中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: The purposes of this study were (1) to investigate the extent of work-family conflict and facilitation in dual-income families and whether they are independent, and (2) to investigate whether the life satisfaction of dual-income families is explained by work-family conflict and facilitation separately by controlling gender, age, educational level, and occupation. Methods: A questionnaire and proportional sampling were used to obtain responses from 798 dual-career families with under 18 years old child from 22 cities and counties in Taiwan. Results: The results indicated that the work-family interface likely represents multiple dimensions composed of bidirectional (work-to-family and family-to-work) conflict and unidirectional facilitation. Participants experienced significantly higher levels of work-family facilitation than work-family conflict. After controlling for gender, age, educational level, and occupation, hierarchical regression analysis showed that the work-family interface significantly explained the level of life satisfaction of dual-income families. Work-family conflict and family-work facilitation explained only 7.0% and 6.0% of the total variance, respectively. Conclusions: The findings indicated that work-family conflict and facilitation related significantly, however, life satisfaction of dual-income families was influenced by work-family conflict and facilitation concurrently. This is a milestone as revealed ways of enhancing life satisfaction by emphasizing work-family positive spillover. Since a popular research focus has been work-family conflict, a concept underpinned by the scarcity hypothesis, researchers have to test the idea that work and family can facilitate one another, rather than just conflict in the future studies.