The Role of Context in Work-Family Challenges and the Implications for Children's Development
type: CreativeWork
description: Achieving a balance between work and family is an issue for family and child wellbeing. Work-family conflict may occur when an individual has to perform multiple roles: their role as a paid employee, and their unpaid role as a parent of children. Performing multiple roles can lead to intrapersonal conflict because it becomes more difficult to perform each role successfully, due to competing demands on time, or lack of energy. The experience of work-family conflict can drain both energy and time, which has implications for parents' health and behaviour, their family lives, and consequently the wellbeing of their children. Changes in society and the labour market are associated with increasing work-family conflict for mothers and fathers, but some families may be disproportionately affected by work-family challenges, and this may exacerbate disadvantage for vulnerable children. This thesis examines how family context affects selected antecedents and outcomes of work-family conflict in Australia. Importantly, it analyses the implications of parents' work-family conflict for their children and whether some children are more vulnerable. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children I examine how family structure, gender and financial hardship affect how characteristics of the workplace contribute to work-family conflict and how they affect the relationship between parents' work-family conflict and children's socio-emotional and literacy development. The results show long hours and poor quality jobs are key sources of difficulty for both mothers and fathers, but are especially problematic for single mothers. This highlights the need to bolster support for working single mothers, for whom the challenges of balancing work and family are particularly pronounced. The study also finds the implications of work-family conflict for children in vulnerable families are complex. High work-family conflict can be problematic for children, but through exploration of soc…
abstract: Achieving a balance between work and family is an issue for family and child wellbeing. Work-family conflict may occur when an individual has to perform multiple roles: their role as a paid employee, and their unpaid role as a parent of children. Performing multiple roles can lead to intrapersonal conflict because it becomes more difficult to perform each role successfully, due to competing demands on time, or lack of energy. The experience of work-family conflict can drain both energy and time, which has implications for parents' health and behaviour, their family lives, and consequently the wellbeing of their children. Changes in society and the labour market are associated with increasing work-family conflict for mothers and fathers, but some families may be disproportionately affected by work-family challenges, and this may exacerbate disadvantage for vulnerable children. This thesis examines how family context affects selected antecedents and outcomes of work-family conflict in Australia. Importantly, it analyses the implications of parents' work-family conflict for their children and whether some children are more vulnerable. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children I examine how family structure, gender and financial hardship affect how characteristics of the workplace contribute to work-family conflict and how they affect the relationship between parents' work-family conflict and children's socio-emotional and literacy development. The results show long hours and poor quality jobs are key sources of difficulty for both mothers and fathers, but are especially problematic for single mothers. This highlights the need to bolster support for working single mothers, for whom the challenges of balancing work and family are particularly pronounced. The study also finds the implications of work-family conflict for children in vulnerable families are complex. High work-family conflict can be problematic for children, but through exploration of soc…
author: Kingsley, Meg
language: en_AU
date published: 2020
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:07:19Z
provider: Australian Catholic University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian Catholic University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/196577