The Impact of Work–Family Conflict and Facilitation on Women’s Perceptions of Role Balance

Abstract

This study investigated married women’s feelings of balance between their occupational and family roles. Data from 274 married and full-time employed women were collected and structural equation modeling techniques were used to assess the connection between their work and leisure lives, work–family conflict and work–family facilitation, and role balance. Women’s satisfaction with their experiences at work and at home, the time they spent in each sphere, and the social support they received from others in each domain were considered. Women’s satisfaction with their workplace and family experiences, most notably, spousal support, were positively related to feelings of role balance. The results of this study suggested that satisfaction with experience in one sphere is stronger and more important than the hours spent doing activities in that sphere when accounting for married women’s role balance.

Keywords

role balance work–family conflict/facilitation family leisure workplace experiences

Women’s Role Balance: Workplace and Family Leisure Experiences

The domains of family and work are the two principal contexts of adult life in America. The number of dual-earner couples is increasing in the United States (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009). As a result, many married women find themselves involved in multiple roles in their daily lives and many of them experience feelings of role conflict between work and family (Wong & Goodwin, 2009). Although social norms may be changing regarding the extent to which spouses share household and parenting activities, women still continue to provide the majority of child care and household work (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010; Drago & Lee, 2008). In this study, the “role balance” approach from the work of Marks and MacDermid (1996) is used. These scholars defined role balance as “a general orientation across roles” that contributes to the effort to understand how, and how well, individuals manage multiple role demands. This perspective suggests that concepts such as work–family conflict, work–family balance, and work–family fit (Barnett, 1998; Grzywacz & Bass, 2003; Jones, Burke, & Westman, 2006; Marks & MacDermid, 1996; Pittman, 1994) would play a role in helping to determine how work and family interconnections relate to well-being.

Theoretical Background

Symbolic interactionism is the broad theoretical underpinning applied to how people experience multiple roles. In symbolic interactionism, roles are tied to social positions in a social context and include shared norms and rules for behavior (LaRossa & Reitzes, 1993; White & Klein, 2002). Theorists place emphasis on the meaning people in roles give to their role behaviors (Daly & Beaton, 2005; LaRossa & Reitzes, 1993) because constructed meaning is in turn very important for understanding how they enact their roles and how satisfied they may be with their roles. Furthermore, actors are seen as carrying out their roles in a social context; therefore, the ways that their role counterparts (e.g., spouse for family roles, supervisor for work roles) interact with them are important to account for if the aim is to understand experience in the home and work roles.

This theory carries several important implications for how studies should be constructed. First, it is important to recognize that individuals will vary in how they perceive their roles. Second, the theory suggests that peoples’ role experiences are interconnected; experiences in the home role will be connected to experiences in the work role. Third, roles take place in a social context, therefore, some understanding of the influence of role counterparts will aid in understanding multiple roles. Fourth, the theory suggests that people will vary in the amount of time they devote to their roles, and that the more objective factors such as time may or may not be connected to people’s perceptions. Connecting how people feel about their roles with relatively objective factors such as time has been rarely pursued as an empirical strategy. Such an approach would illuminate the interplay between satisfaction and perceptions of time, as suggested by the social constructionist branch of symbolic interactionism. Inquiry into these issues is complicated by the fact that interactions across roles, both positive and negative, must also be pursued.

