Putting work and family experiences in context: Differences by family life stage

Abstract

This study explores how individuals across six family life stages (before children, transition to parenthood, youngest child preschool-age, youngest child school-age, youngest child adolescent, and empty nest) differ in their experience of the work—family interface. Data come from a global IBM work and life issues survey ( N = 41,769). Structural equation modeling was used to compare employees from six family life stages on work role factors (job hours, job responsibility, job flexibility) and family role factors (household work hours, marital status), and their relationships to work—family conflict, family—work conflict, work—family fit and four personal success measures. Meaningful differences in the means and size of the relationships among variables across family life stages provided empirical evidence of a ‘life course’ for the work—family interface influenced by differential exposure and differential effects of work and family role demands.

Family Trajectories and Life Satisfaction: The Swiss Case

“…The first perspective predicts a decrease of parents' well-being as a consequence of a child's departure. In sharp contrast to the hypothesis of a loss, the role of strain relief perspective suggests that the empty-nest stage leads to improved parental well-being, since children at home increase exposure to stressors, such as daily demands and work-family conflicts (Erickson et al 2010;Umberson et al 2010;White and Edwards 1990). Notwithstanding, research has been slightly incoherent regarding the impact of the departure of a child from home, and the majority of studies published in recent decades have painted a more optimistic picture.…”

How does the Ecological Well-Being of Urban and Rural Residents Change with Rural-Urban Land Conversion? The Case of Hubei, China

“…It confirms what previous studies have indicated: Changes in rural resident overall ecological well-being and in each constituent of ecological well-being are all greater than those of urban resident [29,49,51,80,83]. And transformation factors including age, education level as well as location have significant influence on both rural and urban resident ecological well-being but the degree of influence is different.…”

“…It figured out that the conversion degree and efficiency by which the goods or service changing to well-being are significantly different for each individual due to the differences in personal, social and environmental conditions which are conceptualized as "transformation factors". For example, different age groups have different anticipations when facing same environmental changes, more highly educated groups have better ability for livelihood selection and further environmental cognition [51,80]. In addition, an individual's preference for ecosystem services is affected by local environmental resources endowments to some extent [29].…”

Work–Family Conflict and Couple Relationship Quality: A Meta-analytic Study

“…As we reviewed all 33 different articles included in this metaanalysis, we realized that scholars and researchers based their work on a wide variety of theoretical frameworks and/ or conceptual models. For example, while many researchers built their studies on ecological system theory (e.g., Galovan et al 2010;Hill 2005;Jacob et al 2008;Nomaguchi and Milkie 2015;Voydanoff 2005), others embedded their studies on a wide array of theoretical frameworks, including but not limited to spillover effects (e.g., Bakker et al 2009;Beatty 1996), family stress theory (e.g., Carroll et al 2013), family life course theory (e.g., Erickson et al 2010), affective events theory (Judge et al 2006), social role theory (e.g., Perrone and Worthington, 2001), and role-strain theory (e.g., Srivastava and Srivastava 2012). Meanwhile, out of 33 studies that we reviewed, 18 of those were not based on any explicit theoretical framework.…”

“…Some reasons for this interest include the rise of dual-earner couples (Jacobs and Gerson 1998), greater prevalence of nonstandard work-hours (Kalil et al 2010;Wittmer and Martin 2010;Maume and Sebastian 2012), and more egalitarian gender roles as exemplified by working men's increased contribution to unpaid work at home (Hook 2006). Work-family conflict is a fairly common occurrence, with approximately half of the individuals in many samples having reported that they experienced such conflict at least some of the time (Anderson et al 2002;Erickson et al 2010;Hill 2005). This relationship is also of clinical interest-one sample of marriage and family therapists reported that nearly 1/3 of their couple cases involved work-family balance issues (Haddock et al 2001).…”