Family Friendly Army — First Class Policy, Second Class Implementation
Abstract
This paper has two primary objectives. The first of these involves an examination of Army’s family friendly policies, which can be broadly summarised as addressing affordable day care, paid maternity and parental leave, carer’s leave and flexible work arrangements. The effectiveness of Army’s policies will be gauged through comparison with employment conditions in the public and private sector. The article’s second objective comprises analysis of the effects of the Army force generation cycle on service families, particularly in terms of children’s schooling and relocation pressures. The role of the commander/manager in implementing and approving policy will also be discussed with a view to highlighting some of the challenges of policy implementation. Recommendations for policy change will be provided throughout the paper.
Being a parent and a full time Army officer is absolutely complementary – one doesn’t come at the expense of the other; however you must be absolutely organised and very clear on your core business and work outputs, as there is just no room for extra nif naf.
- Respondent 15
Introduction
The challenges of balancing family and professional commitments are not necessarily unique to Army or Defence. Employees in other industries face similar challenges such as moving frequently, living in remote locations, working long hours and routine absences from the family home, on top of the normal pressures of balancing parental responsibilities with a rewarding and successful career. However, Army families are unique in that serving members often lack control over where or when they relocate or deploy, and this uncertainty exists for the entirety of the serving member’s career. Inevitably, this has flow-on effects for the family relationships and personal health and wellbeing of Army members.
Massive changes to employment conditions for Army parents have been introduced in the last two decades. Improvements to pay and salary schemes, leave entitlements, and the introduction of family-oriented policies have provided opportunities for a better work-life balance for Army members and have contributed to the ascension of women into senior officer ranks. Women — often the primary carers within a family unit — have traditionally struggled more with the pressures of balancing parenting and full-time work, and thus appear to benefit most from family-oriented policies. In reality, however, contemporary parenting in Army families is predominantly a challenge for men. Of the 10,167 parents in Army, 9268 are males and only 899 are female. Therefore, family-friendly policies have a significant impact on the serving male population of the Army, and as such should be viewed as gender-neutral initiatives.
To that end, this article is neither intended as a commentary on the status of women in the Army, nor a contribution to the wider debate on gender relations in Defence. Instead, its primary objective is to examine the effectiveness of Army’s family-friendly policies which can be broadly summarised as addressing affordable day care, paid maternity and parental leave, provisions for work absence when children are ill (carer’s leave), and flexible work arrangements.1 This article will describe Army’s policies — which are articulated primarily through the Defence
Employment Offer — and performance in these areas while also comparing these with employment conditions in the public and private sector. While the nature of military service is unique and in some ways incomparable to civilian industries, Army can learn from industry and the private sector how to better implement its own policies. Following the outline and comparison of policies provided in section one of this article, section two will contextualise Army’s family-oriented policies within the force generation cycle, describing its impact on family members and relationships. Recommendations for policy change will be made throughout the course of this discussion.
This article combines the findings of academic research with personal perspectives and the experiences of Australian Army officers. A survey of ten questions targeted at senior officers and commanders was sent to workplaces around Australia. Thirty-seven officers responded to questions concerning the support their own children and spouses required during the Army force generation cycle and whether this affected command decision-making. This informal survey was not scientific nor was it undertaken through the Australian Defence Human Research Ethics Committee on a scale sufficiently large to provide a representative population.2 Rather the respondents’ personal experiences assisted the authors to understand the challenges some families face, and the different strategies units employ to assist in minimising these challenges. The survey responses may also suggest an avenue of formal research for those investigating flexible work arrangements within Defence.
Section One: Army’s family-oriented policies
Discussion of Army’s family-oriented policies is usefully prefaced by consideration of the Defence Employment Offer (DEO). The DEO encompasses the tangible and intangible benefits that Defence offers to an individual in exchange for employment as a serving member. It includes salary, service allowance, superannuation, health (medical, dental, physiotherapy), subsidised housing and uniforms. It also includes leave entitlements and policies which govern the military workplace and therefore set the framework for service members’ ability to interact with their families.3 The DEO considers the unique nature and challenge of military service — the requirement for 24/7 duty, movement within Australia and overseas deployments.
