Religious Affiliation and Work–Family Conflict Among Women and Men

Abstract

Religion is an important part of life for many women and men. Research on religion and work–family issues, however, remains limited. To better understand how religion influences work–family experiences, we use data from the General Social Survey to examine subjective experiences of work–family conflict across three religious groups and the nonreligious. Specifically, we examine how conservative Protestants, Catholics/Orthodox Christians, mainline Protestants, and the nonreligious differ in their perceptions of work-to-family and family-to-work conflict. We find that conservative Protestant women, but not men, report less work-to-family conflict and less family-to-work conflict than their peers in other religious groups even after controlling for religious service attendance, specific job features, and sociodemographic characteristics. Catholic/Orthodox men report less family-to-work conflict than conservative Protestant men. We suggest that researchers examine religion more closely to determine if the experiences of conservative Protestant women and Catholic/Orthodox men hold useful lessons for others.

Keywords

religion work–family conflict gender occupations United States General Social Survey

When confronted with challenges, many Americans turn to religion for guidance and support. It is somewhat unclear, however, how well religion supports women and men in their efforts to reconcile the often conflicting demands of paid work and family life. A wide-ranging review of work–family research published between 1980 and 2002 found only one study that examined religion (Eby, Casper, Lockwood, Bordeaux, & Brinley, 2005). A second review, nearly 10 years later, did not mention religion at all (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). A targeted search for publications about work–family issues and religion will identify some activity in this domain (e.g., Ammons & Edgell, 2007; Civettini & Glass, 2008; Edgell, 2006; Ellison & Bartkowski, 2002; Glass & Nath, 2006; Hall, Oates, Anderson, & Willingham, 2012; Patel & Cunningham, 2012). Such work, however, is still relatively rare.

The limited research on work–family issues and religion leaves many fundamental questions unanswered. Do religious Americans have better or worse work–family experiences than their nonreligious peers? Do work–family experiences vary substantially from one religious group to another? If religious Americans or people from particular religious groups have different experiences, what accounts for them? We cannot hope to answer such broad questions in a single article. Instead, we focus on a more modest goal. We add to the small body of literature about religion and work–family issues by studying how religion is related to a central concept in work–family research: work–family conflict.

In this article, we extend previous research by using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to examine how religion shapes subjective experiences of conflict between work and family roles. We contrast conservative Protestants (CPs) with Catholics/Orthodox Christians, mainline Protestants, and the nonreligious and examine perceptions of how paid work interferes with family life and how family life interferes with paid work. We find that CP women, but not men, report less work-to-family (WTF) and less family-to-work (FTW) conflict than other women even after controlling for frequency of attendance at religious services as well as relevant personal, job, and family characteristics. We also find that Catholic/Orthodox men report less FTW conflict than CP men. We conclude that although religion does not ameliorate conflict between work and family for everyone, CP women and Catholic/Orthodox men perceive less conflict than their peers for reasons unrelated to church attendance.

Background

Work–Family Conflict

The rising number of dual income couples in the United States means that more women and men are caught between the competing domains of work and family life. In 1960, only 25% of all married couples with children younger than 18 years were dual income households. By 2012, however, dual income households accounted for 60% of all married couples with children younger than 18 years (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2015a). One way to assess the consequences of these changes is to examine work–family conflict.

Work–family conflict occurs when the pressures from the work or the family domain interfere with the ability to meet the demands of the other domain (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Work-related stressors such as work distress, work overload, and work time commitment are linked to interference with family life, while family-related stressors such as family distress, parental overload, and parental time commitment are linked to interference with paid work (Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1997). As such, work–family conflict is a bidirectional process with distinct, but overlapping, causes and effects (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010; Byron, 2005).

The majority of research on work–family conflict focuses on WTF conflict rather than FTW conflict (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). This is not surprising since research shows that work interferes with family life more for women and men than family interferes with work (Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992). Research in this area shows that more time spent in the workplace (Voydanoff, 2004), atypical work demands such as overtime (Simon, Kummerling, & Hasselhorn, 2004), nonstandard work hours (Liu, Wang, Keesler, & Schneider, 2011), self-employment (Parasuraman & Simmers, 2001), and inflexible work schedules (Schieman, Milkie, & Glavin, 2009) all increase WTF conflict.

A number of job characteristics also serve to reduce WTF conflict, however. Work schedule flexibility, for instance, seems to reduce WTF conflict (Kelly, Moen, & Tranby, 2011; Singley & Hynes, 2005). Kelly et al.’s (2011) longitudinal study of a white-collar organization shows that increasing scheduling flexibility can reduce WTF conflict. Similarly, a supportive boss or coworkers can also reduce WTF conflict (Behson, 2005; Frone et al., 1997). In fact, informal job characteristics like a supportive boss or coworkers are a better predictor of the variance in employment outcomes than formal job characteristics like paid leave (Behson, 2005).

Family structures also play an important role in WTF conflict. Family stress (Frone, 2003; Hill, 2005; Nomaguchi, 2009), family conflict (Batt & Valcour, 2003), and time spent doing housework or child care (Misra, Lundquist, & Templer, 2012; Offer & Schneider, 2011) all increase WTF conflict. Parents of young children, for one, seem to experience more WTF conflict than others (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). Furthermore, although roughly half of all parents experience some degree of WTF conflict (Bellavia & Frone, 2005), mothers seem to experience more WTF conflict than fathers, but assessing such gender differences is complicated because women with especially high levels of conflict may leave the labor force altogether (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010).

