Childrearing Stages and Work–Family Conflict: The Role of Job Demands and Resources

• Date: 01 April 2019
• Author: Kei Nomaguchi,Marshal Neal Fettro
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12521
• Published date: 01 April 2019

K N  M N F Bowling Green State University

Childrearing Stages and Work–Family Conict: The

Role of Job Demands and Resources

Objective: The authors examine the role of job

characteristics in inuencing variation in moth-

ers’ work–family conict by childrearing stage.

Background: Although researchers generally

contend that having younger children is related

to greater work–family conict, examination of

this association is limited.

Method: Using data from the National Insti-

tute of Child Health and Human Development

Study of Early Child Care and Youth Devel-

opment (N=774), we conduct xed effects

models to examine variations in mothers’ job

characteristics across four waves when their

children are 6months old, 15 months old, third

graders, and fth graders and their links to vari-

ations in mothers’ work-to-family conict and

family-to-work conict across the same waves.

Results: Mothers work fewer hours, but perceive

more job pressure, fewer career opportunities,

and less supervisor support when children are

younger. Because of the countervailing patterns

of variations by childrearingstage between work

hours and job pressure, there is little difference

in mothers’ work-to-family conict across the

four waves. Mothers report more family-to-work

conict when children are younger, but this dif-

ference by childrearing stage disappears when

perceived job pressure is controlled for.

Conclusion: Life course dynamics of job

demands and resources may shape variation in

work–family conict by childrearing stage.

Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University,

213 Williams Hall, Bowling Green, OH 43403

(knomagu@bgsu.edu).

Key Words: xed effects models, life course, maternal

employment, occupational stress, work–family balance.

Implications: Workplace policies designed to

reduce job pressurewhile not eliminating career

opportunities would be helpful for mothers with

young children to adjust to the stressfulness of

balancing work and childrearing demands.

Since the late 1980s, a majority of U.S. mothers

return to work during the rst year of their

children’s lives (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statis-

tics, 2009). During this period, U.S. parents

who experience work–family conict, dened

as individuals’ perceptions that their work

and family responsibilities interfere with each

other, have increased (Nomaguchi, 2009).

Work–family conict involves the following

two directions: work can interfere with family

(work-to-family conict [WFC]) and family

can interfere with work (family-to-work con-

ict [FWC]; Bellavia & Frone, 2005). Both

WFC and FWC have serious consequences for

the well-being of workers and their families

(Bellavia & Frone, 2005; Grzywacz & Bass,

2003). Various policies, such as paid parental

leave and exible work scheduling, have been

suggested as workplace policies that may help

parents with young children to reduce WFC

and FWC (Kelly et al., 2014; Landivar, 2017).

To better inform policy makers about types of

policies that may effectively help parents in

specic childrearing stages, it is important to

understand how parents’ WFC and FWC vary by

childrearing stage.

Although researchers tend to argue that

having children younger than age 6 is related

to greater WFC and FWC (e.g., Voydanoff,

2004), empirical ndings on differences in

WFC and FWC by childrearing stage have been

Journal of Marriage and Family 81 (April 2019): 289–307 289

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12521

290 Journal of Marriage and Family

inconsistent (see a review in Schieman, Milkie,

& Glavin, 2009). We suspect that this incon-

sistency is in part because of methodological

limitations. First, many studies have used a

comparison group that was not ideal. Stud-

ies compared employed adults with children

younger than age 6 to all other employed adults

(Grzywacz, Almeida, & McDonald, 2002;

Voydanoff, 2004), employed adults without any

children in the household (Hill et al., 2008; Men-

nino, Rubin, & Brayeld, 2005), or employed

empty-nest parents (Moen & Yu,2000). In these

comparisons, the effect of childrearing stage was

mixed with the effect of parental status. Second,

almost all studies used cross-sectional data.

Relying on cross-sectional data is problematic

because mothers who are employed when their

children are infants are different from mothers

who are employed only when their children

started school in their sociodemographic char-

acteristics and family circumstances (Damaske

& Frech, 2016; Hynes & Clarkberg, 2005). We

need research that compares the same mothers’

WFC and FWC across different childrearing

stages while eliminating the effects of mothers’

background characteristics that are related to

both the odds of mothers being employed in a

certain childrearing stage and mothers’ WFC

or FWC.

Another limitation of prior research is its

insufcient attention to variation in job char-

acteristics by childrearing stage as a potential

source of variation in WFC and FWC by chil-

drearing stage. Researchers typically argue that

having younger children is related to higher

WFC and FWC because of higher demands

of child care when children are younger (Voy-

danoff, 2004). Yet little research has examined

this supposition because the types of child

demands vary by childrearing stage and, thus,

most surveys do not have comparable measures

of child demands across different childrea-

ring stages (Nomaguchi, 2012; Nomaguchi

& Milkie, 2017). In contrast, despite the

availability of comparable measures of job char-

acteristics across childrearing stages, very few

studies, let alone those using longitudinal data,

have examined how job characteristics vary by

childrearing stage (Hill et al., 2008; Martinengo,

Jacob, & Hill, 2010). This is a surprising omis-

sion because many studies have emphasized

that job characteristics play a critical role in

shaping WFC and FWC (Schieman et al., 2009;

Voydanoff, 2005).

Using longitudinal data from the National

Institute of Child Health and Human Develop-

ment Study of Early Child Care and Youth

Development (SECCYD), we compared

mothers’ WFC and FWC across four time

points when the focal child was 6 months old,

15 months old, in third grade, and in fth

grade—the waves when the SECCYD col-

lected detailed information about mothers’ job

characteristics, WFC, and FWC. We focused

on mothers because fathers’ information was

limited in the SECCYD. We drew on the Job

Demands-Resources (JD-R) model (Bakker &

Demerouti, 2007) and a life course perspec-

tive on the work–family intersection (Moen &

Sweet, 2004) to develop hypotheses on varia-

tions in WFC and FWC across these four waves

and how such variations are explained by vari-

ations in job demands and resources across the

four waves. We used xed effects models that

account for unmeasured mothers’ background

characteristics that may confound the observed

variations in WFC and FWC by childrearing

stage (Allison, 2009).

J D  R  T

L  WFC

The JD-R model and other similar approaches

have provided insights into understanding the

role of job characteristics in shaping WFC (Kelly

et al., 2014; Schieman et al., 2009). The basic

idea is that work conditions can be catego-

rized into two characteristics—job demands and

resources—and that levels and interactions of

job demands and resources shape WFC (Bakker

& Demerouti, 2007). In this study, we focus on

how levels of specic aspects of job demands

and resources play a role in shaping WFC (not

examining interactions between job demands

and resources). Following prior research (e.g.,

Schieman & Glavin, 2011; Voydanoff, 2004), we

organize our discussions from the job demands

and the job resources perspectives separately.

The job demands perspective highlights that

individuals are more likely to experience WFC

when job demands are high (Schieman, White-

stone, & VanGundy, 2006). Job demands refer to

the physical, socioemotional, and organizational

aspects of a job that require sustained physical

or mental effort (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007).

Researchers have identied broadly two types

of job demands that shape WFC. The rst type

is time- or task-based demands, which we call