Because symbolic interactionism is a grand theory that is large in scope, this project focused on a particular application directed toward multiple roles developed by symbolic interactionist Stephen Marks (1977, 2009) and his colleague (Marks & MacDermid, 1996)—the role balance approach. This perspective is linked to symbolic interactionism in that the focus is on how people perceive their roles with an assumption that it is possible for individuals to hold several roles as equally important in their lives. The role balance approach stands in contrast to some deeply held assumptions about how work and family life are interrelated. Prior theoretical work suggested that individuals tend to organize these roles hierarchically to aid in their management (Goode, 1960; Stryker & Burke, 2000) and that they do so in accordance with a resource management approach (Hobfoll, 2002; Voydanoff, 2002, 2005). This perspective would not posit that work–family conflict would be an outcome, as is it typically regarded in the literature (Maertz & Boyar, 2011) but rather that interfaces between roles would be mediators between the experiences of work and of family and the feeling of balance. Marks and MacDermid (1996) developed the scale of role balance to assess a person’s general orientation to become fully engaged or disengaged “in the performance of every role in one’s total role system” (p. 421). This article embraces role balance as a key outcome variable to encapsulate how women are ultimately balancing their work and family lives through assessments of these spheres and of the extent to which they experience conflict and facilitation. Scholars have remarked that the literature on work and family roles has achieved little new theoretical insights over the past 20 years, hence our application is intended to open up some new possibilities for understanding how conflict and facilitation between work and family stem from circumstances in women’s work and family roles and account for their well-being (Byron, 2005; Maertz & Boyar, 2011).

Work and Family Conflict and Facilitation

In the field of work and family research, the most common variable that has been associated with combinations of work and family roles is role conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Work–family conflict is not a one directional experience. When people have trouble fulfilling a family role because of work responsibilities, they experience work to family conflict; family to work conflict occurs when family responsibilities affect the work sphere (Crouter, 1984; Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992; Netemeyer, Boles, & McMurrian, 1996; Voydanoff, 2005). Research has found work and family conflict to be related to individual’s well-being in the family sphere and in the work sphere, affecting areas of life, such as family and marital life, job satisfaction, and job stress (Carlson, Kacmar, & Williams, 2000; Duxbury, Higgins, & Thomans, 1996; Frone & McFarlin, 1992; Frone, Yardley, & Markel, 1997; Hammer, Cullen, Neal, Sinclair, & Shafiro, 2005; Thomas & Ganster, 1995).

Theorists and researchers, in recognition that work and family can also assist each other, set forth the concept of work–family facilitation, whereby people can improve one role activity with resources associated with another role, benefitting from a form of synergy (Allen, Herst, Bruck & Sutton, 2000; Carlson, Grzywacz, & Zivnuska, 2010; Casey & Grzywacz, 2008; Frone et al., 1997; Grzywacz & Bass, 2003; Grzywacz & Butler, 2005; Grzywacz & Marks, 2000; Voydanoff, 2004, 2005). Unlike work–family conflict, wherein the emphasis is on incompatible role demands, work–family facilitation focuses on resources in one domain that enhance participation in the other. Positive interconnections may occur when women have support from their families (Carlson et al., 2010; Hill, 2005; Voydanoff, 2004, 2005), and in particular when they experience high-quality marital relationships (Allen et al., 2000; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; Hochschild, 1989; Judge, Ilies, & Scott, 2006; Minnotte, Minnotte, Pedersen, Mannon, & Kiger, 2010; Voydanoff, 2005).

The preponderance of extant research has targeted work-to-family conflict rather than the reverse (Kossek & Ozeki, 1998; Voydanoff, 2005). Both conflict and facilitation can run in either causal direction (i.e., work-to-family and family-to-work). According to Voydanoff (2005), family-to-work conflict and family-to-work facilitation are uncorrelated and, as a result, best seen as independent processes rather than bipolar endpoints on a family-to-work continuum. Although work–family facilitation can seem to be the opposite side of work–family conflict, in that facilitation is positive and conflict is negative, theorists have suggested that those two concepts are bidirectional and multidimensional, rather than opposite of each other (Grzywacz & Bass, 2003; Grzywacz & Butler, 2005; Grzywacz & Marks, 2000). It is possible that some aspects of a particular family role are hindered by the work role, whereas other aspects of the same family role might be advantaged by the work role.

In sum, several general observations about this vast and growing literature may be advanced: (a) the study of family-based activities has nearly exclusively focused on obligatory household tasks (family work) rather than individual and family leisure (family play), a topic we address in the next section; (b) the presumed, often implicit, direction of causality between these two spheres runs from work to family, rarely considering family-to-work effects; (c) relatedly, nearly all extant research explores work-to-family conflict (i.e., negative workplace effects on household task distribution and performance); and (d) when more positive, facilitative, spillover effects between the two domains are investigated, such effects are, again, quasi-inevitably posited to run from work to family, neglecting the extent to which family events may positively spill over to work.

