Exploring the nexus between work-to-family conflict, material rewards parenting and adolescent materialism : evidence from Chinese dual-career families

As a social issue of widespread concern, work-to-family conflict has been found to adversely affect employees’ work and family lives. The current research linked employees’ work-to-family conflict to disruptions in parenting (the use of material rewards) and in turn to adolescents’ materialism. In Study 1, two-wave data from 207 Chinese dual-career families that included an adolescent in junior high school (ages 11 to 14) showed that both men’s and women’s work-to-family conflict was positively correlated with material rewards parenting, and this positive relationship was stronger when parenting daughters than sons. Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1 in a sample of 284 Chinese dual-career families that included an adolescent of the same age group. Furthermore, Study 2 showed that employees’ work-to-family conflict was indirectly related to their adolescent offspring’s materialism through increased material rewards parenting, and this mediating effect was stronger for daughters. The results are discussed in terms of the spillover and crossover processes that affect employees and their families in the context of work-to-family conflict.