Research on FTW conflict reveals similar patterns for women and men. Family stress (Young, Schieman, & Milkie, 2014), self-employment (Konig & Cesinger, 2015), and parenthood (Stevens, Minnotte, Mannon, & Kiger, 2007), for example, are all linked to FTW conflict in the United States and abroad. In Canada, family stressors stemming from spouses’ perceptions of their partners’ WTF conflict promote FTW conflict (Young et al., 2014). In Germany, self-employment is associated with time-based FTW conflict for women and men (Konig & Cesinger, 2015). In the United States, mothers of preschool-aged children experience more negative FTW spillover (Stevens et al., 2007a). To our knowledge, however, there is no empirical research comparing the subjective experiences of WTF or FTW conflict among women and men with different religious affiliations.

Work–Family Conflict and Religion

The conflict individuals experience is not solely the result of objective measures like many of those described above. To some extent, work–family conflict is in the eye of the beholder, and what one person perceives as paid work interfering with family (or vice versa) might not bother someone else. Such diverse interpretations of the relationship between work and family life are often rooted in sources of meaning like religion. Marx’s characterization of religion as the “opium of the people,” albeit a critical perspective, highlights this issue well. Marx (1978) was particularly concerned with the pacifying effects of religion. Indeed, many religious traditions emphasize delayed gratification (e.g., Weber, 2003) and encourage women and men to endure life’s hardships with patience and grace (Orsi, 2005). For women and men who appear to be pulled in opposite directions by work and family life, religion may provide a sense of complacency—or even satisfaction—with their daily lives. A critical emphasis on complacency or delayed gratification, however, fails to highlight the real and tangible benefits that might be derived from such a positive outlook in spite of the tensions between work and family life (J. A. Gallagher, Hall, Anderson, & Del Rosario, 2013).

For some, religion is a valuable resource during difficult times. It follows that religion may help individuals whose job interferes with family life (or vice versa) cope with the competing demands of their daily obligations. Not surprisingly, most contemporary sociologists of religion believe women and men derive considerable benefits from religion. Empirical studies show a positive relationship between religion and subjective well-being (Ellison, 1991), happiness (Childs, 2010), and global indicators of life satisfaction (Ellison, Gay, & Glass, 1989), and a negative relationship between religion and depression (Krause, 2011), stress (Ellison, Jason, Williams, & Jackson, 2001), anxiety (Schieman, 2008), and other forms of psychological distress (Acevedo, Ellison, & Xu, 2014; Ross, 1990). In addition, religion helps women and men manage a number of different stressful situations including chronic illness (Dezutter, Robertson, Luyckx, & Hutsebaut, 2010), job loss (Lechner & Leopold, 2015), and financial strain (Acevedo et al., 2014).

There is also evidence to suggest that religion shapes the way women and men perceive work and family life. For instance, using a small convenience sample, Hall et al. (2012) show that mothers who instill their employment with religious meaning experience less interrole conflict. Similarly, using a small, nonrepresentative sample of Hindu Americans, Patel and Cunningham (2012) find that greater religious involvement is associated with greater work–family facilitation. These preliminary findings regarding work–family conflict/facilitation are consistent with studies that show the positive effects of religion more generally.

Indeed, many Americans find religion helpful as they do their best to cope with a variety of difficult situations. J. A. Gallagher et al. (2013), for example, find that striving for spiritual self-transcendence (e.g., deepening one’s relationship with God) is negatively correlated with interrole conflict among a sample of 200 Christian professional mothers. In 2014, nearly 80% of Americans identified themselves as members of a religious group, and the religiously affiliated were over 50% more likely to say that they felt a, “deep sense of spiritual peace and well-being” at least once a week (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2015b). We suspect that if religion helps so many people find peace despite the demands of modern life, it may also help them cope with difficult work–family arrangements.

Scholars interested in the potential benefits of religion have paid particular attention to conservative Protestants (CPs) (e.g., Civettini & Glass, 2008; Glass & Levchak, 2014; Greeley & Hout, 2006; Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2009). CPs are interesting in part because of the paradoxical contrast between their objectively disadvantaged positions and their positive life outcomes. Compared with the members of other religious groups and the nonreligious, CPs have lower educational attainment (Darnell & Sherkat, 1997; Sherkat & Darnell, 1999), accumulate less wealth and other assets (Keister, 2003, 2007, 2008), and make earlier transitions into marriage and parenthood (Glass & Jacobs, 2005). Despite their limited human capital, though, CPs tend to have better family relationships and greater life satisfaction than the members of other Christian faiths and the nonreligious (S. K. Gallagher & Smith, 1999; Krause & Hayward, 2013; Wilcox, 2004). Explaining this discrepancy requires thinking about the role that religion plays for CP women and men. According to Stark and Finke’s (2000) hypothetical breakdown of Americans’ religious preferences, members of conservative religious groups often “refer to religion to guide them in daily life” (p. 211). Thus, despite their socioeconomic disadvantages relative to other religious groups, CP women and men may be better suited to use their religious beliefs to maintain positive attitudes during difficult times.

Why CPs have such positive outcomes in so many areas of life is not entirely clear, but we suspect they may be the result of conservative Christian teachings that encourage women and men to see every task they do as part of God’s divine plan for their lives. Weber (2003), for example, argues that early Protestant denominations placed great emphasis on “the fulfillment of the obligations imposed upon the individual by his [sic] position in the world” (p. 80). Although this description of the “calling” is specific to the work domain, a large body of CP literature admonishes women and men to apply the same principles in the home (Bartkowski, 2001, 2004; Ingersoll, 2003). Thus, CP women and men are uniquely positioned to trust God’s judgment during difficult times because they see their work and family obligations as a calling and all of life as part of God’s divine plan. Indeed, CPs are more likely to endorse trust-based prayer practices that emphasize God’s divine plan and believe “God answers prayers when He feels it is best even though a person may not understand God’s reasons for doing so” (Krause & Hayward, 2013, p. 675). According to Krause and Hayward (2013), trust-based prayer beliefs increase life satisfaction over time.

