Studying "working fathers": comparing fathers' and mothers' work-family sonflict, fit, and adaptive strategies in a global high-tech company

Fathering, Oct, 2003 by E. Jeffrey Hill, Alan J. Hawkins, Vjollca Martinson, Maria Ferris

However, other studies have found that neither access to (Galinsky, Bond, & Friedman, 1996) nor usage of (Scharlach, 2001) family-friendly programs was related to lower levels of work-family conflict. These non-findings may be more consistent with an expansion model, discussed earlier, which emphasizes an accumulation of meaningful roles, even demanding ones, for positive individual outcomes. In contrast, Galinsky et al. did find an association between schedule control and less conflict. Work-family benefit availability has been found to be related to organizational commitment (Thompson, Beauvais, & Lyness, 1999) and productivity (Hill, Miller, Weiner, & Colihan, 1998). We found no studies, however, that focused specifically on working fathers, their use of work-family programs, and how this use might affect work-family conflict or work-family fit.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Because working fathers are understudied in the work-family literature, this research is exploratory and is guided by research questions designed to build our base of knowledge in this domain. In general, we seek to understand whether there is reason to attend to fathers' experiences of work-family balance by looking discretely at their reports of work-family conflict, fit, adaptation, and outcomes. We compare fathers' reports to mothers' reports, as well as looking across geographic regions to get a sense of how universal these comparisons are. We also look to see if a scarcity model or expansion model better explains the results. We explore the following research questions:

R1. How do working fathers compare vis-a-vis working mothers on key measures of work and family characteristics, work-family conflict, work-family fit, work and family adaptive strategies, and work and family outcomes?

R2. What work-family adaptive strategies do working fathers currently use and intend to use in the future, and how does this usage compare to mothers?

R3. What are the work and family characteristics that significantly predict work-family fit for working fathers?

R4. Does work-family conflict mediate the relationship between work and family characteristics and work-family fit for working fathers?

R5. Which work-family adaptive strategies significantly predict greater work-family fit after controlling for work and family characteristics and work-family conflict?

R6. Which work-family adaptive strategies moderate the relationship between work-family conflict and work-family fit for working fathers?

R7. How do measures of work-family conflict, work-family fit, and responsibility for childcare differ among working fathers and working mothers from different geographic regions of the world?

METHOD

The data for this paper came from the IBM 2001 Global Work and Life Issues Survey. A stratified random sample of 59,250, representing 20% of all IBM employees in 48 countries, was invited to take the survey, and 25,822 responded, for a participation rate of 44%. The sample was stratified by gender and by country. Altogether, 31% of the female population was invited with 43% (n = 11,244) responding; and 15% of the male population was invited, with 42% (n = 14,123) responding. The reason the participation rate of both men and women was lower than the total participation rate is that some respondents declined to indicate their gender. The questionnaire was translated into 20 different languages. This is the largest known single-issue work-life survey administered by any corporate, governmental, or academic entity.