Is work—family balance more than conflict and enrichment?

Abstract

This study deepens our theoretical and practical understanding of work—family balance, defined as the ‘accomplishment of role-related expectations that are negotiated and shared between an individual and his/her role-related partners in the work and family domains’ (Grzywacz & Carlson, 2007: 458). We develop a new measure of work—family balance and establish discriminant validity between it, work—family conflict, and work—family enrichment. Further, we examine the relationship of work—family balance with six key work and family outcomes. Results suggest that balance explains variance beyond that explained by traditional measures of conflict and enrichment for five of six outcomes tested: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, family satisfaction, family performance, and family functioning. We conclude with a discussion of the applications of our work.