When work interferes with family life. Results from a dyadic family research

The involvement of both marital partners in the work force constitutes a central topic within the area of Family and Social Psychology. Most empirical studies have translated the issue in terms of interrole conflict through the construct of work-family conflict. Focusing on one possible direction of such conflict and a sample of 190 dual-income couples, the aim of the present study was to create specific typologies able to discriminate the sample couples and to verify the differences between husbands and wives through a matched pair design (MANOVAs for repeated measures). Results showed that the conflict dimension can not be conceptualised on its own but turns out to be affected by other variables and specific couple configurations (on the basis of job insecurity). Furthermore, the differences between husbands and wives confirmed some commonly-shared representations about the involvement (closeness) of women within the family domain and that of men within the work domain. Finally, only among husbands, the constructs' variance, delineation, and mutual links (i.e. the construct of job satisfaction) were explained by the specific marital typology.