A cross-national study of family-friendly policies, gender egalitarianism, and work–family conflict among working parents

Abstract

Social policies impinge on daily lives of individuals and affect how they negotiate work and family demands. To fill in the void in the international work–family literature regarding whether public family-friendly policies effectively decrease work–family conflict the present study examined multilevel effects of family-friendly policies, organizational type, and family characteristics on working parents’ work–family conflict by gender using random samples of 6,878 individuals in 24 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. Drawn on role stress theory, gender egalitarianism, and institutional theory this study showed that parental leave policies have greater influence on work–family conflict among men compared to women. Individual dimensions of parental leave policies on men’s experience of work–family conflict impinged on workplace characteristics and family characteristics. Implementing parental leave policies with high flexibility and higher rates of income replacement may help men with working spouses or who are employed in the public sector to reduce bidirectional conflicts between work and family. Women generally were not protected by individual dimensions of parental leave policies. Instead, societal attitudes towards gender played a key role in helping women reduce bidirectional conflicts between work and family roles.