Clark’s (2000) work/family border theory provides a secular explanation of why seeing both work and family as a calling might reduce work–family conflict. According to Clark (2000), working women and men are border crossers who move between the distinct domains of work and family life, and she argues that balancing work and family life (i.e., minimizing work–family conflict) requires identification with the roles and activities in both domains (p. 761). When people find a role meaningful, they are less likely to perceive it as interfering and more motivated to successfully integrate that role with other roles. Because CP teachings admonish women and men to fulfill their obligations and see their family and work roles as part of God’s divine plan, they are likely to have greater work/family balance than other women and men. Based on this evidence, we make the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: CP women will report less WTF conflict and less FTW conflict than other women.

Hypothesis 2: CP men will report less WTF conflict and less FTW conflict than other men.

The Burden of CP Women

Despite evidence that CP women and men are better equipped than others to cope with many challenges, CP women may not fare as well as CP men when it comes to their experiences of WTF and FTW conflict. Among CP couples, the burdens associated with work–family conflict disproportionately fall on the woman. Growing numbers of CP women in the paid labor force have meant greater acceptance of feminist principles among some CP families (S. K. Gallagher, 2004). However, women’s entry into the paid labor force has not been accompanied by equal attention to household labor among CP men (Ellison & Bartkowski, 2002; Hochschild, 1989). CP men appear no different than other men when it comes to the number of hours they work for pay or the time they devote to household labor (Civettini & Glass, 2008; Ellison & Bartkowski, 2002). Thus, CP women are primarily responsible for the “second shift” (Hochschild, 1989) despite a growing body of evangelical literature encouraging men to be role models and active parents, spiritual leaders in the family, and servants to their wives (Bartkowski, 2004; Ellison & Bartkowski, 2002; S. K. Gallagher & Smith, 1999; Wilcox, 2004). In fact, many CP families have adopted “symbolic traditionalism” to cope with their changing economic realities (S. K. Gallagher & Smith, 1999). That is, the pragmatic CP husband believes “Women have a right to ‘go out and have a job’ but only insofar as exercising that right does not interfere with women’s broader obligations to care for children or with men’s obligations to provide” (S. K. Gallagher & Smith, 1999, p. 227).

Therefore, as women in general continue to enter the paid labor force, CP women may be the most likely to experience work–family conflict because their husbands expect them to maintain their place as keepers of the home. In addition, CP women’s tendency to adopt traditional gender ideologies themselves also increases the tension they—but not CP men—experience between their work and family roles (Bartkowski & Hempel, 2009). Even if the division of paid and unpaid labor is not that different in CP households than in other households, CP women may experience more work–family conflict than other women because their realities are incongruent with traditional CP values that encourage CP men and women to believe that women should be keepers of the home (Bartkowski & Hempel, 2009; Sherkat, 2000). Based on these considerations, we make the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3: CP women will report more WTF conflict and more FTW conflict than other women.

Method

Data

To examine the role of religion in women’s and men’s experiences of WTF and FTW conflict, we use data from four waves of the General Social Survey (GSS). The GSS is a nationally representative data set administered by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. The GSS was conducted annually between 1972 and 1994 and administered biennially thereafter. The 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014 GSS surveys include the “Quality of Working Life” Module. This module was developed by the National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health to gauge the nature of work and its effect on workers’ lives, and it is the source of our measures about work–life conflict. To our knowledge, the GSS is the only nationally representative data set that asks about the subjective side of work–family conflict and contains detailed information about respondents’ religious preferences.

Our analysis is limited to women and men who completed the Quality of Working Life Module in the 2002, 2006, 2010, or 2014 waves of the GSS and who indicated their current religious preference as CP, mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic/Orthodox, or no religious affiliation. We exclude Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons, and Unitarians because there are too few cases to accurately estimate the effect size for these denominations, and the beliefs and practices of these groups are too heterogeneous to combine into a single “other religion” category. After imposing these sample restrictions and accounting for missing data, our sample includes 4,889 cases: 2,341 men and 2,548 women.

Measures

Dependent Variables

Our dependent variables come from two questions about the subjective nature of work–family conflict. The first question, “How often do the demands of your job interfere with your family life?” is a measure of WTF conflict. The second question, “How often do the demands of your family interfere with your work on the job?” is a measure of FTW conflict. Both variables included four possible responses: “never,” “rarely,” “sometimes,” and “often.”

Explanatory Variables

Our measure of religious affiliation is based on Sherkat’s (2014) classification of the 205 Protestant denominations in the GSS. GSS respondents who reported their religious affiliation were asked to specify the particular denomination to which they belong. According to Sherkat, many of these denominations can be grouped based on tradition, denominational similarity, and ethnicity in order to make meaningful comparisons between groups (see also Roof & McKinney, 1987). Sherkat (2014) identifies 13 unique Christian and non-Christian religious groups in the GSS. Unlike other classification systems (e.g., Steensland et al., 2000; Woodberry, Park, Kellstedt, Regnerus, & Steensland, 2012), this classification of Christian and non-Christian religious groups does not conflate belief and practice with identification which may artificially inflate the religiosity of certain religious groups (e.g., CPs).

To test our hypotheses about CP women and men, we combined several of the groups in Sherkat’s (2014) classification system based on their similarity on a number of social, political, and demographic characteristics. Specifically, we compare CPs (Baptists and sectarian groups), mainline Protestants (liberal Protestants, Episcopalians, moderate Protestants, Lutherans, other Protestants), Catholics/Orthodox Christians, and the nonreligious (see also Sherkat, 2011; Sherkat & Lehman, 2016). Previous research using similar classification systems shows the usefulness of comparing these four groups to explain women’s and men’s divergent experiences with work and family life (e.g., Glass & Nath, 2006; Reynolds & May, 2014).

