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Today, I wanted to introduce one of the foundational concepts of work-family research. Specifically, I want to put a name to the pressured and stressed feeling we all experience as we juggle work, family, friends, community, and self. That name is work-family conflict, or more broadly work-life conflict.  

I am the oldest of four children and became interested in studying the work-family interface from watching my mom work full-time, raise us kids, and engage in our community. Initially, I was simply curious about how women, like my mom, did it all. However, after having my first child in the middle of a PhD program, my interest went from pure curiosity to a need to understand so that I could survive. I was a full-time graduate student, responsible for teaching an undergraduate business course, and a brand-new mom. Our family was approximately 13 hours away and we didn’t have any daycare. I tell you this not so that you will feel sorry for me or wonder “how did she do it all,” but instead to emphasize the impact that understanding the nature of work-family conflict can have on our ability to manage it.  

The purpose of this blog/podcast is to help women move beyond the stress and overwhelm that can so often accompany starring in multiple roles in their lives. Doing so requires understanding, personal reflection, and intentional action. Since we’re at the beginning of this podcast journey, I wanted to start by helping you all better understand the problem we’re facing. Thus, I wanted to dig into some of the foundational work-family research to help illuminate why so many of us are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and burnt out. I believe gaining a better understanding of the problem can be helpful in creating a solution. There’s a lot to unpack here, years of research and hundreds of personal examples, so in this post I will simply try to provide a birds’ eye view.  

When we are starring in multiple roles, we have responsibilities related to each of those roles. Yet, we only have so many resources, such as time, energy, and money to give. This experience, when “the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible” is called work-family conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985, p.77). Those of you who do not have family-related responsibilities can still experience conflict due to the incompatibility of the roles and responsibilities you do have (e.g., employee, friend, volunteer, etc.). This type of conflict is referred to as work-life conflict (Kossek & Lee, 2017). Work-life conflict functions in much the same way as work-family conflict. Since my experience is almost always work-family conflict, I will use that throughout this post; just know that much of what I say applies to both types of conflict!  

Most researchers conceptualize work-family conflict as bidirectional. This means that your work demands can interfere with your family responsibilities (work to family conflict). For example, when working up against a deadline I’ve had to stay at the office later than originally planned which caused me to be unable to pick the kids up from school. Do you see that? My time and effort needed to be focused on work and I was unable to complete one of my family responsibilities. (My husband picked them up, they are fine 😊). Conflict can occur in the other direction too. This is referred to as family to work conflict. We are probably all experiencing some level of family to work conflict during this pandemic. I’ve heard many stories of children busting into the home office and interrupting a zoom meeting to ask for a snack. (In my case, my son interrupted me to tell me that Dad had found and killed a snake in our backyard.)  

What causes Work-Family Conflict? 

Work-family research has identified several antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict. Some of the most common work domain antecedents include job involvement, hours spent at work, work support, schedule flexibility, and job stress (Byron, 2005). Family domain antecedents include family/non-work involvement, hours spent in non-work, lack of family support, family stress, family conflict, number of children, age of youngest child, marital status, and spousal employment (Byron, 2005). Work-domain related predictors tend to be more strongly related to work to family conflict. On the other hand, family-domain related predictors are more strongly related to family to work conflict. There are a few notable exceptions to this rule; job stress, family stress, and family conflict are all strongly associated with both directions of work-family conflict. This underlines the reciprocal nature of work to family and family to work conflict (Frone et al., 1992) and suggests that, without intervention, employees could wind up in a never-ending cycle of work-family conflict. Individuals’ family stress might lead to family-to-work conflict which causes job stress. This job stress can then lead to work-to-family conflict and cause even more family stress, starting the cycle all over again. This emphasizes the importance of better understanding work-family conflict and taking steps to manage it.  

Why is Work-Family Conflict such a big deal? 

Work-family conflict has been linked to a variety of dysfunctional and undesirable consequences both at work and at home. Work-family conflict can lead to decreased job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, and career satisfaction and increased turnover intentions, burnout, exhaustion, absenteeism, and work-related stress (Amstad et al., 2011). In the family domain, work-family conflict has been linked to decreased marital satisfaction, family satisfaction, and performance at home, and increased family-related stress (Amstad et al., 2011). In addition to the work and family domains, work-family conflict can also have serious personal consequences such as decreased life satisfaction and increased health problems, depression, substance use, stress, and anxiety (Amstad et al., 2011). Obviously, these consequences are things we would all like to avoid which is precisely why we need to recognize the work-family conflict we are experiencing and be intentional about managing it.