Family Leisure

Leisure is seen by most people as one of the most valued areas of their everyday lives, and most of us would welcome the opportunity to live a “life of leisure.” The importance that we attach to leisure is most intelligible when we contrast it with work. This contrast is a by-product of the Industrial Revolution, wherein work and family were spatially segregated for the first time, and it would be fair to say that industrialization created leisure as we know it, as the residual time left over after work.

To reiterate, although families are involved in two broad classes of activities—leisure (“play”) and household tasks (“work”)—researchers understand far more about how families work than how they play. This asymmetry is odd given our long-standing belief that “the family that plays together, stays together” and Blood and Wolfe’s (1960) declaration over 50 years ago that leisure companionship had become the most prized feature of American married life. Moreover, by virtue of its discretionary nature, leisure is a particularly useful lens through which to view family behavior. Household tasks are requisite activities that demand performance, whereas discretionary leisure pursuits are equally useful in examinations of family dynamics (e.g., what leisure activities individuals and families undertake, and with whom they do so, when they do not have to do anything at all).

Women’s Leisure

Since roughly the middle of the past century American women have increasingly experienced the “second shift” phenomenon in their daily work and family lives (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009; Hochschild, 1989; Larson & Richards, 1994) and have come to perceive family leisure differently than men. Compared with men, employed women have less chance to enjoy their leisure activities because they may have less time (Henderson, Bialeschki, Shaw, & Freysinger, 1996). Employed women are more likely to distinguish between work and leisure time than men or women who are not employed. They report less leisure time because of their family responsibilities when compared with nonemployed women (Shaw, 1997). In addition, women have less time that they perceive and experience as leisure time than men (Henderson, Bialeschki, Freysinger, & Shaw, 1989; Shaw, 1985). For example, while men report more pleasurable home-based leisure—such as watching television with family members—women are less likely to report such activities as pleasant. Larson and Richards (1994) suggested that women’s leisure activities are often undertaken concurrently with other activities and, as a result, they cannot be as deeply involved in their leisure as men. For example, when a woman is watching television with her children, she may also be doing laundry at the same time. She may see this time as leisure or she may perceive it as work. Thus, both activity and perception are necessary to understand women’s leisure. Furthermore, married women’s leisure appears to be affected by their marital relationships; this fact explains why they experience “pure” leisure less frequently than do married men. Therefore, in a study pioneering the connections between women’s leisure and work–family interface and well-being, it is important to include a measure of spouse’s support. Kossek and Ozeki (1998) included family support in their meta-analysis and demonstrated its link to work- family interference.

Therefore, it is necessary to investigate women’s leisure activities by including both the amount of time they spend and their perception of leisure activities, as well as their marital relationship. Although some activities seem to be leisure, it is possible that women might not view them in that manner. This study investigated women’s leisure activities as both time and satisfaction aspects.

Workplace Experiences

The workplace is one important context for individuals in assessing balance between work and family roles, especially since workplaces are generally separated from home (Burr, Leigh, Day, & Constantine, 1979; Kanter, 1977; LaRossa & Reitzes, 1993). Some aspects of workplaces are related to work and family conflicts, which in turn affect individuals’ well-being and satisfaction. Supportive workplace cultures have been linked to reduced work–family role conflict (Galinsky & Stein, 1990; Warren & Johnson, 1995). Burke (2006) reported that organizational culture is related to individuals’ job stress, job satisfaction, psychosomatic symptoms, and emotional well-being, and found that workers who received support from their supervisors reported less work–family conflicts. Many researchers have found that supervisor support is significantly related to women’s work and family connections (Greenglass & Burke, 1988; Frone et al., 1997; Duxbury, Higgins, & Lee, 1994; Perrewe & Carlson, 2002; Thompson & Prottas, 2005), and more generalized workplace support has also been found to be helpful to positive work–family connections (Kirrane & Buckley, 2004; Phillips-Miller, Campbell, & Morrison, 2000). Most research examining workplace factors, however, has taken a negative view, exploring the relations between the social support at work and work and family conflicts. Thus, both time (a relatively objective factor) as well as perceptions of support and satisfaction and how they are associated with workplaces will improve understanding of how work factors might be associated with role balance.

