Abstract
Work and Family are two central and independent sphere of life for dual career couples and an imbalance in one system may subsequently influence the other as well because today’s emerging and diverse work area has reported significant increase in women, single parents and dual career couples as employees. As the cost of living is increasing at the alarming rate, the husband of the house that used to be “bread winner” makes himself a “bread partner” with the wife in order to cope with the economic hardship and financial obligation at the home front. Working couples not only look for their own career prospective but also attend to their family demands like house cleaning, catering for ageing ones, attending family parties, visiting recreational centres, attending religious programmes, nurturing of children and contribute to their future prospects as well. Work and family responsibilities along with long working hours in professional setup has resulted in conflict which in turn has affected the overall health and well-being of individuals. In dealing with multiple roles and work pressure and for enhancing well-being, working couples use coping strategies depending on their individual experiences and organisational policies. The paper utilised a mixed method; 10 respondents for the qualitative method to interview ten (10) respondents (five males, five females) as well as a quantitative study for 290 respondents. Findings reveal that effectiveness of coping strategies is a subject of unique experience and personal characteristics with some level of organisational support. This paper explores an approach towards the role of work-family conflict and coping mechanism in determining the wellbeing of working couples towards the actualisation of Goal 3 of SDGs by United Nations (i.e. Good Health and Wellbeing for People). Keywords :Work-Family Conflict, Coping Strategies, Healthy Living, Wellbeing, Career Couples, Lagos Metropolis DOI : 10.7176/RHSS/9-8-08 Publication date : April 30 th 2019
Highlights
Work life balance is a relevant issue in today’s world of work, because evolving and various work areas have documented significant increase in the contribution of women, men and career couples who want to make ends meet in order to meet family obligations
These working couples are concerned with their own career potentials, and interested in nurturing their wards in order to help build a reasonable life for them, as well as a better future prospect (Pleck, 1997). This is why work life balance is a pertinent issue in present time, as it has become imperative to understand the influence of change in work and family domain on wellbeing of employed parents because people perform several roles in life and shelving these responsibilities is not an option and consequences for individual are imminent
This hypothesis was supported, and the correlation between the two variables was r = .40. This result indicates that the more work family conflict is experienced by individuals the more psychological distress will be observed. These findings suggest that participants who experienced higher levels of work-family conflict caused by higher degrees of work pressure and demands, and longer time spent in employment, reported higher degrees of distress, concentration problems, sleeping problems, higher levels of unhappiness, strain, and lack of confidence
Summary
Work life balance is a relevant issue in today’s world of work, because evolving and various work areas have documented significant increase in the contribution of women, men and career couples who want to make ends meet in order to meet family obligations. These working couples are concerned with their own career potentials, and interested in nurturing their wards in order to help build a reasonable life for them, as well as a better future prospect (Pleck, 1997). Variations in family structure have resulted in corresponding change in work and family accountabilities for husbands and wives (Allen, Herst, Bruck and Sutton, 2000)
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