Managing multiple roles - Personality, stress, and work-family interference in dual-earner couples

Abstract

Today many parents have multiple roles. This study examined how personality, domain-specific stress, and work-family interference are interrelated. Questionnaire data of 276 Dutch dual-earner couples with young children were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings demonstrated that job stress and parenting stress were positively related to work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict, respectively. For women, additionally, family-to-work conflict was strongly associated with increased levels of job stress. Finally, emotional stability functioned as an indirect predictor of work-family interference by decreasing the levels of job stress and parenting stress for both genders, but in distinctive ways. The use of couple data and inclusion of personality showed a valuable extension of existing models linking work and family.