Although the number of women who work in traditionally male- dominated workplaces is increasing, the occupational domain is still quite gender-segregated, with women still concentrated in occupations such as teaching, clerical and administrative support, and health care (Blackburn & Jarman, 2006; Gabriel & Schmitz, 2007). Educational settings were one of earliest professions to allow women to work outside the home and have sought ways to ameliorate conflicting work and family demands (Drago, 2007); this study targeted women who work in educational settings.

Individuals’ experiences at work and at home in leisure were the foci of the current study. The theoretical foundation suggested that the work/family interface concepts (conflict and facilitation) would mediate the connections between experiences in the work sphere and between experiences in the home sphere and role balance. In order to ascertain the connections between these experiences, it was seen as crucial to measure similar dimensions of work and home, and to have each sphere be distinct in the model and hypotheses that could clearly delineate links between experiences in each sphere and work–family interconnection. The particular experiences in each sphere (work and family) were selected based on important findings in the literature for at least one sphere: therefore, the objective dimension of time was chosen at work (work hours) and in leisure from the family sphere (leisure time). Similarly, satisfaction with each of these time dimensions was identified because of the clear finding that job satisfaction was important to account for; therefore, we included leisure satisfaction in the home sphere. As well, satisfaction with work and satisfaction with marriage were each included to be parallel and to reflect findings in the literature. Last, the experience of support in each sphere was included due to the findings concerning spousal support in the home sphere; hence we incorporated a measure of supervisor support in the work sphere. This study investigated two models with different mediators, work–family conflict and work–family facilitation. Specific hypotheses were as follows:

Hypothesis 1: Work–family conflict will mediate the relationship between both family factors (amount of leisure time, leisure satisfaction, and spousal support) and work-based factors (work hours, job satisfaction, and supervisor support) and women’s feelings of role balance.

Hypothesis 2: Work–family facilitation will serve as the mediator between the same set of family- and work-based factors and feelings of role balance.

Figure 1 portrays the conceptual models under investigation. Hypothesis 1 uses work and family conflict as the mediator and Hypothesis 2 places facilitation as a mediator.

Figure 1.

Conceptual model.

Method

Sample

This study collected data from participants recruited from two selected workplaces in the United States. Two organizations were classified as educational service organizations: a public school district and staff members (not faculty) at a university in Texas. A total of 577 individuals participated in an online survey, although 130 respondents who reported they had no spouse or partner were eliminated because this study investigated spousal support and marital satisfaction. Of the number of individuals who started the survey, 72% completed it. Among the 447 responses, only women respondents were used for the study since this study is about women’s feelings with regard to role balance between work and family. Therefore, the final sample was 274 female employees who worked full time and were married or living with a partner.

The average age of participants was 42.63 years (SD = 11.31) and their mean length of marriage was 15.82 years (SD = 12.33). In all, 149 women had no children at home whereas 125 women had at least one child at home, 19.7% of whom had children younger than 6 years. The average age of the youngest child at home was 7.84 years (SD = 5.34). Most women were White/Caucasian non-Hispanic (81.8%), and 11.7% women were Mexican American Hispanic. The average annual income of participants was $42,856 (SD = 12.79), and length of time at the current job averaged 8.53 years (SD = 7.99). More than half of participants worked in professional, technical, and related occupations, such as a teacher (56.9%), and 27.4% women worked in administrative support occupations.

Procedures

Initially, the researcher contacted human resource managers and explained the purpose and requirements of this study. Participants received an e-mail from their human resource managers or their listserv at the organizations allowing them to connect to the anonymous Survey Monkey website. When employees agreed to participate in this study, they answered an online survey. The researcher provided two different online survey links to classify the data from each organization through the Survey Monkey website. The survey took approximately 30 to 40 minutes to complete.