Controls

To isolate the effect of religion, our regression models include controls for several job characteristics that are associated with WTF and FTW conflict. Because work hours are associated with both types of conflict (Adkins & Premeaux, 2012), we control for the number of hours worked each week as well as the number of days per month the respondent works extra hours. We also control for high levels of stress at work, inflexible schedules, and a lack of work–family supports because they can all increase work–family conflict (Frone et al., 1997). Specifically, we use dummy variables to identify respondents who report high levels of stress and those who say it is difficult to get time off for family. We use a seven-item scale to measure the extent to which respondents lack workplace supports (men alpha = .70, women alpha = .72). In addition, because people who feel overwhelmed by the amount of work they must complete tend to have work–family conflict, we use a dummy variable to identify respondents who feel they have too much work to do their job well. Finally, because nonstandard work arrangements are associated with increased work–family conflict, we identify respondents who work something other than a regular daytime schedule.

In addition to the job characteristics described above, we also control for respondents’ religious service attendance. Behaviors like religious service attendance are generally associated with adopting the beliefs of the faith (Kanter, 1972). Therefore, to distinguish behavior from identity, we control for respondents’ religious service attendance. Religious service attendance ranges from more than once a week to never or almost never. Following Schwadel and Falci (2012), we collapsed the original nine-category variable to separate high attenders (at least once per week), moderate attenders (at least once per month), and low attenders (less than once per month). Low attendance is the reference category.

Finally, we control for demographic characteristics generally associated with different degrees of work–family conflict. These demographic variables include race (1 = White), marital status (1 = married), having young children (kids in household younger than 6 years = 1), education (bachelor’s degree = 1), region (South = 1), family income, and age. Since we use multiple waves of GSS data, we also include dummy variables to control for survey year. Coding procedures for the control variables and descriptive statistics for all variables are included in the appendix.

Analytic Strategy

The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, we use crosstabs to examine how religious preference is related to WTF conflict and FTW conflict by gender. The crosstabs show the basic patterns of work–family conflict for women and men. Second, we estimate regression models to see if the relationships from the crosstabs are still present after adding controls. If people affiliated with a particular religious group only differ in their experiences of work–life conflict because of their demographic characteristics, workplace experiences, or propensity to attend religious services, the relationships will be much weaker in the regressions than in the crosstabs.

Because our two dependent variables measure conflict between work and family in an ordinal fashion, we estimate regression models specifically designed to handle that situation. The ordered logit model is one possibility, but as is often the case, a Brant test indicated that a crucial assumption of that model (i.e., the parallel lines assumption) was violated. Consequently, we rely on models that relax the parallel lines assumption. Specifically, we considered partial proportional odds models that relax the assumption for some of the independent variables and generalized ordered logit models that relax the parallel lines assumption for all of the independent variables (Williams, 2016). To identify which independent variables to leave unconstrained in the partial proportional odds models, we used STATA’s gologit2 command with the autofit option and an alpha of .01 (see Williams, 2006). We then used likelihood ratio tests to choose between the partial proportional odds models and the generalized ordered logit models. The partial proportional odds model was the best model for examining FTW conflict, and the generalized ordered logit model was the best model for examining WTF conflict.

Results

Bivariate Results

The results of our bivariate analyses indicate that CP women are better protected from the competing demands of work and family life than other women. The results presented in Table 1 provide support for the hypothesis that CP women will report less WTF conflict and less FTW conflict than other women (Hypothesis 1). They do not support the alternate and opposite hypothesis that CP women will report more conflict than other women (Hypothesis 3). Compared with mainline Protestant women, Catholic/Orthodox women, and women with no religious preference, CP women are more likely to report that they never or rarely experience WTF conflict. They are also more likely to report that they never experience FTW conflict. Similarly, CP women are less likely to report higher levels of conflict. Only 20.85% of CP women indicated that the demands of their job interfered with their family life “sometimes” compared with 29.12% of mainline Protestant women, 32.57% of Catholic/Orthodox women, and 31.43% of women with no religious preference. And 18.87% of CP women reported that the demands of their family interfered with their work on the job sometimes compared with 27.27% of mainline Protestant women, 28.92% of Catholic/Orthodox women, and 20.95% of women with no religious preference.

Table 1.

Work-to-Family and Family-to-Work Conflict by Religion and Gender.

	Work-to-family conflict
	Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	n
Men
No religion	21.65	32.11	33.58	12.66	545
Catholic/Orthodox	26.92	25.94	33.44	13.70	613
Mainline Protestant	17.47	33.48	32.75	16.30	687
Conservative Protestant	24.80	32.46	28.63	14.11	496
Total	22.47	30.97	32.25	14.31	2,341
	Cramer’s V = 0.06		p = .00
	Family-to-work conflict
	Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	n
Men
No religion	32.66	40.73	22.94	3.67	545
Catholic/Orthodox	34.91	36.38	24.31	4.40	613
Mainline Protestant	26.49	42.94	25.76	4.80	687
Conservative Protestant	31.45	39.72	23.99	4.84	496
Total	31.18	40.03	24.35	4.44	2,341
	Cramer’s V = 0.04		p = .13
	Work-to-family conflict
	Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	n
Women
No religion	27.38	28.33	31.43	12.86	420
Catholic/Orthodox	24.66	31.66	32.57	11.11	657
Mainline Protestant	26.17	31.70	29.12	13.02	814
Conservative Protestant	31.66	35.16	20.85	12.33	657
Total	27.39	32.03	28.26	12.32	2,548
	Cramer’s V = 0.06		p = .00
	Family-to-work conflict
	Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	n
Women
No religion	34.29	39.52	20.95	5.24	420
Catholic/Orthodox	29.07	38.05	28.92	3.96	657
Mainline Protestant	27.27	39.68	27.27	5.77	814
Conservative Protestant	36.23	38.20	18.87	6.70	657
Total	31.20	38.85	24.49	5.46	2,548
	Cramer’s V = 0.07		p = .00

Note. Each panel lists row percentages followed by the n for each row.