This article will compare the DEO to public sector provisions within Australia and in other countries. The purpose of this comparison is to demonstrate that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has exceeded the provisions provided to the public sector in Australia and, by virtue of this, has become an employer of choice. Furthermore, by outperforming the public sectors of other countries, the ADF provides better benefits and conditions than comparable militaries around the world, which often perform on par with the public sector of their various countries.
Four major family-oriented policies are discussed in the following paragraphs: children’s day care, parental leave entitlements, carer’s leave, and flexible working arrangements.
Defence Day Care
Defence has attempted to provide affordable children’s day care through the creation of Defence Day Care Centres on or close to select bases. Serving members are able to salary sacrifice to pay the fees, considerably decreasing the cost. The day care centres located close to Army bases are fully subscribed and profitable; however the centres located close to Navy and Air Force bases have proven less profitable, raising questions over the continued operation of Defence Day Care Centres. While the reason for this disparity has not been researched, it may be that Navy and Air Force families remain in one location for longer periods (over repeat postings) and therefore seek alternative day care arrangements within the community. The result is that service personnel must rely on obtaining civilian day care positions which are becoming increasingly expensive. In the last five years, children’s day care costs have risen from $55 to $104 per child per day in long-term day care. As Sheryl Sandberg suggests, unless a woman has a job that challenges and interests her, paying such a high portion of her wage in care deters many women from re-entering the workforce after childbirth.4
Parental Leave
Defence’s second major family-friendly policy concerns leave entitlements. Army provides extensive maternity leave entitlements allowing women 14 weeks’ leave at full pay (or taken as 28 weeks on half-pay) and a total of 66 weeks’ leave when combined with other forms of leave.5 Spouses are entitled to two weeks’ parental leave on full pay (or taken as four weeks on half-pay). The member may then be granted 64 weeks’ parental leave without pay.
If we compare the Army leave provisions with those of the Australian Government, Army fares well. Currently, public service employees are entitled to 12 weeks’ maternity leave, spousal leave for two weeks (minimum wage), and paid parental leave for 18 weeks (minimum wage).6 Army also compares well with the international community. Our neighbours across the Tasman are consistent with Australia, providing 14 weeks’ paid maternity leave (to $475 per week) which can be extended to 52 weeks’ unpaid leave. They also provide up to two weeks’ unpaid parental leave.7 Canada pays 15 weeks’ maternity leave and 35 weeks’ paternity leave (for those who have paid their employment insurance) for 600 hours of employment.8
The gold standard, however, is in Sweden, where parents can ‘take 480 days off work, receive 80% of their pay for the first 15 months and divide their leave however they see fit, barring that both parents receive 2 months of parental leave that is exclusive to them’.9 They can take this leave at any time until the child is eight years old.10 While there is no obligation for Army to meet the generous leave entitlement of Sweden, there is real value in allowing existing leave entitlements to be taken until children are older (until four to eight years of age). There is no additional cost to Army because the entitlement for leave already exists, but the benefit to the serving member is enormous. This would allow the member to choose to retain a portion of leave to address the challenge of childhood illnesses or school holidays. This concept was supported by the Child Family Community Australia Paper, which accompanied the introduction of Dad and Partner Pay.11 This article likewise recommends that Army consider allowing serving members to retain their parental leave entitlements until a child is eight years old.
Carer’s Leave
Defence’s third major family-friendly policy involves carer’s leave. The DEO recently expanded the use of paid carer’s leave to ten days per financial year. In industries such as the Australian construction industry, paid or unpaid carer’s leave is not an entitlement. As Sandberg asserts, the lack of paid carer’s leave is a key factor in the families of sick children falling into debt and poverty.12 This is the antithesis of the community capacity-building that Army supports. Army could evolve its policy in this area to recognise the challenges that caregivers face by expanding the parental leave entitlement to include care for immediate family members. Such a policy change has proven successful for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Massachusetts, which replaced its parental leave policy with a family leave policy to allow 12 weeks’ leave for ‘new parents, but also for employees who need to care for a spouse, child or parent with a serious health condition’.13 Army could also consider expanding the entitlement to include care for immediate family members.