Measurement

Control Variables

Demographic variables were used as control variables, including age, educational level, annual personal income, length of marriage, age of youngest child, and length of current job. Participants were asked to answer their age, length of marriage, length of current job by months, and number, age, and gender of each child. Educational level was classified as less than high school degree, high school degree, college degree (bachelor), graduate school degree, and others.

Independent Variables

Marital satisfaction

Marital satisfaction was assessed with the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (Shumm et al., 1986). This three-item scale asked, “How satisfied are you with (a) your marriage/marriage-like relationship, (b) husband (wife) /partner as a spouse, and (c) your relationship with your husband (wife)/partner” on a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = extremely dissatisfied to 7 = extremely satisfied). Cronbach’s alpha for the Kansas Marital Satisfaction scale was .98 in this study.

Job satisfaction

Agho, Price, and Mueller’s (1992) overall job satisfaction scale was used. This scale had six items with one reverse scored item, and participants responded on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1= strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Sample items included “I feel fairly well satisfied with my present job,” and “I am satisfied with my job for the time being” (α = .90).

Leisure experiences and satisfaction

Individuals’ leisure experiences in terms of time were measured by one item: “How many hours do you spend on leisure activities in a week on average?” Leisure satisfaction was obtained by asking “How satisfied are you with how much time you spend in leisure activities?” on a 7-point scale (1 = extremely dissatisfied to 7 = extremely satisfied).

Social support

An established scale of social support (Caplan, Cobb, French, Van Harrison, & Pinneau, 1980) measured the extent of support that individuals reported that they received from their spouse (a family perceptual factor) and their work supervisor (a workplace perceptual factor). This scale included four items, including both emotional and instrumental supports from those four different sources (e.g., “how easy is it to talk with your spouse”?). The range of responses was 0 = I don’t have any such person” to 4 = very much on a 5-point Likert-type scale. Coefficient alphas were .87 for support from spouse and .92 for support from supervisor in this study.

Dependent Variables

The Role Balance Scale (Marks & MacDermid, 1996) was used to assess the degree to which individuals’ experience the balance across their entire role systems. This scale is a self-report questionnaire and includes eight items. Each item was responded to on a 5-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Sample items include the following: “Nowadays, I seem to enjoy every part of my life equally well,” “I am pretty good at keeping the different parts of my life in balance,” and “I generally don’t let things ‘slide’.” According to Marks and MacDermid (1996), Cronbach’s alpha for the eight items was .68. In this study, the coefficient alpha was .63.

Mediators

Work–family conflict and facilitation

The measurement of work–family conflict and facilitation consisted of four dimensions: work to family conflict, work to family facilitation, family to work conflict, and family to work facilitation. Each aspect of conflict had four items and each area of facilitation included three items. The original measurement of Work–Family Conflict/Facilitation (Grzywacz & Bass, 2003) asked “how often have you experienced each of the following in the past year?” This study, however, asked individual’s feelings between work and family during the past 3 weeks to be more precise in the measurement of individuals’ perceptions of work–family conflict and facilitation. Each item was responded to on a 5-point scale from not at all to very much. Cronbach’s alphas were .83, .67, .67, .68, respectively, for work to family conflict and facilitation, and from family to work conflict and facilitation (original αs were .83, .73, .80, .70, respectively).

Analysis

Structural equation modeling was used to test two conceptual models. Each model separated out the relatively objective factors associated with work and leisure (e.g., time) from perceptual factors (e.g., support and satisfaction) associated with work and family. Family-related factors were women’s leisure experiences and their marital relationships, including satisfaction and support, and work-related factors included their work hours, job satisfaction, and support from supervisors. Two different models were investigated, with Model 1 testing “work–family conflict” as a mediator and Model 2 using “work–family facilitation” as a mediator (Baron & Kenny, 1986). AMOS 6 (Arbuckle, 2005) was used in this study to carry out statistical analysis. To calculate exact relations among the variables, age, annual income, educational level, and length of marriage were controlled. This was done because these covariates can have a direct effect on leisure and workplace experiences.

