Work—family conflict: A comparison of dual‐career and traditional‐career men

This research examines differences in the antecedents and consequences of work—family conflict — a form of interrole conflict that occurs when the demands of work and family are mutually incompatible in some respect — for two groups of career‐oriented men: those with a homemaker wife (called traditional‐career men) and those with a spouse in a career‐oriented job (labelled dual‐career men). Using a model built on the work of Kopelman, Greenhaus and Connolly (1983), the responses from 136 dual‐career men and 137 traditional‐career men were compared. The primary conclusion of this research is that maternal career employment has a significant effect on the antecedents of work — family conflict. Dual‐career men appear to experience a significant negative spillover from their work domain. We suggest that this spillover is due to a lack of structural flexibility in the workplace, outdated organizational policies that operate on the myth of separate worlds' and a lack of social support for the male dual‐career role which contradicts societal norms. Copyrigh