The Role of Workplace Flexibility in Couples' Relationship Quality and Parent-Child Interactions

Background and Purpose

Accompanied by a rapid increase in the number of working mothers and dual-earner families, workplace flexibility—including availability of flexible schedules, working at home, and part-time employment—has become a crucial work-family support for working parents with young children to balance work and family responsibilities. Abundant studies suggest possible benefits of workplace flexibility on individuals’ wellbeing and their work-family conflict. Less is known, however, how workplace flexibility affects relationships between family members and whether these effects of workplace flexibility vary across workers with different economic resources. Guided by work-family conflict and boundary-spanning resource perspectives (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; Voydanoff, 2005), this study hypothesizes that three types of workplace flexibility will be positively associated with couples’ relationship quality and parent-child interactions among working parents with young children. The study further explores whether these associations differ across levels of household income.

Methods

This study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort, a nationally representative study of children born in the U.S. in 2001. The sample consisted of employed mothers (N=5,100) and resident fathers (N=5,200) in each of three survey waves, when the children were 9, 24, and 48 months old. Flexible schedules were measured with a dichotomous indicator for availability of flexible work hours or schedules at parents’ current jobs. Working at home was measured with a binary indicator of whether parents have a formal arrangement to work at home. Parents who worked less than 35 hours per week were considered as part-time workers. Measures of couples’ relationship quality consisted of three scales: relationship happiness, a scale of positive partner interactions (e.g., calmly discuss something) and negative interactions (e.g., argue about house chores). Parent-child interactions were measured via the frequency of three types of activities: literacy (e.g., reading books), caregiving (e.g., changing diapers), and physical play interactions (e.g., playing games). This study employed cross-sectional OLS regression models with extensive controls for demographic and employment characteristics. Analyses were conducted separately for mothers and resident fathers. Subsequently, interactions between different levels of household income (i.e., below 200 percent poverty level) with each flexibility indicator were tested.

Results

As hypothesized, results show that, in general, workplace flexibility was associated with better relationship quality among couples and more frequent parent-child interactions. Mothers who worked at home or were employed part-time reported more relationship happiness and more frequent interactions with their children. Fathers with flexible schedules also showed more relationship happiness and more positive interactions with his partner. Fathers’ part-time employment was associated with more frequent interactions with his children. The interaction results indicate that workplace flexibility was beneficial for parent-child interactions particularly for parents with mid/high incomes.

Conclusions and Implications

Findings suggest that workplace flexibility may yield benefits for couples’ relationship quality as well as parent-child interactions and that it may work differently across workers with varying levels of household income. Given the increasing attentions on work-family support for working parents, promoting workplace flexibility for parents in the context of work-family policy will be discussed.