Results

Preliminary Analyses

Table 1 provides the descriptive results and zero-order correlations among work and family-related variables. (By adding the direct paths from demographic variables to exogenous variables, demographic variables were controlled.)

Table 1.

Correlations Between Work–Family Related Variables and Demographic Variables.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1. Role balance	—
2. Marital satisfaction	.16*	—
3. Leisure time	.03	.09	—
4. Leisure satisfaction	.41***	.15*	.07	—
5. Work to family conflict	−.53***	.02	.06	−.47***	—
6. Family to work conflict	−.47***	−.15*	−.10	−.40***	.55***	—
7. Work to family facilitation	.17**	−.06	−.18**	.10	−.09	.13*	—
8. Family to work facilitation	.29***	.46***	−.05	.28***	−.07	−.20**	.18**	—
9. Work hours	−.02	.03	.17**	−.09	.10	−.02	−.06	−.06	—
10. Work hours satisfaction	.31***	.21**	−.04	.27***	−.32***	−.22***	.19**	.16**	−.14*	—
11. Job satisfaction	.44***	.02	−.11	.28***	−.36***	−.20**	.37***	.22***	−.03	.39***
12. Spouse support (easy)	.28***	.47***	.08	.17**	−.08	−.18**	−.08	.52***	−.05	.04
13. Spouse support (life)	.26***	.40***	.16*	.23***	−.09	−.24***	.03	.49**	.02	.05
14.Spouse support (rely)	.22***	.45***	−.05	.17**	.00	−.15*	.10	.56***	−.07	.00
15.Spouse support (listen)	.29***	.50***	.08	.16**	−.07	−.17**	.07	.60**	−.03	.07
16. Supervisor support (easy)	.27***	−.04	−.05	.18**	−.27***	−.12	.17**	.04	−.10	.21**
17. Supervisor support (life)	.27***	−.10	−.07	.16**	−.27***	−.10	.23***	.00	−.10	.23***
18. Supevisor support (rely)	.16**	−.07	−.10	.17**	−.24***	−.07	.19**	.03	−.14*	.21**
19. Supervisor support(listen)	.24***	−.05	−.08	−.25***	−.08	−.08	.22***	.06	−.12	.16*
M	25.54	17.86	5.83	4.12	11.08	8.47	7.68	10.94	2.16	4.87
SD	4.70	3.90	11.56	1.56	3.77	2.76	2.57	2.57	.44	1.48
Range	8-40	3-21	1-8	1-7	4-20	4-20	3-15	3-15	1-4	1-7
α	.63	.98			.83	.67	.67	.68
	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19
1. Role balance
2. Marital satisfaction
3. Leisure time
4. Leisure satisfaction
5. Work to family conflict
6. Family to work conflict
7. Work to family facilitation
8. Family to work facilitation
9. Work hours
10. Work hours satisfaction
11. Job satisfaction	—
12. Spouse support (easy)	.03	—
13. Spouse support (life)	.07	.52***	—
14. Spouse support (rely)	.15*	.57***	.64***	—
15. Spouse support (listen)	.10	.71***	.64***	.71***	—
16. Supervisor support (easy)	.30***	.12	.11	.10	.12*	—
17. Supervisor support (life)	.36***	.04	.09	.13*	.11	.77***	—
18. Supervisor support (rely)	.30***	.04	.08	.16**	.15*	.80***	.81***	—
19. Supervisor support (listen)	.25***	.06	.12	.15*	.17**	.68***	.69***	.74***	—
M	23.34	3.69	3.23	3.48	3.60	2.90	2.59	2.79	2.40
SD	4.85	.65	.86	.85	.73	1.12	1.14	1.16	1.13
Range	6-30	0-4	0-4	0-4	0-4	0-4	0-4	0-4	0-4
α	.90

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Structural Equation Modeling

Work–Family Conflict as a Mediator

Our results largely supported the prediction that work–family conflict would mediate the relationships between family- and work-based factors and feelings of role balance in Hypothesis 1: χ² (131, N = 274) = 232.87, p < .001; comparative fit index (CFI; Bentler, 1988) = .96; normed fit index (NFI; Bentler, 1988) = .91; and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA; Browne & Cudeck, 1993) = .05. The model was significant and demonstrated a mediation effect as detailed below.

