Does Work–Family Conflict Vary According to Community Resources?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12348
• Author: Marisa Young
• Published date: 01 April 2019
• Date: 01 April 2019

M Y McMaster University

Does Work–Family Conict Vary According

to Community Resources?

Objective: To examine the gendered impact

of community on work–family conict (WFC)

and whether respondents with young chil-

dren benet more from community resources

compared with other residents.

Background: Studies suggest that the gender

gap in WFC is decreasing. Most attribute this

trend to individual-level antecedents of work

and family. However, these explanations do not

take into account important community-level

components—specically, men’s and women’s

differential access to and use of community

resources.

Method: Individual-level data from 1,702

Canadians matched to census-level data from

the Canadian census were used, and hier-

archical linear modeling techniques were

employed.

Results: Key ndings werethat women and par-

ents with young children experience more

conict in less resourced communities, and col-

lective efcacy affected men’s and women’s

reports of WFC, but in opposite, nonlinear

ways: At higher levels of collective efcacy,

women reported heightened conict. For men,

this pressure was only felt when efcacy levels

were high.

Conclusion: There are important gender dis-

tinctions in reported WFC depending on one’s

Department of Sociology, McMaster University, 1280

Main Street West, Hamilton Ontario, L8S 4M4, Canada

(myoung@mcmaster.ca).

Key Words: community resources, work–family conict,

gender differences, multilevel modeling, neighborhood

disadvantage.

community resources. In some circumstances,

these resources are more benecial for women

than men and matter differently for parents

with young children compared with those with-

out young children.

Implications: These ndings help inform com-

munity and policy-based initiatives aimed

at reducing residents’ experiences of WFC,

underscoring the utility of promoting efcacious

communities.

In recent years, the gender gap in work–family

conict (WFC)—or the incompatibility between

day-to-day role expectations—has been nar-

rowing, in most part due to men’s increased

reports of WFC (Aumann, Galinsky, & Matos,

2011; Nomaguchi, 2009; Young, Schieman, &

Milkie, 2014). Differential experiences of WFC

are often attributed to gender ideologies con-

cerning work versus family role demands that

constitute a good (or conversely, bad) father or

mother (Aumann et al., 2011). Although these

factors explain a good portion of the observed

gendered patterns of WFC, they may not fully

capture contributing conditions. Part of the

explanation may lie beyond a limited focus of

individual-level antecedents and, instead, stem

from the communities in which residents engage

daily and the resources differentially accessed

by or benecial for men and women struggling

to balance competing roles (Voydanoff, 2007;

Young & Wheaton, 2013).

The present study was designed to exam-

ine this commonly overlooked yet potentially

impactful context with regard to gendered expe-

riences of WFC. The differential benets of

Family Relations 68 (April 2019): 197–212 197

DOI:10.1111/fare.12348

198 Family Relations

community context for WFC depending on age

of the youngest child in the household is also

considered because parents with younger chil-

dren rely more on resources available in geo-

graphic propinquity and spend more time in

the community compared with individuals with-

out young children (Swisher, Sweet, & Moen,

2004). Parents with young children are also more

susceptible to WFC, given the time demands

associated with younger kids (Michel, Kotrba,

Mitchelson, Clark, & Baltes, 2011). These dis-

tinctions may have implications for the assess-

ment of community resources for balancing

demands.

Core tenants of the stress process model

(SPM; Pearlin, Menaghan, Lieberman, &

Mullan, 1981) are drawn upon to examine a

more nuanced understanding of the association

between community resources and WFC by

gender and parental status, with the assumption

that inequalities in access to and use of such

resources inuence the experience of stressors

among these populations differently. The SPM

offers “a general orienting framework that can

guide the thinking of researchers about poten-

tially stressful circumstances. .. [and] sensitize

them to the kinds of data that are needed to

study these circumstances” (Pearlin, 1999,

p. 396). The SPM helps researchers conceptu-

alize how social and economic aspects of life

inuence exposure and vulnerability to stressors

across various levels of social reality. Using

this perspective, the present study addresses

two research questions: (a) How do commu-

nity resources differentially benet men’s and

women’s experiences of WFC? and (b) Do these

associations vary among residents with and

without young children in the household?

This study uses multilevel data from Toronto,

Ontario, Canada, to answer these questions by

considering measures of both objective and

perceived community resource availability and

quality. Social resources are also measured by

what is commonly called collective efcacy.

Collective efcacy refers to the combination

of cohesion and informal social control among

neighbors (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls,

1997).

G E  WFC

 P  Y C

Traditionally, women have tended to report

experiencing higher levels of WFC than their

male counterparts (Simon, 1995). Despite

their increasing role and presence in paid

work, women are still responsible for the

lion’s share of domestic chores and child care

(Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006; Marshall,

2011). Terms such as the double shift or the

stalled/unnished revolution have been used

to capture the incompatibility and inequity of

competing expectations for women (Gerson,

2009; Hochschild, 1989). Among mothers with

full-time paid employment, domestic work

consumes 4 to 5 hours per day and about 3 hours

more than that for those with children under

6 years of age (Aumann et al., 2011; Statistics

Canada, 2011). These reports of hours engaged

in domestic labor are high relative to fathers

with full-time paid employment, and thus con-

tribute to women experiencing more WFC than

men in past decades.

Recently, however, this gender imbalance

has begun to shift. Studies now show that

fathers report WFC comparable to their female

counterparts (Aumann et al., 2011; Nomaguchi,

2009; Young et al., 2014). This literature points

to fathers’ increased investment in the fam-

ily sphere—referred to by some as intimate

fatherhood and men who mother (Doucet, 2006;

Williams, 2001)—as a chief contributor to

this pattern shift. Fathers’ time with children

has nearly doubled over the past half century;

married fathers employed full time now spend

about 7 hours a week on child care, which is

3 hours more than men reported in the 1960s

(Livingston & Parker, 2011; for Canadian pat-

terns, also see Young et al., 2014). Gendered

changes in childcare expectations along with

men’s growing reports of WFC underscore that

such conict is a challenge for both men and

women, and this may be particularly true among

those with young children given that they tend

to invest more time and energy into domestic

labor (Bianchi et al., 2006; Michel et al., 2011).

Key tenants from the SPM (Pearlin et al.,

1981) help researchers theorize about causes and

consequences of the gender gap in experiences

of WFC. In short, WFC can be conceptualized as

a chronic stressor within the SPM (Pearlin et al.,

1981; also see Wheaton et al., 2013). Wheaton

et al. (2013) dened chronic stressors as those

that have no clear start or end point, are insid-

ious in nature, and—like other stressors—are

affected by the environments in which they are

experienced. This perspective shifts the focus

from individual-level domestic and work-related