Job Demands and Work-Home Interference: Empirical Evidence from Service Sector Employees in Eight European Countries

Abstract

There is a prevailing view that work and family life are becoming more and more difficult to reconcile. New requirements, associated with increasing competition, downsizing, the growth of service industries and technological changes are modifying the experience of work. Substantial and rising proportions of jobs provide little security or require unusually hard and stressful effort, which has lead to the conclusion that work in contemporary societies is becoming more demanding (Green, 2006). At the same time, the increase in the number of dual-earner and single parent families challenges traditional household arrangements and specialization in paid/unpaid labour. Intensification of work, coupled with changes in the nature of the labour force and family composition, have lead to increasing work demands and pressure on employees, and have left many individuals experiencing tensions between work and family/private life (Burchell et al., 2002; Winslow, 2005). Thus, ‘job’ and ‘home’ can no longer be treated as separate domains. More and more people are struggling with multiple roles, such as employee, parent or caretaker of elderly parents, and experiencing tensions in managing the responsibilities and expectations of the many domains that compete for their time and energy.