Role conflict between parental and career roles: choice of coping strategy and coping effectiveness (dual-career, women)
Description
The main purpose of the study was to explore the effectiveness of strategies used by married career women with young children for preventing or coping with role conflict. The two preventative measures examined were premarital planning of career and parental role combinations and type of dual-career marriage. The coping behaviors explored were structural role redefinition, personal role redefinition, and reactive role behaviors. The relationships among role conflict, coping strategies, coping effectiveness, psychological well-being, and physical strain were investigated, and the relationships of several personal and situational resources with each of those variables were explored The subjects were 143 professional women who were married and living with their husbands and who had at least one child under the age of 12. They completed a 148-item questionnaire that included measures of the type of dual-career marriage, extent of premarital planning for role combinations, role conflict intensity, use of coping strategies, coping effectiveness, physical strain, psychological well-being, self-esteem, career orientation, family orientation, social support, spouse support, job time-demands, and marital conflict The type of dual-career marriage was not found to have a significant relationship with any of the major variables. The results indicated that the extent of premarital planning for the combination of parental and career roles was inversely related to role conflict level and positively related to coping effectiveness, life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and spouse support. Although the women used reactive role behaviors most often, they found this type of coping behavior least effective. Moreover, extensive use of such coping was positively related to symptoms of physical strain and negatively related to job satisfaction and life satisfaction. Personal and situational resources that were associated with most of the major variables were self-esteem, spouse support, social support, and marital conflict. Implications and limitations of the study were discussed, and suggestions for future research were presented