Figure 2 illustrates the significant pathways in the structural model. For clarity, Figure 2 does not include nonsignificant paths from work and family experience variables to work–family conflict and role balance, from work–family conflict to role balance, and the correlations among latent variables and single indicators, although these correlations were included in model.

Figure 2.

Standardized solutions for structural equation model with work–family conflict.

Leisure time and work hours, which measured the relatively objective aspects of both family and work, were neither related to work–family conflict nor to role balance. Leisure satisfaction, work hour satisfaction, and job satisfaction negatively influenced married women’s role balance through the degree of work–family conflict. The path coefficients confirmed significant relationships between leisure satisfaction and work–family conflict (β = −.46, p < .001), work hour satisfaction and work–family conflict (β = −.19, p < .001), job satisfaction and work–family conflict (β = −.17, p < .05), and between work–family conflict and role balance (β = −.57, p < .001). Women who reported higher levels of leisure satisfaction scored lower on work–family conflict, and women with lower work hour satisfaction reported high levels of work–family conflict. Additionally, women with lower levels of job satisfaction were more likely to report high levels of work–family conflict. The last direct path meant that women with lower levels of work–family conflict were more likely to have high scores of role balance. Work–family conflict worked as a mediator for leisure satisfaction and work hour satisfaction. Although the model still had a direct path from job satisfaction to role balance, the coefficient rate of the path was decreased compared with the model without a mediator. Therefore, work–family conflict met the criterion set by Baron and Kenny (1986) to be a mediator for job satisfaction.

In addition, there were two significant direct paths. Job satisfaction was directly related to role balance in a positive way (β = .20, p < .001) such that higher scores of job satisfaction led to higher scores on role balance. Although two latent constructs, spousal support and supervisor support, were not related to work–family conflict, spousal support was significantly and positively related to role balance (β = .24, p < .001) whereas supervisor support was not related to role balance. Women who perceived more support from their spouses had higher scores on role balance. Marital satisfaction was related neither to work-family conflict nor to role balance.

Work–Family Facilitation as a Mediator

Hypothesis 2 predicted that work–family facilitation would mediate the association between home-and work-based factors and feelings of role balance. This prediction was not supported, in that work–family facilitation was not related to role balance. The results yielded a model with adequate fit to the data: χ² (112, N = 274) = 197.88, p < .001; CFI (Bentler, 1988) = .96; NFI (Bentler, 1988) = .92; and RMSEA (Browne & Cudeck, 1993) = .05. Figure 3 illustrates only the significant paths from work–family experience variables to work–family facilitation and from work–family facilitation to role balance, excluding significant correlations among latent variables and single indicators for clarity.

Figure 3.

Standardized solutions for structural equation model with work–family facilitation.

Leisure time had a significant path to work–family facilitation (β = −.11, p < .05) whereas the other time variable, work hours, was not significantly related to work–family facilitation. When married women had more leisure time, they were less likely to experience work–family facilitation between work and family spheres. There was no significant path between either marital satisfaction or spousal support and work–family facilitation. Only job satisfaction from the work sphere had a significant path to work–family facilitation (β = .29, p < .001). Women who had high scores on job satisfaction were more likely to experience more work–family facilitation. The path between work hours satisfaction and work–family facilitation was not statistically significant. Supervisor support was related neither to work-family facilitation nor to role balance. Spousal support was significantly and positively related to both work–family facilitation (β = .47, p <. 001) and role balance (β = .26, p <. 01). Women who perceived more support from their spouses experienced more work–family facilitation and reported more role balance.

The aim of the second structural equation model was to test work–family facilitation as a mediator. However, the path between work–family facilitation and role balance was not statistically significant, and there was no significant path from the independent variables to the dependent variables (role balance). Therefore, work–family facilitation did not qualify as a mediator in this model.