Flexible Working Arrangements
Defence’s fourth and final major family-friendly policy concerns flexible working arrangements. Broader societal influences have seen employment patterns change for Australian families. The DEO addressed this by introducing flexible working arrangements which allow serving members, in consultation with their hierarchy, to work unconventional hours or reduced hours (for proportionally reduced pay), or to work remotely where practicable. Of course, flexible working arrangements are not necessarily feasible in all Army’s work environments. Some employees, particularly those working in the field, on deployment, or in highly demanding roles have reduced flexibility in work hours and attendance, and may not have the same access to flexible working arrangements as those working in office environments. Nonetheless, where it is possible to support families by allowing members to work flexibly, Army should do so. If it cannot be done in today’s work environment, then it should become an aspiration for our future workforce.
The introduction of flexible working arrangements necessitated a review of standard workplace structures that govern office work, including the baseline expectations concerning when, where and how work will be done.14 It is still possible for employers and employees to collaborate to achieve a satisfactory balance between work and personal commitments if expectations and priorities are clearly articulated and agreed.15 Workplace plans should be constructed collaboratively to satisfy both parties and to ensure that employees affected by the flexible working arrangements of other workers are fully informed.16 Within Army, where a significant power differential exists due to rank, negotiation over flexible working arrangements could be facilitated by a third party — a flexible working arrangements ‘broker’.
For Army, the key obstacle in implementing flexible working arrangements is the culture of ‘presenteeism’ which, according to one survey respondent, involves ‘the belief that if you are not standing in front of your commander you are not a productive member of the team’.17 This culture affects a member’s willingness to apply for flexible working arrangements, the likelihood such arrangements will be approved, and whether the member will feel comfortable using any flexible working arrangements granted. This highlights the requirement to ‘shift the work culture to performance evaluation as separate from employee visibility’.18 As one respondent from a headquarters workplace noted:
I know my boss expects me to be working extended hours (up until 6pm) and he is frustrated by my inability to do this [due to collecting child from day care before 6pm] and is expressing that. I am fully aware that this is colouring his perception of me and that I can expect him to make some comment about this in my annual report which will have obvious flow-on effects.19
While there are individual and collective training requirements which can only be met by all members of the team being present, the objective for Army should be to differentiate between activities that require all members to attend and activities that could be conducted with a degree of flexibility, rather than presuppose that all staff are required all days of the year. After all, Army copes with people taking leave (annual, sick, maternity) so there is scope to include flexible work arrangements in most organisations within the Army.
Currently, less than 1% of Army members are utilising flexible working arrangements. The nature of Defence work means that to have 100% of its members on flexible working arrangements would not be in the organisation’s — or the members’ — best interests. However there is still considerable scope for greater participation. Chief of Army Lieutenant General Morrison has provided strategic guidance on the issue, reinforcing his support for increased flexible working arrangements within the Army, stating that ‘providing our officers and soldiers with the flexibility they need to balance their work and their personal commitments is a key element of retaining them.’20 Despite this, some survey respondents expressed their reluctance to use flexible working arrangements on part-time leave without pay as they were concerned that this might be detrimental to their careers. Essentially, if an assessing officer believes part-time leave without pay correlates to decreased performance and motivation, a weaker annual report will be issued. Therefore, ‘while perhaps reducing day to day work/family conflict, part time work may have negative long term career consequences, which also need to be taken into consideration.’21 Noting that promotion boards consider the six-year reporting history of serving members, a poor report thus carries a six-year residual impact. These long-term career consequences need to be considered as ‘most working parents committed to keeping their families at the centre have pursued non traditional career paths.’22
This highlights one of the biggest challenges for the implementation of successful flexible working arrangements in the Army: reaffirming the value of non-traditional or non-linear career pathways. As one respondent claimed, ‘the message now is if you are not assessed as suitable for command you are of little value to Army, and treated and managed as such.’23 Perceptions like this need to be addressed by Army’s Career Management Agency to demonstrate that Army wants to retain the talent, experience, and institutional knowledge that personnel and capability- streamed staff possess. This article recommends that Army should actively manage careers that deviate from the command, leadership and management model to better retain talent and organisational knowledge. Overhauling organisational culture is not solely about celebrating the demographic diversity within our ranks; it should also be about recognising and capitalising on the many types of service and working arrangements in which members are engaged.
Army should be aware that flexible working arrangements come with a clear management overhead to implement and support them for the benefit of the organisation and its members. The required management skills could be taught on promotion courses for senior non-commissioned officers and junior officers or via compulsory Campus courses such as that used for the new performance appraisal reporting.24 Such education programs should ‘cover topics such as negotiating a return to work plan before taking leave’, the importance of ‘on ramps’ and ‘strategies for maintaining contact’.25 It should be recognised that the management costs of implementing flexible working arrangements compare favourably with the cost of recruiting and training replacement soldiers.
