Employees throughout the United States struggle to balance their work and family commitments, in part because the workforce makeup has changed significantly over the last half century. The evolving family structure also has contributed to this struggle.
This research seeks to build on previous work-family literature by incorporating the six dimensions of WFC conceptually defined by Carlson et al. (2000), while gauging the culture of the athletic department and institution in regards to work-life practices and policies. This study is designed to extend the current line of work-family literature by examining the construct from both male and female perspectives, married and single outlooks, and the standpoint from ATs with and without children. A combination of descriptive statistics, MANOVA, ANOVA and correlation analysis were used to analyze the data.
Almost 30% of the respondents were experiencing work-family conflict at the time of this study. Several departmental issues may contribute to work-family balance which includes the unpredictable work hours and not being consulted before changing practice times. One hundred-fifty respondents did not feel comfortable using departmental policies for work-family balance. Most respondents felt being an AT is an easier job for single people and the time commitment involved discourages quality family time. A MANOVA was conducted to investigate whether biological sex, child status and marital status affect the WFC domains, WIF and FIW. Results indicate that child status significantly affects the combined dependent variable (DV) of WIF and FIW. Post-hoc tests revealed child status affects the DV and FIW. An ANOVA was conducted to investigate whether the biological sex, child status and marital status influenced perception of institutional and department practices and policies. A significant main effect was found for child status. Based on these results, the athletic department has positive features for workers with families and single personnel who may want to start families but, overall the departments are neutral to negative for family-friendliness. This negative response suggests a very poor climate for workers who may be facing conflict and needs to be a concern of the institution of higher education and the athletic department.