A dialectic approach to work-family conflict

Managing work–family conflict is an ongoing challenge in which individuals have difficulty allocating their time, skills, or behaviors to fully meet responsibilities at both work and home. Examining communicative responses to work–family conflict allows a focus on how people cope with this conflict and how differential communicative responses are related to marital quality. In this study, work–family conflict is situated as a dialectic tension. One hundred fifty-four respondents reported on changes in work–family conflict throughout their marriages and their use of different responses to dialectic tensions (denial, disorientation, segmentation, cyclic alternation, balance, integration, recalibration, and reaffirmation) to manage the conflict. A significant relationship between denial–disorientation response and both marital quality and level of work–family conflict emerged, as did a relationship between recalibration–reaffirmation responses and the mean level of work–family conflict.