 Conflict and an Elegant Balance

 I used to assume that while undesirable, work-family conflict was just inevitable. Working women with families to care for were just supposed to be frazzled, overwhelmed, and stressed. After all, when I looked around that was often what I saw. Women pouring themselves into their careers (but simultaneously feeling guilty about it), putting self-care on the backburner to love their children, saying yes to every volunteer opportunity that came up (because that’s what responsible grown-ups do). I thought it was just part of every woman’s experience. But it DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!

 This blog/podcast is called “Elegant Balance” because simplifying my life to the point where I think it’s beautiful and effective is what has helped me the most in addressing the stress and overwhelm that comes from starring in multiple roles. If you want some more elaboration on the concept of “Elegant Balance”, you can listen to episode 1 “In Pursuit of an Elegant Balance”.

 Think about what we’ve learned today regarding work-family conflict. I listed out several antecedents of work-family conflict. Which ones are you struggling with right now? What are the demands on your to-do list? Once you get really clear on the cause of your work-family conflict, you can start to intentionally address it. One exercise I really like to do is to list out the all the demands that are being placed on me. These include work demands, family demands, and demands from friends, church, community, etc. Once you get them all down on paper, you start asking these questions regarding each demand:

1) Is this demand urgent?

2) Is this demand important?

Once you’ve defined the urgent and important demands, you can look at the other demands on the list.  

If they’re not urgent or important then why are you taking them on? 

You don’t have to be superwoman. In fact, spreading yourself too thin will ensure that you’re not “super” at anything. I encourage you to think about eliminating the non-urgent/non-important demands from your life. That might take some time – learning to say no to things that didn’t align with my values and feel “important” to me took several years – but taking control of your life and editing out the excess is so worth it. Once you do, you’ll be left only with the essential demands; the ones you have to do, the ones you love to do, and hopefully some that fall into both categories. Many of you are probably familiar with the concept of a capsule wardrobe. For those of you who are not, it’s basically the idea that you curate a closet of a few, high-quality, clothes. The idea is that you don’t cram your closet full of clothes your never wear or clothes that don’t really fit or flatter you. Instead, you become very selective about which pieces you keep in your closet. Most women who curate a capsule wardrobe only invest in pieces that make them feel beautiful; pieces that bring them joy; pieces that they love to wear over and over again. The same concept applies to work-family conflict. We can curate our life so that the demands that are being asked of us are important to us. When you get really intentional about cutting out the excess, it’s truly amazing how much space it gives you to breathe.

 Obviously we can’t always eliminate demands simply because we want to. There will always be demands that are urgent and/or important that we’re not particularly excited about. In this case, I encourage you to think about how you can make the best of it. For example, I hate doing dishes. In fact, before I got married I tried to get my husband to sign a contract stating that he would always do dishes (it didn’t work). Since we are a family of four and I love to cook there will always be dishes to do. I can’t simply take a stand and eliminate that demand from my list of responsibilities. Yet I can take steps to make it more enjoyable. I recently invested in a pair of blue-tooth noise cancelling headphones and I now use the dish-washing time as “me time” to listen to audiobooks or podcasts. This has helped me shift my mindset around washing my dishes from it being a “dreaded chore” to a nice break from the craziness of having a six- and two-year old in the house. I am constantly looking for ways to make the mundane more enjoyable – bringing more elegance and beauty into my life.

 The absence of conflict does not mean that you will have balance (Carlson et al., 2009). However, I believe that understanding work-family conflict, recognizing the cause of it, and taking intentional action to manage it is a step in the right direction. To help you get started, I’ve created a FREE Elegant Balance Workbook. If you haven’t already, you can grab a copy here.

If you complete the exercise above, I’d love to hear about it! Did it help you gain some clarity? Did you take any steps toward simplifying things? You can post in the comments below, or tag me on Facebook or Instagram. I can’t wait to hear about it!

References

 Amstad, F. T., Meier, L. L., Fasel, U., Elfering, A., & Semmer, N. K. (2011). A meta-analysis of work–family conflict and various outcomes with a special emphasis on cross-domain versus matching-domain relations. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 16(2), 151. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022170

Byron, K. (2005). A meta-analytic review of work-family conflict and its antecedents. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 67, 169-198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2004.08.009

Carlson, D. S., Grzywacz, J. G., & Zivnuska, S. (2009). Is work—family balance more than conflict and enrichment?. Human Relations, 62(10), 1459-1486. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0018726709336500

Frone, M. R., Russell, M., & Cooper, M. L. (1992). Antecedents and outcomes of work-family conflict: testing a model of the work-family interface. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77(1), 65. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.77.1.65

Greenhaus, J. H., & Beutell, N. J. (1985). Sources of Conflict between Work and Family Roles. The Academy of Management Review, 10(1), 76-88. https://doi.org/10.2307/258214

Kossek, E. E., & Lee, K. H. (2017). Work-family conflict and work-life conflict. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190224851.013.52