Planning to Have It All: Emerging Adults’ Expectations of Future Work-Family Conflict

This study assessed college students’ anticipated work-family conflict (family-impacting-work and work-impacting-family), and the family-altering and work-altering strategies they plan to employ to relieve that conflict. Undergraduates ( N = 121) from two universities in the southeastern U.S. were surveyed and differences between the genders were tested. There were no significant gender differences in total conflict, but women anticipated more family-impacting-work conflict, while men anticipated greater work-impacting family conflict. Women planned to employ conflict-relieving strategies more than men did, although the genders did not differ in the mean amount of conflict they anticipated. The type of conflict anticipated did not align with planning for the appropriate conflict-relieving strategy. Women varied in their employment plans while their children are too young for school, although most planned to have their first child by age 30, and to return to a highly prestigious career. Results indicate that emerging adults of both genders may not be realistically planning for their anticipated work-family conflict.