Abstract
This study investigated the nature and predictors of anticipated work-family conflict (AWFC) amongst business students in South Africa (N=645) who intended to both work and start a family. Anticipated work-family conflict is the belief that future demands from work and family will be incompatible. The results indicate moderate levels of anticipated work-family conflict with differences across gender but no differences across race, socio-economic status, parental employment or parental education level. Further analysis showed an interaction effect between gender and maternal employment in explaining AWFC amongst female students. As expected, the personal factorsof positive affectivity and specific self-efficacy beliefs helped predict significant variance in AWFC. Social context factors did not help explain the variance in AWFC above that explained by demographic and personal variables.
Highlights
Anticipated work-family conflict (AWFC) is the anticipated inter-role conflict between future work and family roles, predicated on the assumed incompatibility of these roles (Weer, Greenhaus, Colakoglu, & Foley, 2006)
The positive affectivity (PA) items loaded onto a single factor
Anticipated work-family conflict was a unidimensional scale indicating that South African students do not distinguish between the family to the work and work to family directionality of AWFC (c.f., Cinamon, 2006; Gutek et al, 1991), which is consistent with many other applications of AWFC (Weer et al, 2006; O’Shea & Kirrane, 2008; Bu & McKeen, 2000; Livingston Burley & Springer., 1996)
Summary
Anticipated work-family conflict (AWFC) is the anticipated inter-role conflict between future work and family roles, predicated on the assumed incompatibility of these roles (Weer, Greenhaus, Colakoglu, & Foley, 2006). The nascence of the literature on anticipated work-family conflict means that the construct is still theoretically underdeveloped and few empirical studies have been conducted. Two personal characteristics are posited as predictors of AWFC: self-efficacy to manage future work-family conflict (SE-FWFC) and positive affectivity (PA). It is reasonable to expect (in the absence of conclusive empirical data) that students with a high level of self-efficacy to manage future work-family conflict will experience less anxiety about future work-family conflict. Personal characteristics (i.e., self-efficacy to manage anticipated work-family conflict and general positive affectivity will explain significant variance in anticipated work-family conflict over and above that explained by demographic characteristics (i.e., gender and race). 2. Socialisation characteristics (i.e., maternal and paternal employment, maternal and paternal education, and socio-economic status) will explain significant variance in anticipated work-family conflict amongst students over and above that explained by demographic and personal characteristics. Female students whose mothers were employed fulltime during the student’s childhood will experience significantly more anticipated work-family conflict than those whose mothers were not employed fulltime and this relationship will not apply to male students
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