CP men do not experience the same protection from WTF and FTW conflict. Although fewer CP men report that their work on the job interferes with their family life sometimes (28.63% compared with 32.75% of mainline Protestant men, 33.44% of Catholic/Orthodox men, and 33.58% of men with no religious preference), Catholic/Orthodox men are the most likely to report that their paid work never interferes with their family life. When it comes to FTW conflict, there is no significant difference between CP men and other men in the bivariate analysis. As such, the results of our bivariate analyses appear to refute the hypothesis that CP men will report less WTF conflict and less FTW conflict than other men (Hypothesis 2). The results presented in Table 1 suggest that religious affiliation is more important in the balance of work and family life for women than it is for men. Table 1, however, does not account for differences in educational attainment, religious service attendance, job characteristics, and other factors that vary between religious groups and thus might explain the differences in women’s reports of work–family conflict.

Multivariate Results

The models in Tables 2 and 3 provide a more rigorous test of our three hypotheses. Our controls for religious service attendance, specific job features, and several sociodemographic characteristics allow us to better isolate the effect of religious affiliation on the subjective sides of WTF conflict and FTW conflict. Since CPs tend to be less educated and less financially well-off, the characteristics of their job may affect their experience with WTF conflict and FTW conflict. We cannot be certain about the support for Hypothesis 1 until we know that the effect of conservative Protestantism for women is not an artifact of such factors. Like the bivariate analyses described above, the results of the partial proportional odds and generalized ordered logit regression models in Tables 2 and 3 provide further support for Hypothesis 1, but not Hypotheses 2 and 3.

Table 2.

Odds Ratios From Partial Proportional Odds and Generalized Ordered Logit Regressions Predicting Work-to-Family and Family-to-Work Conflict Among Men.

	Work-to-family conflict			Family-to-work conflict
	1	2	3	4	5	6
	>Never	>Rarely	>Sometimes	>Never	>Rarely	>Sometimes
No religion	0.99	1.10	0.76	0.84	0.84	0.84
Catholic/Orthodox	0.61**	1.06	0.84	0.76*	0.76*	0.76*
Mainline Protestant	1.21	1.24	1.13	1.00	1.00	1.00
Controls
Attends services ≥monthly	1.26	1.52**	1.01	1.28*	1.28*	1.28*
Attends services ≥weekly	1.31	1.18	0.89	1.09	1.09	1.09
Weekly work hours	1.01**	1.02***	1.02***	1.00	1.00	1.00
High stress at work	1.99***	2.26***	2.37***	1.64***	1.64***	1.64***
Lack of support at work	1.15	1.32**	1.22	1.19*	1.19*	1.19*
Days/month works extra hours	1.03***	1.04***	1.05***	1.01	1.01	1.01
Difficult to get time off for family	1.62***	2.02***	2.72***	0.98	1.39**	1.71**
Too much work to do well	1.37*	1.88***	1.18	1.45***	1.45***	1.45***
Works a nonstandard schedule	1.16	1.86***	2.76***	1.01	1.01	1.01
White	1.74***	1.22	0.98	1.41***	1.41***	1.41***
Married	1.46**	1.22	1.00	1.51***	1.34**	0.68
Kids in household younger than 6 years	1.65**	2.18***	1.68**	1.44**	1.44**	1.44**
Bachelor’s degree	1.40*	1.00	0.82	1.44**	1.01	0.52*
Lives in the South	0.73**	0.89	1.11	0.96	0.96	0.96
Family income	1.01***	1.01***	1.00	1.01***	1.00**	1.01*
Age	0.99**	1.00	1.01	0.99*	0.99*	0.99*
2006	1.15	1.13	0.86	1.19	1.19	1.19
2010	1.88***	1.39*	1.27	1.20	1.20	1.20
2014	1.54**	1.48**	1.23	1.27*	1.27*	1.27*
N	2,341			2,341
Pseudo R²	.136			.054

Note. The dependent variables are coded 1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, and 4 = often. The reference category for the religion variables is conservative Protestant. Based on the results of likelihood ratio tests, the work-to-family regression (Models 1-3) relaxes the parallel lines assumption for all the independent variables, and the family-to-work regression (Models 4-6) relaxes it for only some variables.

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

Table 3.

Odds Ratios From Partial Proportional Odds and Generalized Ordered Logit Regressions Predicting Work-to-Family and Family-to-Work Conflict Among Women.

	Work-to-family conflict			Family-to-work conflict
	1	2	3	4	5	6
	>Never	>Rarely	>Sometimes	>Never	>Rarely	>Sometimes
No religion	1.07	1.41*	0.80	0.99	0.99	0.99
Catholic/Orthodox	1.09	1.39*	0.85	1.15	1.30*	0.69
Mainline Protestant	1.07	1.31*	1.06	1.35**	1.35**	1.35**
Controls
Attends services ≥monthly	1.13	1.05	0.78	1.02	1.02	1.02
Attends services ≥weekly	1.41**	1.28*	0.93	1.15	1.15	1.15
Weekly work hours	1.02***	1.02***	1.02***	1.00	1.00	1.00
High stress at work	2.02***	2.35***	2.38***	1.26**	1.26**	1.26**
Lack of support at work	1.35**	1.42***	1.42**	1.10	1.10	1.10
Days/month works extra hours	1.04***	1.03***	1.04***	1.02**	0.99	1.01
Difficult to get time off for family	2.45***	2.47***	3.03***	1.28**	1.28**	1.28**
Too much work to do well	1.53***	1.69***	1.73***	1.31**	1.31**	1.31**
Works a nonstandard schedule	1.40**	1.83***	2.48***	0.82	1.03	1.75**
White	1.50***	1.29*	1.06	1.35**	1.35**	1.35**
Married	1.21	1.15	0.91	1.15	1.15	1.15
Kids in household younger than 6 years	1.27	1.33*	1.22	1.66***	1.66***	1.66***
Bachelor’s degree	1.40**	1.14	0.62**	1.24	0.96	0.46**
Lives in the South	0.86	0.95	1.14	0.99	0.99	0.99
Family income	1.01***	1.01***	1.00*	1.01***	1.00*	1.00
Age	1.00	0.99	0.99	0.99*	0.99*	0.99*
2006	0.91	1.04	0.91	0.86	0.86	0.86
2010	1.22	1.04	1.10	0.88	0.88	0.88
2014	1.18	1.39**	0.93	1.05	1.05	1.05
N	2,548			2,548
Pseudo R²	.130			.039