Army’s family-oriented policies provide a world class framework of entitlements to support serving members and their families. Any discussion of the support options available must recognise that the nature of Army service is inherently one of devotion and duty to country, and that barracks positions are more open to flexible working arrangements than field positions. As one respondent commented:
The ADF should define what is appropriate [rather than dictate a solution to work-life balance]. The ADF should also accept that being a member is demanding ... we must recognise that the types of sacrifices expected of members of the ADF can never be fully compensated ... every individuals sacrifice takes a different form. Some costs are borne by the individual in the sense of time and effort. Some costs are borne by the family of the serving soldier.26
It is therefore necessary to ground the academic theory and policy aspects of family-friendly policies within Army’s force generation and posting cycles.
Section Two: the force generation cycle
The force generation cycle prepares Army for war by categorising members into ready, readying, and reset phases. In theory, during the ready phase a member is poised to deploy — whether on a long-term or short-term operation. In the readying phase, members spend considerable time in the field conducting collective training and mission rehearsal exercises to prepare for deployment. During the reset phase, members rest, reconnect with family and attend promotion courses. The force generation cycle is a sound concept, but does not provide the clear delineation between phases originally anticipated, as noted by the following respondents:
I have learned that the [force generation] cycle is busy regardless of which year one is in. All that changes is the emphasis and type of training, and the types and amounts of resources available.27
My key observation is that during the readying, ready and reset period is that the tempo of work does not decrease. The nature may change however we are just as busy regardless of the force generation cycle.28
It is difficult to apply Army’s family-friendly policies during the force generation cycle as the tempo and volume of work varies significantly and the commander does not have the ability to employ additional staff to mitigate the loss or changed work habits of staff. While the force generation cycle was meant to provide certainty to families and respite to members, in reality members spend more time away from their families.
The aim of the force generation cycle is to provide structure to the lives of serving members, but Army personnel post into and out of units at different stages of the cycle, and also to units outside the cycle, which negates the anticipated rest phase. This poses the challenge of adjusting from the deployment, reconnecting with family and then leaving the unit family. Survey respondents described the additional pressure of postings on family units:
From a family perspective – is the rest phase of this cycle occurring? Many families report of postings straight after deployment – therefore adding two stressful events to a family at once – reintegration post prolonged separation, on top of moving and setting up house.29
Moving out of the force generation cycle with a posting to another location introduces another collection of parenting challenges for military families in terms of children’s education. This is exacerbated by the release of posting orders after the end of the financial year:
Catholic schools are required to submit enrolment numbers for funding purposes on 30 June for the following academic year, which is before parents have even been informed where they will have to look for schools. The mismatch reduces the flexibility that Catholic schools have in accepting enrolments from out of state in the second half of the year.30
Concerns regarding school enrolment are amplified when a child has experienced learning difficulties. A US study found that some children are being lost in the education system: ‘any child who is five months behind at the end of first grade has only a one-in-five chance of ever catching up to grade level.’31 Despite differences between Australian and US educational and deployment systems, in the absence of a comparable Australian study, US findings highlight the potential for similar challenges in Australia. For example, current Defence policy identifies the key school years as grades 10 to 12; perhaps the first two years of school should also be identified as critical for stability.
Education and day care challenges are exacerbated as Defence Housing allocates a married quarter or approves the use of rental assistance only four weeks before a posting date. A family has minimal ability to obtain appropriate care and plan its daily work and school schedules at such short notice. One solution would be to issue posting orders in May. This would require a fundamental change in the function of the career management agencies and would rely on career managers commencing their preparations for the promotion board in the previous calendar year. Yet the enormous value of posting orders issued in May to the thousands of Army families would be well worth the changes to the career management system.
Another possible solution would be to have Defence Housing Australia advise families of their new address and the date of their projected removal in June (before the end of the financial year). Defence Housing Australia could advise the date the family would leave its current residence and the date the new residence would be available. While this would limit the flexibility of families to alter their removal dates, the value to the majority of defence members would compensate for the inconvenience to the minority.
