Managing multiple roles: Routes to reconciliation

Abstract

Work and family: Stress or success? The combination of work and family is one of the greatest social challenges of this era. What helps dual-earner families with young children to deal with this issue? Pedagogue Hilde Wierda-Boer approached this issue from different angles. She found three factors that may hinder a successful reconciliation of work and family: time spent on paid work – by the person and his or her partner, scaling back in a life domain (work or family) when the time budget is limited, and experiences of stress. Although an equal division of tasks may yield other benefits, it was not a solution for work-family interference experienced by the parents in this study. The key to success could be found in personal characteristics: emotional stable parents, fathers with more feminine traits and mothers with more masculine traits had an asset in combining work and family. The thesis concludes with several directions for policy making.