Note. The dependent variables are coded as 1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, and 4 = often. The reference category for the religion variables is conservative Protestant. Based on the results of likelihood ratio tests, the work-to-family regression (Models 1-3) relaxes the parallel lines assumption for all the independent variables, and the family-to-work regression (Models 4-6) relaxes it for only some variables.

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

Contrary to the hypothesis that CP men will report less work–family conflict than other men, Catholic/Orthodox men experience less WTF and less FTW conflict than CP men, who serve as the reference category.¹ Model 1 in Table 2, for instance, shows that compared with CP men, Catholic/Orthodox men are 100(1 − 0.61) = 39% less likely to have WTF conflict rarely, sometimes, or often rather than never. The corresponding coefficients in Model 2 (1.06) and Model 3 (0.84), however, are not significant, indicating that Catholic/Orthodox men do not have the same advantage at higher levels of WTF conflict. The FTW conflict models in Table 2 (Models 4-6), on the other hand, indicate that Catholic/Orthodox men are 100(1 − 0.76) = 24% less likely than CP men to have a higher rather than lower level of conflict at all levels.

The lower levels of conflict among Catholic/Orthodox men are visible in Figures 1 and 2. These figures show the predicted probability of each outcome on the dependent variables for each religious category, while holding all other variables at their means. The relative height of the lines indicates the probability of reporting each outcome. Men are thus more likely to report WTF conflict sometimes than they are to report it often (Figure 1). Furthermore, lines that are straight and horizontal indicate that the probability of that outcome does not vary much across religious groups. Therefore, in Figure 1, the peak in the line for “Never” and the associated valley in the line for “Rarely” for Catholic/Orthodox men echo the odds ratios showing that these men tend to experience comparatively low levels of WTF conflict. Figure 2 shows a similar but somewhat less pronounced pattern: Compared with CP men, Catholic/Orthodox men are less likely to report FTW conflict sometimes and more likely to never report it.

Figure 1.

Work-to-family conflict among men by religion.

Figure 2.

Family-to-work conflict among men by religion.

Among women, CPs report the least conflict. In Model 2 of Table 3, all the odds ratios for religion are significant and greater than 1.0. This indicates that mainline Protestant women, Catholic/Orthodox women, and women with no religious preference are all more likely than CP women to report WTF conflict sometimes/often rather than never/rarely. Furthermore, Models 4 to 6 indicate that CP women have an advantage over Catholic/Orthodox and mainline Protestant women in terms of FTW conflict. Compared with CP women, mainline Protestant women have higher odds of reporting greater FTW conflict no matter the level of conflict, and Catholic/Orthodox women have higher odds of reporting FTW conflict more than rarely.

Once again, predicted probabilities can help convey these patterns by showing them from a slightly different perspective. Figure 3, for instance, shows that the probability of reporting that the demands of their job rarely interfere with their family life is especially high among CP women. Figure 4 shows that CP women also have a high probability of never reporting FTW conflict. Mainline Protestant women, by contrast, have a relatively low probability of never reporting FTW conflict. Parallel differences are evident in the probability of sometimes reporting FTW conflict, where CP women are low, but mainline Protestant women and Catholic/Orthodox women are high.

Figure 3.

Work-to-family conflict among women by religion.

Figure 4.

Family-to-work conflict among women by religion.

Overall, the models in Table 3 and the corresponding figures provide fairly strong support for the hypothesis that CP women perceive less conflict than other women (Hypothesis 1). In particular, we found that CP women report less conflict of both kinds than Catholic/Orthodox women and mainline Protestant women, and they report less WTF conflict than women with no religious preference. We also found that religion matters for men’s experiences of conflict, but not in the expected way (Table 2 and Figures 1 and 2). We thought that CP men would report less conflict than other men would, but we found that Catholic/Orthodox men were the group who stood out. More specifically, Catholic/Orthodox men were the only group to have significantly less conflict than CP men.

Although they are not the focus of our analysis, the results for the control variables are worth noting because they confirm some of the other relationships described in previous work. For instance, stress at work, lack of support at work, difficulty taking time off for family, having too much work to do well, and working a nonstandard schedule tend to increase the odds that women and men will report that the demands of their job interfere with their family life. In addition, the more hours they work per week, the greater the odds that women and men will perceive WTF conflict. Working extra hours has a similar effect. Job characteristics are also related to FTW conflict. High stress at work, difficulty getting time off for family, and having too much work tend to increase the odds that women and men will report that the demands of their family interfere with their work on the job.

The analyses in Tables 2 and 3 also reveal that frequency of religious service attendance is related to work–family conflict, but not in the way that one might expect. For women, high attenders (≥weekly) are more likely than low attenders (the reference category) to report WTF conflict rarely/sometimes/often rather than never (Table 3, Model 1). High attenders are also more likely than low attenders to report WTF conflict sometimes/often rather than rarely/never (Table 3, Model 2). For women, religious service attendance does not appear to increase or decrease FTW conflict.

