Family Relationships

Much like workplace relationships, the interpersonal relationships within families and social support networks affect and are affected by WLC. We discuss the interplay between work and the family as a unit in WLC.

Family Units. While families are made up of a nexus of various relationships, the fam­ily unit itself can be studied as a relational entity linked to both W → LC and L → WC. Research illustrates that work hours and stress at work can affect the family unit’s cohesiveness, functionality, and integration (e.g., Boyar, Maertz, Pearson, & Keough, 2003; Clark, 2002; Voydanoff, 2004). For example, mothers’ shorter paid work hours and fathers’ lower participation in profes­sional organizations are positively related to activities with adolescents, which in turn are positively related with family integration (Voydanoff, 2004). Boyar et al. (2003) note that WLC affects the family unit because employees “adjust their home lives rather than their work lives since the immediate effect is less damaging to one’s livelihood” (p. 185).

Additional research examines how “life” issues can both contribute to and buffer WLC (or its outcomes) in the workplace (e.g., Clark, 2002). While Kossek et al. (2001) find fam­ily climates that are open and conducive to sharing concerns are directly related to well-being, work performance, and WLC, they also note that if either family or work climate is not open to sharing WL concerns, general well-being and work performance of the caregiver is damaged. Some organizations acknowledge this need for “openness” and recognize families as a legitimate influence on employees’ organizational involvement—they consider families as organizational members and see homes and families as an extension of the workplace (Golden, 2009).

Relational Partners. Research on how rela­tional partners affect WLC often focuses on how workplace issues affect these relation­ships or how the relationship buffers WLC. Most notably, WLC negatively affects mari­tal satisfaction (Crouter, Bumpus, Head, & McHale, 2001) and partners’ commitment (Day & Chamberlain, 2006). Bergen, Kirby, and McBride (2007) examine commuter mar­riages and illustrate how social networks can further these negative impacts by questioning the couples’ choices and (re)introducing a need for the couple to negotiate WL. Furthermore, when wives choose to commute because of work, they expend great energy, constructing a narrative to make their relationship fit within the master narrative of marriage (Bergen, 2011). Conversely, partner support can also buffer WLC (Westman & Etzion, 2005); the positive management of WLC of one partner can have positive implications for the other (Cinamon, Weisel, & Tzuk, 2007).

Partners can also help each other commu­nicatively reconstruct the seemingly competing roles of worker and parent/spouse/partner. When studying worker’s decisions when faced with conflicting demands of a workplace and family event, Greenhaus and Powell (2003) found that pressure to engage in one domain’s activity by either the partner or supervisor had the greatest impact on the decision made. In light of societal changes, Golden (2002) explores how worker parents interpersonally “co-arrange” their work­ing and personal lives (see also Golden, 2001). Related to partners’ negotiation of work and life, emerging communication research focuses on the division of domestic labor (Alberts, Tracy, & Trethewey, 2011; Medved, 2007, 2009b). Alberts et al. (2011) propose an integrative theory of divi­sion of labor that takes into account (a) response thresholds to household labor, (b) differences in perceptions of obligation versus gift, and (c) how responsibility can become a solidified pattern of domestic labor. These negotiations of domestic labor between partners in the private sector have also led to the commodification of family labor with new services provided by public entities (Medved, 2007).

Dependent Relationships. WLC affects the parent-child relationship and how much knowledge of their children’s experiences the working parents have. For example, Crouter et al. (2001) note that a combination of long hours and high work overload is consistently associated with less positive father-adolescent relationships among adolescent sons and daugh­ters. As noted, mother’s shorter work hours and father’s lower participation in community­based organizations (rather than paid work) are positively related to increased activities with their adolescents (Voydanoff, 2004). WLC also influences how mothers and fathers think about themselves as parents as it is negatively correlated with parental self-effi­cacy (Cinamon et al., 2007). Other research explores the impacts of elder care on WLC: As just one example, an employee’s decision to care for an elderly family member in her or his own home seems to be detrimental to overall performance and well-being (Kossek et al., 2001).

Conversely, WLC is associated with increased parental commitment (Day & Chamberlain, 2006). And researchers note that, like spouses, children can act as a buf­fer to WLC (e.g., Barnett, Marshall, & Pleck, 1992). Among fathers, blurring the boundaries of work and child rearing actually aided in the development of a masculine concept of care­giving that acknowledges emotion (Golden,

2007). Finally, parental WLC can also affect how children are socialized into WL issues (Langellier & Peterson, 2006) and divisions of domestic labor (Alberts et al., 2011): Paugh (2005) analyzed actual dinnertime conver­sation among 16 working-class families to “illuminate how children are apprenticed into discourse and ideologies of work” (p. 55). This socialization of children, however, is not nec­essarily equitable, and men and women may receive significantly different messages about career paths and when/if it is appropriate to exit the paid labor force (Medved et al., 2006).

In thinking about the transformation of WL problems at the relational level, indi­viduals should be mindful that communicative exchanges with spouses, friends, managers, and coworkers can both create and relieve WLC.

Enactments of Work, “Life,” and Work-Life Conflict

Office Gossip IV: So in my last meeting they were considering providing all of us with smartphones through the CompanyX bud­get and paying our monthly bill and giving us like $50 in apps... but I gotta say, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Don’t get me wrong—the technology is exciting. But if Sarah sends me an e-mail at 9:30 at night, am I expected to answer it because she is my boss and it is my work phone? What time does work officially stop? I like to separate work and home, and this seems like a slip­pery slope.

In terms of practice and future research, we focus on the “doing” (accomplishment, management, navigation) of work and life in mundane daily practices (Medved, 2004) and how that facilitates or buffers WLC. In the everyday accomplishment of work and life, we see the continual, dynamic, and com­municative nature of the WL relationship: “The process is not always smooth, linear, nor necessarily purposive; however it is surely one of ongoing action, interaction and sensemak­ing” (Medved, 2004, p. 142). We discuss here three processes through which individuals accomplish work and life (and that can poten­tially transform WL problems): (1) construct­ing boundaries, (2) constructing identities/ selves, and (3) seeking out practices of power. Research on these processes comes primar­ily from a social constructionist perspective, which emphasizes the role of communication in constructing reality.