For years, working women have shouldered the pressures of balancing work and family. With more dual-income households, increased work hours and more-involved fathers, men now are experiencing greater work-family conflicts than ever before, according to new research from the Families and Work Institute.
In fact, men now report work-life conflict issues in greater numbers than women do, according to "The New Male Mystique."
In dual-income homes, 60 percent of men report work-life conflict to 47 percent of women. Overall, 49 percent of employed men say they experience work-life conflict up from 34 percent, found researchers at Boston College, the Alliance for Work Life Progress and WFD Consulting, which consults for Fortune 500 companies on work-life issues.
The shift is similar to what happened when women entered the workforce in mass years ago, as men now feel pressure to "do it all in order to have it all," NPR reported. Men have begun to experience increased pressure because of "flat earnings, long hours, increasing job demands, blurred boundaries between work and home life, and declining job security."
The number of women reporting work-life conflict has stayed relatively the same since 1977, one of the researchers, Ellen Galinsky, wrote in a piece for the Huffington Post. The percentage of men experiencing work-family conflict has nearly doubled since 1977, when it was 35 percent.
The study also found a direct correlation between the number of hours worked and how demanding a job is and the feelings of work-family conflict, Galinsky wrote. That led to a surprising finding, that men with children worked more hours each week, at least three more, than men with no children. About 47 percent of men working long hours did so because they needed the money, 16 percent said they would be unable to keep their job without working extended hours and 14 percent work did so in order to keep up with the high demands of their job.
The Los Angeles Times reported that men with traditional views of women's and men's roles are more susceptible to feeling conflicted between the two, about 54 percent. About 40 percent of men who reject traditional values feel the conflict.
The Times also reported that "men not living with a spouse or partner, including single dads, were less likely to report high levels of family-work conflict than those who were partnered."
Technology is also a factor, blurring work-home boundaries. The Families and Work Institute found that 41 percent of men say they are contacted by people at work outside of work hours at least once a week, up from 32 percent in 2002. Only 18 percent of men who said they are never contacted outside normal work hours report experiencing work-life conflict.
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