For men, the relationship between religious service attendance and work–family conflict is somewhat different. When it comes to WTF conflict, moderate attenders (≥monthly) are significantly more likely than low attenders to report that the demands of their job interfere with their family life sometimes/often rather than rarely/never, but the difference between high attenders and low attenders is not statistically significant (Table 2, Model 2). Unlike women, however, religious service attendance does affect men’s perception of FTW conflict. Specifically, moderate attenders are significantly more likely than low attenders to perceive FTW conflict at all levels.

While these results are interesting in themselves, they also help us better understand the relationship between religious affiliation and work–family conflict. In particular, because CP women perceive less WTF and FTW conflict in the bivariate analyses (Table 1) and the multivariate models (Table 3), we conclude that religious attendance does not mediate the effect of religious affiliation. Stated differently, the benefit of religion for CP women is not the direct result of attending religious services.² Despite variation between CPs and others on our control measures, the results in Table 3 make it clear that CP women experience benefits unrelated to their religious service attendance and their unique job and sociodemographic characteristics.

Discussion

Religion is often overlooked in research on the relationship between paid work and family life (see Civettini & Glass, 2008; Glass & Nath, 2006; Reynolds & May, 2014, for some notable exceptions). This is problematic because religion remains an important part of life for many women and men, and a factor that influences how they approach both paid work and family life. We have made a modest attempt to fill this gap by examining the role that religion plays in women’s and men’s reports of work–family conflict. We find that religion is related to the degree of conflict people perceive between their paid work and family life, especially for women. Below, we attempt to explain these findings in light of other research, and we also suggest several directions for future research.

Our bivariate and multivariate analyses reveal an important relationship between religious affiliation and work–family conflict for women, and a modest relationship between religious affiliation and work–family conflict for men. More specifically, CP women tend to experience less WTF conflict and less FTW conflict than other women. This is consistent with our first hypothesis about the nature of work–family conflict for CP women, and we elaborate more on this point below. Among men, in contrast, we find that Catholic/Orthodox, not CP men, are less likely to report that their work interferes with their family life or that their family life interferes with their jobs.

Although the relatively low levels of conflict among Catholic/Orthodox men and the high levels among mainline and CP men are not consistent with our predictions, they are not necessarily at odds with all previous research. Men of all types are encouraged to provide for their families, but a significant minority of Evangelical Christian leaders and commentators increasingly emphasize men’s role(s) in the home. Some leaders of the Evangelical men’s organization, Promise Keepers, for instance, admonish men to be “servant leaders” who share domestic responsibilities with their wives and take an active role in the lives of their children (Bartkowski, 2004). Similarly, an article by Evangelical author Jocelyn Green (2010) on the website of the conservative Christian organization, Focus on the Family, describes servant leadership as helping with family responsibilities and being an active parent. Thus, it is not entirely surprising that CP and mainline Protestant men are more likely to perceive that the demands of their family interfere with their work on the job: Catholic/Orthodox men are the least likely of these groups to adhere to Evangelical beliefs and behaviors (Sherkat, 2014). Without further information about the nature of CP and other men’s family responsibilities, however, we caution against drawing strong conclusions about this modest relationship.

The relationship between religion and work–family conflict among women is easier to explain in light of other empirical and theoretical work. First, Clark’s (2000) work/family border theory explains why CP women are less likely to experience interrole conflict. More specifically, CP women (and men) are encouraged to strongly identify with their family and work roles like the Calvinists in Weber’s Protestant Ethic who are called to live out God’s purpose for their lives (Bartkowski, 2001, 2004; Ingersoll, 2003). According to Clark (2000), those who take an active role in both domains experience less interrole conflict (i.e., less work–family conflict). Although the current data do not include a measure of women’s and men’s identification or influence in their work or family roles, other empirical research shows that the growth in women’s labor force participation is not matched by men’s attention to household labor (Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006). Thus, CP women, but not men, are likely to be involved in both domains in ways that would lead to less interrole conflict.

Second, it follows from previous research that CP women would experience less conflict in both domains. Byron’s (2005) meta-analysis of 61 articles on work–family conflict showed a strong correlation between WTF conflict and FTW conflict. That is, the more conflict a person experiences in one domain the more conflict she tends to experience in the other domain. Thus, since CP women are less likely to experience WTF conflict, it is not surprising that they are also less likely to experience FTW conflict (and vice versa). In light of these findings, it is important to consider the implications for Catholic/Orthodox and mainline Protestant women who report more WTF and FTW conflict than CP women do, and women with no religion who report more WTF conflict than CP women.

Despite its subjective nature, the consequences of work–family conflict are real. A longitudinal study of work–family conflict revealed a positive association between FTW conflict and depression, poor physical health, and hypertension, and a positive association between WTF conflict and heavy alcohol consumption (Frone et al., 1997). In addition, the fallout from work–family conflict reaches beyond the worker’s own health and behaviors. McLoyd, Toyokawa, and Kaplan (2008), for instance, found that higher levels of work–family conflict were associated with increases in children’s externalizing problems in a sample of African American children and their parents, and a study of 399 dual-earner couples found that partners’ work–family conflict accounted for a significant amount of the variance in both women’s and men’s work–family conflict (Hammer, Allen, & Grigsby, 1997). Therefore, it is important to consider the factors related to women’s and men’s subjective experiences of work–family conflict. Based on our analyses, religious affiliation is one of these factors, and Catholic/Orthodox, mainline Protestant, and nonreligious women may disproportionately experience these and other ill effects.