Alongside the problems of finding suitable education, day care and housing, there are myriad personal challenges caused by relocation such as separation from friends and merging into a new school culture. Both children and the service spouse require enormous confidence to meet these challenges. Unless the spouse can work remotely, he/she is:
Required to restart in her [or his] employment every posting. This causes a huge amount of financial and emotional stress each move ... If we go MWD-U [i.e. the member moves alone while his/her family remains in the former location], her [or his] employment and the stability of the kids schooling will be the main factors for making that decision.32
As a result many spouses choose to leave the workforce to look after the family and assist with the transition:
At the time of initial [career] sacrifice the loss is tangible, unavoidable (child bearing) and within a honeymoon period; when children commence school reflection rightly kicks in and unfairness/tiredness/appreciation deficit is questioned.33
This article does not suggest that Army has a role in the allocation of responsibilities within a family, particularly as offering ‘a one size fits all’ approach to family problems is ‘certain to result in costly failure for the organisation and resentment on the part of employees.’34 Instead, Army’s role extends to creating a policy framework for the serving member, which ‘does not dictate behaviour directly … but provides a framework for rational choice.’35 This can allow a serving member to craft the work arrangements that support the family, whether through standard working hours or flexible working arrangements.
When this observation is placed in context of the cycle of Army’s two and three- year posting cycles and internal position change within the unit, this becomes an almost constant challenge for serving members. For those who are primary caregivers and are negotiating the ins and outs of a new posting, that challenge can be intensified:
When children need more attention and this stage coincides with a new posting it is hard to convince a new chain of command that while you are normally committed to your job and prepared to work towards achieving appropriate work-related goals, that at that particular time the balance needs to swing more away from work and toward family.36
Ideally, we need to be able to devote sufficient time to our families, feel competent and challenged at work and be valued as an employee. Within an Army context this would require career management agencies to employ serving members in a job that is within their level of competence and expertise and it would require their commander to value their contribution. Career management agencies and commanders therefore have a key role in maintaining the quality of members’ family lives and ensuring members remain mentally and physically available to their families. For Army this means that if we manage people well (which is a sunk cost as we are already paying the wages of the staff responsible for career management and commanders) we will not be required to pay retention bonuses to retain dissatisfied people. While the force generation cycle, deployments and postings impose challenges on our families, commanders can represent the biggest impediment to accessing family-friendly policies. A commander can nurture a culture in which applying for leave or flexible work is feasible with resources available to mitigate the absence of staff members. If flexible working arrangements are to be effective, managers need to be resourced to negotiate arrangements which suit the workplace and, if required, obtain additional resources to achieve identified targets and/or outputs. By encouraging and supporting commanders to facilitate family-friendly policies in their work units, Army will create flow-on effects that will minimise work/life conflict thereby increasing job satisfaction and contentment. This, in turn, will have a positive influence on productivity, innovation and retention.
Conclusion
Army has world class family-friendly policies — the stumbling block comes with select individuals’ aversion to implementing these, in positions where it would be feasible. As one survey respondent commented:
The issue of support in my view resides solely with the supervisor/ commander. The system provides maximum flexibility; however, the decision makers empowered to provide that flexibility remain the weak point.37
The irony is that this aversion is countered by the extensive micro-level flexible working arrangements implemented within units which enable people to contribute to their families in a way that suits them and Army. Perhaps the problem lies in a fallacious belief that, if such arrangements are formalised, there will be some impact on the member’s career.
As this article has argued, Army’s family-friendly policies are often impeded by a prevailing workplace culture of ‘presenteeism’, the tempo of the force generation cycle, and the willingness and ability of commanders to approve the use of these policies. This discussion has also identified that the force generation cycle, deployments and postings have a direct impact on families and children by not providing certainty to families or time to rest and reconnect. This undermines Army’s credibility as a ‘family first’ organisation.
To address these concerns, this article recommends consideration of the following policy amendments:
- parental leave entitlements should be available until a child is eight and should be expanded to include care for immediate family members
- Army should actively manage careers that deviate from the command, leadership and management model to better retain talent and organisational knowledge
- management skills for flexible working arrangements should be taught via Campus courses to raise awareness and encourage managers to approve their use in the workplace
- posting orders should be issued in May and Defence Housing Australia should inform members of their new residential address in June (before the end of the financial year)
- school years of grades K to 1 and 11 to 12 should be classified as critical years for a child’s education
The work-life balance that Army promotes is certainly achievable. It is simply a matter of prioritising different aspects of members’ lives in concert with their families and employers to ensure that all parties are receiving the support they need. It is not the role of Army to dictate one model for the perfect work-life balance, but rather to provide policies which equip serving members with practical options. Army’s policies provide these options — it is now for commanders to be encouraged and supported in implementing them. If commanders support the implementation of flexible working arrangements, and the recommendations outlined in this article are adopted, pressures on Army families will decrease and the recruitment of new serving members will increase as Army’s first class policies will be implemented at a first class standard, raising Army’s status to that of preferred employer.
