The anticipated work-family conflict of future business managers: Does gender and maternal employment matter?

Abstract

This study investigated the nature and predictors of anticipated work-family conflict (AWFC) amongst business students in South Africa (N=645) who intended to both work and start a family. Anticipated work-family conflict is the belief that future demands from work and family will be incompatible. The results indicate moderate levels of anticipated work-family conflict with differences across gender but no differences across race, socio-economic status, parental employment or parental education level. Further analysis showed an interaction effect between gender and maternal employment in explaining AWFC amongst female students. As expected, the personal factorsof positive affectivity and specific self-efficacy beliefs helped predict significant variance in AWFC. Social context factors did not help explain the variance in AWFC above that explained by demographic and personal variables.