Gender, Beliefs about Spouse’s Work-Family Conflict, and Relationship Quality

Research on work-family conflict has focused on individuals, and little is known as to how spouses perceive each other’s work-family conflict and how inaccuracies of such perceptions relate to relationship quality. Using a national sample of dual-earner married and cohabiting couples (N = 545), we found that over half of spouses overestimate or underestimate each other’s work-family conflict. Husbands are more likely to overestimate than underestimate wives’ workfamily conflict. Husbands’ overestimating wives’ work-family conflict is related to husbands’ perceptions of better relationship quality. Wives’ underestimating husband’s conflict is related to both spouses’ perceptions of poorer relationship quality. These findings indicate the influence of gendered cultural scripts of the division of labor within households on husbands’ perceptions of wives’ work-family conflict and highlight potential costs of wives’ beliefs of husbands’ lack of work-family conflict for relationship quality. Culture, Couples, Gender, Relationship quality, Work-family conflict