Endnotes
1 C. Wehner and P. Abrahamson, ‘Family and/or Work in Europe’, Journal of Comparative Family Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2006, pp. 153–75.
2 The Australian Defence Human Research Ethics Committee is committed to the creation and maintenance of an environment in which research on humans undertaken on Australian
Defence Force (ADF) personnel, by ADF personnel, or on Defence property, is conducted both professionally and ethically.
3 ‘Family’ in this context encompasses single members and their next of kin, married/ de facto members, and married members with their children.
4 Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operations Officer of Facebook and the author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (written with Nell Scovell), Knopf, New York, 2013.
5 Often this is a mixture of leave without pay, annual leave and long service leave.
6 P. Rush, ‘Dad and Partner Pay Implications for policy-makers and practitioners’, Child Family Community Australia Paper, No. 12, 2013.
7 See: http://www.dol.govt.nz/er/holidaysandleave/parentalleave/paid-unpaid.asp
8 See: http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/ei/types/maternity_parental.shtml#lo…
9 M.B. Wells and A. Sarkadi, ‘Do Father-Friendly Policies Promote Father-Friendly Child-Rearing Practices? A Review of Swedish Parental Leave and Child Health Centres’, Journal of Child Family Studies, Vol. 21, 2012, p. 25.
10 Ibid., p. 26.
11 Rush, ‘Dad and Partner Pay’, p. 2.
12 Sandberg, Lean In.
13 A. Slaughter, ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All’ (2012), p. 11 at: http://www.theatlantic.com/ magazine/print/2012/07 (downloaded 7 Mar 13).
14 Ibid.
15 S.D. Friedman, P. Christensen and J. Degroot, ‘The End of the Zero Sum Game’ in Harvard Business Review on Work and Life Balance, Harvard Business School Press, USA, 2000, p. 1.
16 Ibid.
17 Respondent 7.
18 R. Hertz, ‘Working to Place Family at the Center of Life: Dual-Earner and Single-Parent Strategies’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 562, 1999, p. 19.
19 Respondent 3.
20 Lieutenant General David Morrison, ‘Flexible Work in the Australian Army’ (2012) at: http:// www.army.gov.au/Army-life/Health-and-welfare/Families/~/media/Files/Arm… and%20welfare/FWA_CAletter.pdf
21 J. Dikker, M. Van Engen and C. Vinkenburg, ‘Flexible work: ambitious parents’ recipe for career success in The Netherlands’, Career Development International, Vol. 15, No. 6, 2010, p. 563.
22 Hertz, ‘Working to Place Family at the Center of Life’, p. 16.
23 Respondent 7.
24 The Campus Learning Management System is the Australian Defence Organisation’s Learning Management System.
25 Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Submission to Productivity Commission Inquiry into Paid Maternity, Paternity and Parental Leave, 2009 at: www.pc.gov.au/_data/assets/ pdf_file/0009/81396/sub185.pdf (downloaded 7 Mar 13).
26 Respondent 6.
27 Respondent 6.
28 Respondent 17.
29 Respondent 5.
30 Respondent 7.
31 R. Whitmire, ‘Why Boys Fail. Saving Our Sons from an Educational System that is Leaving Them Behind’, American Management Association, US, 2010, p. 28.
32 Respondent 7.
33 Respondent 19.
34 D. Darcy and A. McCarthy, ‘Work-family conflict. An exploration of the differential effects of a dependent child’s age on working parents’, Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 31, No. 7, 2007, pp. 530–49.
35 C.K.. Fu and M.A. Shaffer, ‘The tug of work and family. Direct and indirect domain-specific determinants of work-family conflict’, Personnel Review, Vol. 30, No. 5, 2001, p. 514.
36 Respondent 3.
37 Respondent 13.
