Abstract

Given limited temporal resources, many individuals struggle with juggling time between multiple domains, such as family and work, and previous research has found that time-based conflicts between family and work can occur. Thus, it is important to understand the impact of family time on work time, and how different factors can influence this relation. In this research, I focused on the impact of family time on work time, and whether there are gender differences and occupational level differences in this relation. Archival data from the American Time Use Survey, which is a single-day, time-diary survey, were analyzed for this study; the data were available from a sample of 33,296 individuals from 2003 to 2015. Consistent with my hypotheses, I found that family time had a strengthening negative relation with work time. Also in line with my hypotheses, I found that women spent more time on family activities than men, and individuals in managerial jobs spent greater time working than individuals in non-managerial jobs. I put forward a research question about whether gender moderates the curvilinear relation between family time and work time. In line with past research, gender moderated the linear relation between family time and work time, but did not moderate the curvilinear relation between them. In contrast to my hypothesis, occupational level did not moderate the relation between family time and work time. Supplemental analyses including leisure time and sleep time provided support for the importance of slack time resources, suggesting that family time has a stronger relation with work time when temporal resources in other domains are exhausted. Overall, these findings contribute to the existing literature on the work-family interface.