Work-Family Conflict of Husbands and Wives with Preschool Children

Rational View versus Gender Role Explanation

Abstract

Two conflicting frameworks have been advanced to explain work-family conflicts of men and women. According to the rational view, conflict is related linearly to the total amount of time used for paid and family work for both sexes. According to the gender role perspective, conflict is related to the total amount of time spent in untraditional roles. This study examined a sample of 237 double-income couples with children attending a nursery in Japan. Using multivariate analyses, this paper obtained the following findings. First, wives perceive more conflict than men do, even if they have equal working hours. Second, wives and husbands perceive conflict equally if they work long hours. The former result supports the gender role perspective, but the latter one supports the rational view. These disparate results suggest that these views do not consider qualitative differences of paid and family work. This article shows a draft hypothesis amending this point.