data were collected with support from a grant to the National Center for Family and Marriage Research, Bowling Green State University from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (5 UOI AEOOOOOI-03). This research was supported in part by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, which has core funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24HD050959-07).

Appendix: Methodological Notes on The Married and Cohabiting Couples 2010 study

1.1 Data and Sample

The Married and Cohabiting Couples 2010 Study (MCC2010) is a web-based household survey that was obtained through a collaboration between the National Center for Family & Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University and Knowledge Networks (KN). KN maintains a national panel of potential respondents, called KnowledgePanel (KP), who were selected by using random digit dialing sampling and address-based sampling methodology. Among the KN, individuals who do not already have Internet access are provided free Internet access and a laptop computer. Those who already have Internet access are given points redeemable for cash as incentives for their participation. KP consists of about 50,000 adult members (ages 18 and older) and includes persons living in cell phone only households as well as persons who have a landline phone. The KP members completed a demographic profile that determined eligibility for inclusion in specific studies. When selected, members receive a notification email letting them know there is a new survey available for them to take (Knowledge Networks 2010).

For the MCC2010 study, a nationally representative sample of US heterosexual married and cohabiting adults aged 18–64 was selected from active KP members with a supplement of cohabiting adults aged 18–64 from an opt-in panel (n = 1075). The survey was conducted from July to October 2010. The data and a field report that describes the sampling design are publicly available through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR 2013). For this chapter, we selected dual-earner couples (N = 545), including 391 married and 154 cohabiting couples. Using household ID numbers and gender of respondents, we created couple-level data. KN provides study-specific post-stratification weights to adjust the data to the distributions provided by the Current Population Survey for male partners and female partners respectively. We used these weights in our statistical analyses. Appendix Table 9.4 shows sample characteristics.

1.2 Measures of Relationship Quality

Emotional support was an average of four questions (α = 0.85): (a) “My spouse/partner shows love and affection toward me”; (b) My spouse/partner encourages me to do things that are important to me”; (c) “My spouse/partner will not cheat on me”; and (d) “My spouse/partner listens when I need someone to talk to” (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).

Enchantment was a scale created using 11 items of “marital disillusionment scale” (Huston et al. 2001) (α = 0.95): (a) “My marriage/relationship hasn’t gone quite as perfectly as I thought it might”; (b) “I’m beginning to see my spouse/partner in a somewhat more negative light”; (c) “I’m beginning to see my marriage/relationship in a somewhat more negative light”; (d) “Marriage/Life together is not as enjoyable as I had expected it to be”; (e) “Our relationship has changed for the worse”; (f) “I no longer really like my spouse/partner as a person”; (g) “My marriage/relationship is no longer as important to me as it used to be”; (h) “I am very disappointed in my marriage/relationship”;(i) I feel tricked, cheated, or deceived by love”; (j) “I feel no longer quite as positively about my spouse/partner as I once did”; and (k) “If I could go back in time, I would not marry my spouse/live with my partner again” (1 = strongly agree to 5 = strongly disagree). Each item was reverse-coded and we averaged the scores of 11 items to create an enchantment scale.

Global relationship happiness was measured by one question, “Taking all things together, how satisfied are you with your relationship with your spouse or partner?” (1 = very dissatisfied to 5 = very satisfied).

1.3 Controls

In our analyses of the associations between inaccuracies in partners’ perceptions of each other’s work–family conflict and relationship quality, we took demographic and socioeconomic characteristics into account, such as age , race/ethnicity (white vs. nonwhite), education (whether they have a college degree or not), self-employment , relationship status (first marriage, remarriage, or cohabiting), and parental status (whether they had at least one child under age 18 living in the household), because these characteristics are related to gender ideology (Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001), work–family conflict (Milkie and Peltola 1999; Schieman et al. 2009), and relationship quality (Amato et al. 2003). We also accounted for the effects of the levels of partners’ own work–family conflict and their perceptions of the other partner’s work–family conflict while we focus on how discrepancies between partners’ perceptions are related to relationship quality. These characteristics were included as controls in regression models (see Tables 9.2, 9.3).

Table 9.4 Means (SD) or % distributions for variables for dual-earner couples in The Marriage and Cohabiting Couples 2010 Study (N = 545)