Boundary Management Permeability and Relationship Satisfaction in Dual-Earner Couples: The Asymmetrical Gender Effect.

Marcello Russo,Ariane Ollier-Malaterre,Marc Ohana,Ellen Ernst Kossek

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01723

Abstract

Given the increasing use of technology and the growing blurring of the boundaries between the work and nonwork domains, decisions about when to interrupt work for family and vice versa can have critical implications for relationship satisfaction within dual-earner couples. Using a sample of 104 dual-earner couples wherein one of the partners is a member of the largest Italian smartphone-user community, this study examines how variation in boundary management permeability within dual-earner couples relates to partner relationship satisfaction, and whether the effect differed by gender and partners’ agreement on caregiving roles in the family. Using actor–partner analysis, we examined the degree to which an individual and his or her partner’s level of family-interrupting work behaviors (FIWB, e.g., taking a call from the partner while at work) and work-interrupting family behaviors (WIFB, e.g., checking work emails during family dinner) was positively related to relationship satisfaction. Results show that women experienced greater relationship satisfaction than men when their partners engaged in higher levels of FIWB, and this relationship was stronger when partners had perceptual congruence on who is primarily responsible for caregiving arrangements in the family. This study advances research on dual-earner couples by showing the importance of examining boundary management permeability as a family social phenomenon capturing transforming gender roles.

Highlights

Contemporary dual-earner couples face different challenges in managing work and nonwork relationships than did prior generations, when most men worked as the primary breadwinner, and women stayed at home to manage caregiving (Kanter, 1977)
We aim to extend this stream of research to dual-earner couples via the Actor– Partner Interdependence Model (APIM, Garcia et al, 2015) to understand how variation in partners’ boundary management permeability relates to relationship satisfaction
We suggest that WIFB will be more strongly negatively related to the partner’s relationship satisfaction when it is the woman who engages in WIFB rather than the man, as women who engage in frequent work-related interruptions behave in a way that is inconsistent with traditional gender norms

Summary

Introduction

Contemporary dual-earner couples face different challenges in managing work and nonwork relationships than did prior generations, when most men worked as the primary breadwinner, and women stayed at home to manage caregiving (Kanter, 1977). The multitude of everyday work, family, and personal issues to handle (Nomaguchi and Milkie, 2015) takes place in a social context where proliferating personal communication devices, such as cell phones, are likely to blur work– home boundaries (Olson-Buchanan and Boswell, 2006). These trends can make work–family issues increasingly challenging to navigate, with implications for couples’ relationships and negotiating gender roles. A growing challenge for contemporary dualearner couples is how to build a system of boundaries whose permeability, which refers to the ease with which individuals situated in one role manage tasks related to another role (Ashforth et al, 2000), matches each other’s personal preferences and needs (Kossek and Lautsch, 2012; Lanaj et al, 2014; Dumas and Sanchez-Burks, 2015)

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