Discussion

This study explored women’s perceptions of their role balance by examining the perceptions of time and satisfaction related to factors concerning work experiences, on one hand, and family experiences including leisure, on the other hand. Many paths between perceptual factors and role balance were significant in the models. Most noteworthy were the connections between (a) spousal support and role balance (in the family sphere) and (b) job satisfaction and role balance (in the work sphere). None of the time-related factors in the work–family conflict model were significantly related to role balance directly or indirectly, whereas one time-related factor (leisure time) was significantly related to role balance in the work–family facilitation model.

Separate models considered the interplay between work–family factors and role balance. Work–family conflict mediated the connection from family experiences and workplace experiences to married women’s role balance; work–family facilitation, however, did not serve as a mediator. In general, the time devoted to leisure and to work was relatively less important for understanding women’s role balance. Rather, satisfaction with these experiences was related to work–family conflict/facilitation and feelings of role balance. Thus, how individuals subjectively evaluated their situations, rather than simply how much time they spent in leisure or work activities, was the most important set of predictors of married women’s feelings of work and family balance. As such, our findings reinforced the importance of the meanings that women create concerning their situations, reflecting a basic tenet of symbolic interactionism (Daly & Beaton, 2005; LaRossa & Reitzes, 1993; White & Klein, 2002).

Both work–family conflict and facilitation were examined as possible mediators for role balance; the former served as a mediator whereas the latter did not. Work and family conflict was strongly associated with women’s perceptions of role balance between work and family. These findings mirror those of the large body of literature that has investigated the effects of work–family conflict (e.g., Gareis, Barnett, Ertel, & Berkman, 2009; Perrewe, Hochwarter, & Kiewitz, 1999; Voydanoff, 2005). Moreover, these findings also support the notion that work–family conflict and facilitation are qualitatively distinct dimensions rather than simply bipolar opposites (Carlson et al., 2010; Grzywacz & Butler, 2005), given that work–family conflict and facilitation were differentially related to work and family variables as well as differentially associated with role balance (Carlson et al., 2010). It is noteworthy that the factors associated with facilitation in the model by and large were not associated with role balance, with time-based feelings of satisfaction in work and leisure associated with role balance but not with facilitation.

This study explored factors related to the work–family interface based on previous studies and included a few factors not used in prior research (Hill, 2005, Marks, Huston, Johnson, & MacDermid, 2001), particularly satisfaction with leisure time for work–family facilitation and work hour satisfaction and perceived spousal support for women’s feelings of balance. This was a fortunate addition, in that leisure satisfaction was significantly related to role balance and work–family conflict, whereas absolute time spent pursuing leisure was related to neither. Work–family facilitation was significantly and negatively related to respondents’ reports of the amount of their leisure time. This could be because of the fact that the leisure time available to married women, as suggested by Henderson (1996), may not be time that was exclusively devoted to leisure but rather time in which they were simultaneously involved in household or childcare tasks (Robinson & Godbey, 1997). Similar to existing studies, this study demonstrates a strong connection between spousal support and the work–family interface; however, this study did not find supervisor support to be a significant factor (Allen et al., 2000; Hill, 2005; Marks et al., 2001; Thompson & Prottas, 2005; Wayne, Grzywacz, Carlson, & Kacmar, 2007). By way of explanation, it could be that spousal support is more important than supervisor’s support for married women in order to achieve role balance, given the primacy of overall well-being. Spousal support and supervisor’s support were also highly correlated, and it is possible that spousal support decreased the effect of support from supervisor because both types of support were included in a model.

The extent to which occupational and family life—contexts within which most Americans spend the vast majority of their adult lives—either compete or cooperate is an important area of inquiry now and will doubtless continue to be so for the foreseeable future. This is particularly true for working women, who continue to shoulder disproportionate responsibility for instrumental and childcare tasks during their time away from work. Continued investigation targeting those factors that facilitate and deter the meshing of these two domains is needed both for social scientific reasons and, more practically, to improve the quality of life for millions of American women.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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