While CP women report less WTF conflict and less FTW conflict than other women, this does not necessarily mean that they are less likely to experience objective interference between the two domains. Consider, for example, the case of Venezuelan men who convert to Evangelical Christianity in order to combat personal problems like addiction, unemployment, and familial strain (Smilde, 2007). According to Smilde (2007), conversion to Evangelical Christianity gives these men a narrative that emphasizes abstinence and personal responsibility, but it rarely absolves them of their addictions to drugs and alcohol, their joblessness, or their threatened masculinity at home. Nevertheless, the conversion narrative gives these men confidence and allows them to make sense of their situations. Data limitations prevent us from examining if CP women are more or less likely to experience objective interference between their work and family lives. Nevertheless, we find that they perceive less conflict than other women even after accounting for differences in their family structures and work experiences. Future research should consider if CP women’s reports of less WTF conflict and less FTW conflict serve as a protection against the negative outcomes associated with work–family conflict described above.

It is also difficult to explain why religion is related to subjective experiences like work–family conflict because there are many mechanisms involved, and the positive (or negative) consequences of religion are rarely the result of just one of these mechanisms (Koenig, 2012). Our analyses cannot tell us why CP women experience less work–family conflict than other women. Previous research led us to expect that the protective effects of conservative Protestantism are rooted in CP teachings that encourage women and men to identify with both work and family roles and view their current situations as part of God’s divine plan for their lives (Krause & Hayward, 2013). However, without more direct measures, we cannot be certain that this is the cause for the differences in women’s experiences of work–family conflict. More research will be needed to better understand the mechanisms behind the relationship between religious affiliation and work–family conflict.

Above all, our findings indicate that religious affiliation is an important part of the relationship between religion and work–family conflict beyond religious service attendance and women’s and men’s job and family situations. Thus, we encourage further consideration of the role that religion plays in other areas of the work–family interface. Research on the sanctification of work is one area with increasing promise in this regard. Specifically, research in this area demonstrates that attributing spiritual qualities to a specific domain (e.g., the work domain) is generally associated with greater satisfaction in that domain (Mahoney et al., 1999) and less interrole conflict (J. A. Gallagher et al., 2013), but it is more difficult to conceptualize and make use of the spiritual qualities of the work in some occupations than others (Grant, O’Neil, & Stephens, 2004; Sullivan, 2006). Future research may consider how religious affiliation shapes these processes and how our changing religious landscape may result in shifts in the role that religion plays in work–family conflict and other work–family experiences over time.

Footnotes

Appendix

Coding Information and Descriptive Statistics.

Variable	Coding	Men		Women
Variable	Coding	M	SD	M	SD
Work-to-family conflict	“How often do the demands of your job interfere with your family life?” (1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often)	2.38	0.99	2.26	0.99
Family-to-work conflict	“How often do the demands of your family interfere with your work on the job?” (1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often)	2.02	0.86	2.04	0.88
No religion	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.23	0.42	0.16	0.37
Catholic/Orthodox	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.26	0.44	0.26	0.44
Mainline Protestant	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.29	0.46	0.32	0.47
Conservative Protestant	0 = No, 1 = Yes (reference category)	0.21	0.41	0.26	0.44
Controls
Attends services	“How often respondent attends religious services?”
<Monthly	0 = No, 1 = Yes (reference category)	0.64	0.48	0.50	0.50
≥Monthly	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.18	0.39	0.24	0.43
≥Weekly	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.18	0.38	0.26	0.44
Weekly work hours	Number of hours respondent worked last week (or usual hours if last week’s hours were missing)	44.80	14.80	38.61	13.76
High stress at work	“How often do you find your work stressful?” 1 = always/often, 0 = sometimes/hardly ever/never	0.31	0.46	0.33	0.47
Lack of support at work	The average of the six variables below.Each item is coded 1 = very true, 4 = not at all true unless otherwise noted.The scale is missing if more than two variables are missing.Cronbach’s alpha is .70 for men and .72 for women.“My supervisor is helpful to me in getting the job done.”	1.87	0.51	1.85	0.54
	“How often are there not enough people or staff to get all the work done?” (1 = never, 4 = often)“I receive enough help and equipment to get the job done.”“The people I work with take a personal interest in me.”“The people I work with can be relied on when I need help.”“When you do your job well, are you likely to be praised by your supervisor or employer?” (1 = yes, 2 = maybe, 3 = no)
Days per month works extra hours	“How many days per month do you work extra hours beyond your usual schedule?”	6.71	8.10	4.87	7.08
Difficult to get time off for family	“How hard is it to take time off during your work to take care of personal or family matters?” (0 = not at all hard/not too hard, 1 = somewhat hard/very hard)	0.26	0.44	0.28	0.45
Too much work to do well	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.29	0.46	0.30	0.46
Works a nonstandard schedule	Respondent usually works an afternoon shift, night shift, split shift, irregular shift/on-call, or rotating shift. 0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.29	0.45	0.26	0.44
White	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.79	0.40	0.74	0.44
Married	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.51	0.50	0.44	0.50
Children in household younger than 6 years	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.13	0.34	0.15	0.36
Bachelor’s degree	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.20	0.40	0.20	0.40
Lives in the South	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.36	0.48	0.38	0.49
Family income	Family income in thousands of constant dollars (base = 1,986)	41.49	36.18	34.99	31.63
Age	Respondent’s age in years	42.32	13.09	42.28	13.02
2002	0 = No, 1 = Yes (reference category)	0.31	0.46	0.30	0.46
2006	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.28	0.45	0.28	0.45
2010	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.19	0.39	0.21	0.41
2014	0 = No, 1 = Yes	0.22	0.42	0.22	0.41

Acknowledgements

We thank Richard Williams for helping us troubleshoot our models.

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.

Notes

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