How Work-Family Guilt, Involvement with Children and Spouse’s Support Influence Parents’ Life Satisfaction in a Context of Work-Family Conflict

Work-family guilt (WFG) is sometimes perceived as an adaptive characteristic, since it has been found to encourage working parents to engage in more activities with their children in off-work time (Cho & Allen, 2012). However, while it may be an adaptive characteristic for the parent-child relationship, the same may not be true for parents’ psychological health. Using insights from the work-home resources model (W-HR), this study aims to determine WFG’s influence on parents’ life satisfaction. This study also investigates if parents’ belief regarding the investment of their spouse in recreational activities with their children is a resource that could foster their life satisfaction. A cross-sectional design was used with a sample of 289 working parents with at least one child aged between 5 and 10. A path analysis shows a significant moderated mediation model. Parent-child activities were found to partially mediate the relationship between strain-based work interference with family and parents’ life satisfaction. Furthermore, WFG moderated this mediation. Specifically, it worsened the detrimental effect of doing fewer parent-child activities on parents’ life satisfaction. Results also show that a spouse’s investment in activity with their child is a resource that motivates parents to invest more in their children and directly contributes to parents’ life satisfaction.